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Ananya Zutshi develops cells therapy to combat cancer
She founded and assumed the role of CEO at Guardian Bio.
Ananya Zutshi / Image - Harvard University
Ananya Zutshi, an entrepreneur of Indian descent who completed her graduate studies at Harvard University, is leading an innovative cell therapy initiative for cancer treatment.
Within a year of graduating from Harvard, she founded and assumed the role of CEO at Guardian Bio, a pharmaceutical and biotech company dedicated to developing a novel therapy for combating cancer.
“Entrepreneurship wasn’t something that had ever been on my radar before Harvard,” said Zutshi in a statement published by the school. “I found it so powerful, the idea of marrying the technical and business side of things. I love the technical side, am so proud of my engineering training and will call myself an engineer forever. But I recognized that my strengths and experiences are well suited for the business side of drug development.”
Guardian Bio's cell therapy revolves around the utilization of dendritic cells, a crucial element in the human immune response. Analogous to a coach on the immune system's playing field, dendritic cells play the role of guiding T-cells, instructing them on what to target and what to avoid.
The firm specializes in the development of a rare subset of dendritic cells that are pivotal for activating killer T cells. These killer T cells can be specifically engineered to target cancerous cells. Once designed, these cells are administered into the human body to initiate and enhance the natural immune response against cancer.
“What’s become clearer over the last couple years is that cancer patients have bad dendritic cells,” Zutshi said. “They don’t have as many, and the ones that they have don’t work as well, which makes sense. If you are cancer and want to effectively keep the body from fighting you, you want to make sure the body can’t recognize you, and can’t be trained against you.”
After finishing her degree, Zutshi remained at Harvard for a further year as a Blavatnik Fellow in Life Science Entrepreneurship at HBS. It was during this period that she commenced the development of her company. Guardian Bio, headquartered in Boston, gained acceptance into the Y Combinator accelerator program and was officially launched in June 2022.
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