Polina Lishko, PhD, Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology and BJC Investigator at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was selected to the 2025 Equalize Startups cohort in the therapeutics category. Lishko joins 38 other women academic entrepreneurs in a six-month mentoring, training and networking program that culminates in a virtual pitch event in June at which participants (or Equalizers) pitch their business ideas to hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, university tech transfer professionals, and supporters of university startups.
Lishko will be sharing her research around novel therapies for presenting, slowing down and potentially reversing age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Read more about Lishko and the entire Equalizer cohort here.
Lishko is a noted molecular biologist and entrepreneur whose work has advanced scientific understanding in fields as varied as reproductive biology, vision and neurodegeneration. She joined WashU Medicine in 2022 from the University of California, Berkeley and was selected as a Sloan Foundation Fellow and a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences in 2015 and received a MacArthur “Genius Grant” in 2020.
Lishko joins a group of five other WashU innovators who have participated in this program from its inception in 2020. Past WashU Equalizers include:
Shu (Joy) Jiang: 2024 cohort
Christine O’Brien: 2023 cohort
Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg: 2022 cohort
Hong Chen: 2021 cohort
Pamela Woodard: 2020 cohort
Equalize Startups seeks to equalize the pathway for academic women who want to commercialize their innovations. Equalize participants receive education, a field-specific mentor, and access to networks that drive new entrepreneurial connections. Equalize candidates can include faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in STEM disciplines.
Equalize Startups was founded in 2022 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit program. Since its inception, Equalize Startups has provided mentorship, education, and business strategy review to over 90 women faculty members. Their outcomes have ranged from a newly launched company, to raising seed and Series A funding. The program was founded by Nichole Mercier, PhD, Assistant Vice Chancellor & Managing Director for the Office of Technology Management at Washington University in St. Louis, and Kirsten Leute, Partner at Osage University Partners.
