Author: Bassil Dahiyat & Joseph Panetta

Bassil I. Dahiyat is the president and CEO of Xencor (NASDAQ: [[ticker:XNCR]]), a Los Angeles area biotech focused on antibody and protein therapeutics. He is a co-inventor of Xencor’s core technology and co-founded the company. He has led Xencor in raising more than $460 million in public and private financing, creating a diverse portfolio of monoclonal antibody clinical programs for the treatment of life-threatening and debilitating diseases, and establishing alliances with leading biopharmaceutical companies that generated over $200 million in upfront payments. Dahiyat holds a doctorate in chemistry from Caltech and B.S. and M.S.E. degrees in biomedical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. He has co-authored numerous scientific papers in the fields of protein design and drug delivery, is an inventor of 33 U.S. and numerous foreign patents, and has received scientific awards from the American Chemical Society, the Controlled Release Society, the Protein Society, and Caltech. Joseph Panetta is President and CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of Biocom, the Southern California association that advocates for more than 550 companies, service sector firms, universities and research institutes working in the life sciences. As the head of Biocom since 1999, Panetta has lead programs in capital formation, public policy, workforce education, and member services. He oversees several subsidiaries of Biocom, including a purchasing group that provides more than $35 million in products and services to members. He co-founded the Biocom Political Action Committee and the Biocom Institute for education and workforce development. Joe also is a founder and chairman of the California Biotechnology Foundation, a joint initiative to inform legislators and the media about the life science industry in California.