Principal
Johnny Hu, Ph.D.
Bio + HealthcareAI
As a principal at Menlo Ventures, Johnny invests in biotech and life science companies with a focus on novel therapeutics and new technologies for improving medical outcomes. He has firsthand experience working at the bench on engineering new tools for the clinic. While completing his Ph.D., Johnny helped develop gene editing technologies that were licensed by companies such as Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT) and Beam Therapeutics (NASDAQ: BEAM). He is excited about partnering with founders at the beginning of the company journey to translate groundbreaking science into new medicines.
Prior to Menlo, Johnny was a vice president at Longitude Capital, where he made several investments in early-stage biotech companies. He was a board observer at Lexeo Therapeutics, Endeavor Biomedicines, and Opna IO, and was on the investment team for Amunix Pharmaceuticals. Before Longitude, he was an associate at Omega Funds, where he worked on the firm’s investment in Nuvation Bio (NYSE: NUVB).
Johnny received his Ph.D. from Harvard University as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He holds an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and an A.B., summa cum laude, in Chemical and Physical Biology from Harvard. He relishes the opportunity to continue learning from innovators and to explore new science.
After 14 years in Boston, Johnny now lives with his wife in Seattle, where you can find him road and gravel biking, as well as hiking the Pacific Northwest terrain.
Supported by: Lauren Etienne, [email protected]
Investment Portfolio
Xaira Therapeutics is an integrated biotechnology company driving advances in artificial intelligence to learn the language of life and transform how we treat disease.
Milestones
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2023 - Founded
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2024 - Partnered, Seed + Series A
Leadership
Marc Tessier-Lavigne
Founder & CEO
Partners
Opna Bio a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel oncology therapeutics.
Milestones
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2021 - Founded
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2021 - Partnered, Series A
Partners
Vilya is creating a novel class of medicines to treat disease targets inside cells, leveraging its proprietary AI engine to design for drug-like properties and ultimately generate new drug candidates.
Milestones
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2022 - Founded
-
2023 - Partnered, Series A
Leadership
David Baker, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
Gaurav Bhardwaj, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
Partners
Opna Bio
Opna Bio a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel oncology therapeutics.
Vilya
Vilya is creating a novel class of medicines to treat disease targets inside cells, leveraging its proprietary AI engine to design for drug-like properties and ultimately generate new drug candidates.
Xaira Therapeutics
Xaira Therapeutics is an integrated biotechnology company driving advances in artificial intelligence to learn the language of life and transform how we treat disease.
q&a
Investment Approach
I get to learn every day from the people who are pushing the limits of human knowledge and who are pioneering the ideas towards a better future.
We share a common language and collaborate to bring ideas from paper to reality. In the early stages, everyone at the table plays a meaningful role in shaping the company’s future and setting its direction.
We’re still very early in understanding the complexity of the natural and biological world, but our tools to measure and impact change have improved dramatically in the last few years. I hope that the field continues to invest in that data generation in the coming years because we’ve already seen what a well curated dataset paired with the latest computational tools can produce in the field of protein structure prediction.
