Christina Smolke, PhD

Bio:

Christina Smolke, PhD, is the visionary CEO and Co-Founder of Antheia, the advanced biosynthesis company delivering 21st-century drug manufacturing and innovation. A distinguished pioneer in biotech, her groundbreaking research, developed in her Stanford University lab, engineered baker’s yeast to produce complex medicines, addressing the crisis of fragile global pharmaceutical supply chains. In 2015, she co-founded Antheia to scale this breakthrough and solve this massive problem: ending the reliance on centuries-old manufacturing approaches that create drug shortages and limit drug innovation.

Antheia has successfully launched the only biosynthetic thebaine — a key ingredient in overdose rescue drug Narcan — available globally, with products now incorporated into medicines for patient use. The company is rapidly expanding its commercial portfolio from a pipeline of over 70 complex pharmaceutical ingredients. Antheia has secured substantial backing, raising over $170M from leading investors, and is recognized by the U.S. government as critical infrastructure for national security.

Antheia’s commercially proven platform replaces slow, unpredictable agricultural sourcing with a reliable, fermentation-based approach that delivers ingredients in weeks rather than years. This advanced biosynthesis technology packs unprecedented complexity into engineered microbial hosts, achieving a level of sophistication that has yet to be replicated.

Dr. Smolke was previously a Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and serves on the National Academies’ Committee on Science and Innovation Leadership for the 21st Century. Her work has earned numerous awards, including the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator Award, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, Nature’s 10, and the TR35 Award.