Health Care

Terning The Flight to Innovation with Terns Pharma

Mar. 13, 2026

Guest: Amy Burroughs, CEO, Terns Pharmaceuticals

Host: Yaron Werber, Managing Director, Health Care – Biotechnology Research Analyst, TD Cowen

TD Cowen senior biotech analyst Yaron Werber speaks with Amy Burroughs, CEO of Terns Pharmaceuticals, at the 46th Annual TD Cowen Health Care Conference, discussing leadership, resilience and innovation in biotech. Amy reflects on her non‑linear career path from large organizations to smaller biotechs, and how those experiences shaped her approach to building teams and leading through change. She discusses how Terns, inspired by the agility and persistence of the Arctic tern, evolved through multiple pivots to focus on TERN-701, its lead program in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). She outlines the key unmet need in CML – the pursuit of functional cures – and explains Terns’ plans to advance TERN‑701 into pivotal trials with urgency and discipline. On a personal note, Amy describes her leadership “superpower”: learning not to be the smartest person in the room, listening intently and surrounding herself with trusted advisors.

This podcast was originally recorded on March 2, 2026.

Full transcript

Voiceover:
Welcome to TD Cowen Insights, a space that brings leading thinkers together to share insights and ideas shaping the world around us. Join us as we converse with the top minds who are influencing our global sectors.
Yaron Werber:
Hi, I'm Yaron Werber, senior biotechnology analyst at TD Cowen, and we're here live at the 46th Annual TD Cowen Healthcare Conference. With us today is Amy Burroughs, CEO of Terns Pharma. Amy, great to see you. Thanks for joining us.
Amy Burroughs:
Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Yaron Werber:
So lots to talk about, about Terns. You built an impressive career in biotech and in large companies like Genentech Roche and smaller startups like Cleve Therapeutics. You're now running Terns, one of the more innovative companies in biotech. As a woman executive who've navigated multiple leadership roles, what experiences most shaped the leader you are today?
Amy Burroughs:
Well, I've been told that I have a non-linear career, and I think so many things have actually prepared me for this job that I love. So I started my career working for a large company, Procter & Gamble, and then I also worked for Genentech, and I feel like working for a best-in-class organization and really learning from amazing people. Early in my career, I often tell young people, take that opportunity to go work for a great company with good people.
I also have had a lot of time in smaller companies. I actually started in services and technology and moved over to biotech, so a lot of different experiences, both on the healthcare delivery side and on the drug development side, working with different types of investors, the challenges of raising capital and really navigating in a small environment where you don't have the kind of resources that you have at a larger company.
And then very unusual, I spent three years at a major search firm working to build teams, public company boards, private company boards, C-teams, CEOs. And when I came to Terns, I had a lot of work to do on the team side. We've expanded our board. And so that has been incredibly valuable to me having done that myself.
Yaron Werber:
So really a terrific experience all around.
Amy Burroughs:
Yes.
Yaron Werber:
The name Terns is inspired by the Arctic tern. I actually had to look it up and learn a little bit more about the bird. The bird is really known for its agility and adaptability. How do these qualities shape up the company's approach to drug development?
Amy Burroughs:
Well, so Terns was founded in 2017. And I think like many great biotech companies, it has been through multiple iterations and pivots. Not everything that we discover and develop in biotech turns out the way we hope that it will, and I think that ability to be flexible and persistent is really important in this business and to work together as a team. And so I think we are appropriately named for our resilience. Terns birds are also known for traveling long distances. And I think where we are today, we're on TERN-701 and we've worked on multiple programs, we've focused now in oncology, and I think that that has had a lot to do with our success today.
Yaron Werber:
When you joined Terns, the company was really in a little bit of a tough spot with an amazing previous founder CEO, and really needed reshaping. What allowed you to really set the right strategy and tone and get to where you are today?
Amy Burroughs:
Yeah. Well, when I came into Terns, the company had been through a lot of difficulty with the untimely passing of our prior CEO, and a lot of people were very heartbroken. We also were in a stage, from a business standpoint, where we had a metabolic program going on, an oncology program. We were just starting in TERN-701. We had no idea how good it would be at the time and our metabolic program the same way. So we had multiple shots. We were really re-crafting the team. And I think getting the right team to then come to a decision this year around really focusing on oncology, which I think strategically, one of the most important things in strategy is deciding what you're not going to do. So we decided not to do everything to really out-license our metabolic assets and focus on TERN-701, which when we saw how good the 701 data was, was honestly a fairly easy decision.
Yaron Werber:
Your lead program is in chronic myeloid leukemia or CML. From your perspective, what is the unmet need in that indication and what would truly differentiate a new drug in this area?
Amy Burroughs:
Well, as we talked about earlier today at the conference, the biggest unmet need is really to cure people of this chronic disease. The holy grail in CML is really finding more functional cures, and there's data to support that faster, deeper responses, particularly for frontline patient, can lead to a higher functional cure rate. That's a huge aspiration, and something in our trials to date, we are seeing more responses, we're seeing fast responses, and so we're excited to see how this can develop. We're also seeing a safety and tolerability profile that's really unprecedented in CML in addition to the efficacy data. And for a patient to do well to potentially get to that functional cure, you have to be able to stay on therapy. There's a lot of other therapies that cause pretty scary side effects like pleural effusion or arterial occlusive event.
Yaron Werber:
In terms of next steps for TERN-701, you mentioned its promising activity and profile so far in Phase 1, what are the next steps in development to bring it to market?
Amy Burroughs:
Yeah, we're really excited to start our pivotal. We hope later this year and at the latest by early next year, we hope to enroll that pivotal quickly and get this to patient as soon as possible.
Yaron Werber:
And then to close and my favorite part of every podcast where you really get to know somebody pretty well, every great leader has a secret superpower. What's yours and how it has helped you shape and navigate your opportunities?
Amy Burroughs:
So I'm glad I got a little heads-up on this question because I think the best thing to do is ask the people you work closely with. So I asked some of the people that I work with, and I think the answer they gave me is a superpower that I actually was not born with, but something, as we were talking about experiences, that I've really learned, which is, as the CEO, not to be the smartest person in the room. You don't have to know everything. You admit when you don't know things and you really leverage the people around you. So I recognize that I could not do the job of my senior leadership team as well as any of them do it. And I generally try to get their advice, be there for them and stay out of their way.
I would say I also do that externally in terms of listening to people and taking advice. So in addition to my senior team, my board that I get great advice from. I also have what I call a personal board of directors, people who are senior-level board-level people who I can call, even have them under CDA with my company to get advice from, and then a broader group of CEOs that I've built through my career. So I think listening, admitting you're not always the expert to people is something I've learned is an important superpower for me.
Yaron Werber:
So maybe to put you on the spot a little bit, if I were to ask your family, what is your superpower, what would they say?
Amy Burroughs:
That's such a good question. You didn't prepare me for that one.
Yaron Werber:
It just came up in my head.
Amy Burroughs:
I think my family would say actually something to that effect. I come from a fairly stubborn family, so I think listening does not come naturally. So I think they would say that. I think also my ability to juggle a million balls in the air.
Yaron Werber:
Great. Amy, good to see you. Thanks for joining us.
Amy Burroughs:
Thank you, Yaron.
Voiceover:
Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for the next episode of TD Cowen Insights.

