For the second year in a row, flashes of pink cut through the sea of navy, gray and black that flooded San Francisco’s Union Square during the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. The color—largely worn by female attendees—stood out on streets that have been historically dominated by men during the event.
And then there was Nkarta Therapeutics CEO Paul Hastings, who was impossible to miss in head-to-to-toe pink: a bright jacket, pants and even rose-colored shoes.
“We have a[n] incredible, amazing population of women who are biotech CEOs,” Hastings told Fierce Biotech on the sidelines of the conference. “You need to be supporting them.”
On the second day of the conference, throngs of people in pink gathered for the Biotech CEO Sisterhood’s second annual group photo. The organization, which aims to empower women in biotech leadership and promote equitable representation across the industry, drew an estimated 800 to 1,000 attendees to its meetup—many clad in hues of pink to support women in the industry’s C-suites.
“I have never felt and seen so much joy and unity on the Square at JPM as this Tuesday at 4pm and it was simply terrific!” Shehnaaz Suliman, M.D., CEO of ReCode Therapeutics, chair executive for Women in Bio and member of the Biotech CEO Sisterhood, wrote on LinkedIn. “Finally—here’s hoping that ‘Pink on the Square’ and ‘Wear PInk Tuesday’ continues to be a fixture at JPM.”
While nearly 1,000 attendees showed up in support of the sisterhood, many thousands more attended the annual conference, with most still dressed in the darker, gray-scale palette.
Against this backdrop, it was easy for Hastings to stand out.
“I’m wearing pink—all of a sudden everyone’s looking at me,” he said.
“There’s still like, the sensitivity and the curiosity that this doesn’t belong,” Hastings added. “And we can’t let that go away. We can’t let the excitement about differences go away.”
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The second yearly biotech sisterhood gathering followed a year of profound uncertainty for the industry, driven in part by a federal crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Under President Donald Trump, health agencies have pulled funding for science that doesn’t align with his executive orders, which declare that the U.S. government only recognizes two sexes and demand that diversity efforts be dismantled.
Biotech “starts fundamentally with the [National Institutes of Health (NIH)] grants,” Hastings said, adding that graduate students working on NIH-backed research often go on to spin that science into startups. “They’re not there if they’re not being encouraged to be there,” he explained.
The biotech CEO also highlighted issues with research that doesn’t consider diverse populations, citing an already existing underrepresentation of women—particularly Black women—in clinical trials for new investigational therapeutics.
Hastings said he is supportive of the current FDA, which has prioritized cell therapy, but lamented the agency’s mass layoffs, noting that it “would take years to replace that kind of knowledge.”
In late November, the former Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) chair signed a letter addressed to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., that underscored the need for regulatory predictability. BIO’s CEO John Crowley also spoke out after the sudden departure of Richard Pazdur, M.D., saying the exit raised “serious concerns about the repeated turnover in key leadership occurring at the FDA.”
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The leadership turnover and workforce reductions at the agency have factored into the volatility that defined 2025, adding fuel to a fire stoked by the federal divestments in research, Liberation Day tariffs and uncertainty surrounding U.S. drug pricing policies.
The headwinds have prompted many biotechs to cut down on pipelines and teams to stay alive. Nkarta did just that, laying off a third of its staff in March of last year.
Previously, in 2024, the company deprioritized a CAR NK candidate after data from 14 patients with acute myeloid leukemia failed to live up to the asset’s initial promise. The decision reaffirmed Nkarta’s pivot to autoimmune diseases, with the biotech now focused on its allogeneic CD19-directed CAR NK—dubbed NKX019—in several autoimmune indications, including lupus nephritis.
“We used to have multiple research programs, multiple development programs,” Hastings told Fierce last week. “Because of the uncertainty and the tension in the air, we have to focus on a few things that make the cash last longer, so that we can see ourselves through the next three years or four years.”
“And that’s what everyone right now is trying to do—survive,” Hastings concluded. “They’re trying to get through whatever period of time it takes to get to the next place that isn’t this place.”
