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President and CEO, Omega Therapeutics

Mahesh Karande is a biotech influencer who seeks to advance the field of controlled epigenomic modulation with a signature blend of ambition and humility, and by focusing on the question: “What if we could target and control genes – including those that have been historically intractable – to treat and cure almost any human disease?”

Under Karande’s leadership, Omega has showcased the first-ever preliminary clinical data demonstrating EC-mediated pre-transcriptional control of MYC expression, a notoriously undruggable oncogene. Karande hopes to leverage his expertise and leadership to expand the definition of what is achievable in biotechnology, offering a transformative approach to address a broad range of diseases.

We asked…

What goals would you still like to personally achieve?

Early in my career, I felt compelled to apply my engineering and business background and appetite for problem-solving to life sciences. I saw the discovery and development of new drugs as an opportunity to have a meaningful and lasting impact on the world. Over the last two decades, I’ve had the privilege of working in the biopharma and biotech industry on a global scale. This includes very rewarding work launching new products and increasing patient access to medications during my tenure at Novartis in the US, and across the emerging markets of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 

I want to impact patient access in a different way – by offering a truly novel class of medicines with the potential to overcome the key limitations of current treatments. Despite great strides in various therapeutic areas, many of the tools in a healthcare provider’s toolbox are limited to managing the symptoms of a disease or treating the disease at a cost of burdensome side effects. Our growing understanding of the human genome and how gene expression is regulated gives us the unprecedented opportunity to engineer new solutions to address the root cause of many diseases. It is my hope and goal to see epigenomic controllers approved and used successfully to treat patients. In my eyes, such a milestone would complete the pioneering journey I started when I joined Omega Therapeutics in 2019.