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Yaron Werber, MD, MBA

Managing Director, Health Care – Biotechnology Research Analyst, TD Cowen

Yaron Werber, MD, MBA
Managing Director, Health Care – Biotechnology Research Analyst, TD Cowen

Biography

Dr. Yaron Werber is a Managing Director and senior research analyst on TD Cowen’s biotechnology team. In this role, Dr. Werber is responsible for providing analysis on large-, mid-, and small-cap biotechnology stocks. Dr. Werber has 20+ years of experience as a research analyst in the financial services industry and has served as an executive in a public biotechnology company.

Prior to rejoining TD Cowen, Dr. Werber was a founding team member, chief business and financial officer, treasurer and secretary of Ovid Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on developing transformative drugs for orphan disorders of the brain. In this role, Dr. Werber established and was responsible for all financial planning and reporting, business development, strategy, operations/IT and investor and public relations and human resources functionality. Dr. Werber also led negotiations to secure several pipeline compounds including an innovative partnership with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, a deal that expanded Ovid’s pipeline and pioneered a novel approach for partnering the focused expertise of small biotech with big pharma.

This deal was chosen by Scrip as a finalist for the 2017 Best Partnership Alliance Award. In addition, Dr. Werber oversaw all financing activities and led a $75 million Series B round in 2015 and Ovid’s $75 million IPO in 2017. In that capacity, Dr. Werber was selected as an “Emerging Pharma Leader” by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine in 2017.

Prior to joining Ovid, Dr. Werber worked at Citi from 2004 to 2015, where he most recently served as a managing director and head of U.S. healthcare and biotech equity research. During his tenure at Citi, Dr. Werber led a team that conducted in-depth analyses of life science companies at all stages of development, ranging from successful, profitable companies to recently public and privately held companies. Previously, Dr. Werber was a senior biotech analyst and vice president at SG Cowen Securities Corporation from 2001- 2004.

Dr. Werber has been awarded several accolades for performance and stock picking, he has been highly ranked by Institutional Investor magazine, has received awards from Starmine and was voted among the top five analysts in biotech in the Wall Street Journal’s “Best on the Street” Greenwich survey. He has frequently been featured as a guest on CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg News and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg thestreet.com and BioCentury.
Dr. Werber earned his B.S. in Biology from Tufts University, cum laude, and a combined M.D./MBA degree from Tufts University School of Medicine where he was a Terner Scholar.