Joshua P. Fairbank

Biography

Fairbank has spent over two decades on both sides of the table; as an investor and as an entrepreneur. He is the CEO of Base4 Biotechnology and a Managing Partner at Orchard Capital Management; he is a co-founder of both companies.

Base4 is a computational genetics firm that harnesses AI and big data to work on multiple unsolved diseases including cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and infectious diseases. Joshua has negotiated partnerships with multiple leading global pharmaceutical companies and secured significant non-dilutive funding. He is a joint inventor on two of Base4’s biophysics patents.

At Orchard Capital he sits on the investment committees for the small cap value and the alternative asset strategies. In 2004 he co-founded and led the investment team at Orchard Ventures, a biotech VC fund.

In addition to Base4 and Orchard, he is the co-founder of several other companies. At Akebia (NASDAQ:AKBA) he wrote the original business plan, negotiated the spin-out from Procter Gamble, and served as a founding director. Akebia is developing an anemia drug that mimics the body’s physiological response to high altitude, it has been tested in over ten thousand patients, and has been approved internationally. Early on at Akebia they spun off the blindness-related assets into a new company, Aerpio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARPO), that they also took public.

Academic Areas

• Entrepreneurship