
Our Team
Big goals in the big apple
We come from different backgrounds, but we share the same belief: that science can change the world for the better. We exist to deliver life-saving cancer therapies through breakthroughs in drug discovery.
Our bios recount our academic credentials, but there’s a lot more to us. Our individual experiences shape who we are as a team, and together we’re passionate about making a difference.
We are supported by a premier group of investors and board members with a proven track record of building successful biotechnology companies. Our founders and scientific advisors are renowned for their seminal discoveries in cancer biology.
Our Founders

Bakhoum, Ph.D.

Cantley, Ph.D.
In 2016, Samuel Bakhoum joined the lab of world-renowned cancer biologist Lewis Cantley with an idea: to study chromosome behavior and how it might drive cancer metastasis.

Elemento, Ph.D.
They recruited their colleague Olivier Elemento, whose lab combines big data analytics, including artificial intelligence and mathematical modeling, with experimentation to develop entirely new ways to help prevent, diagnose, understand, treat and ultimately cure cancer. Together they saw a path toward targeting a root cause of cancer metastasis.

Just a few years later, in January 2018, they published a study in Nature showing for the first time how CIN allows cancerous cells to evade the immune system and spread.

With this groundbreaking
finding, Volastra was born.
Investors






