Name: Cheri Ackerman Araromi, Concerto Biosciences
Uploaded: 2026-07-20T17:00:00.000Z
Duration: 14 min 15 s

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Cheri Ackerman Araromi

CEO & Co-Founder,

Concerto Biosciences

play_circle_outline Cheri Ackerman Araromi's Concerto Biosciences: Topical Microbial Therapy for Eczema, Odor Control, Women's Health, Skin Universe

play_circle_outline Use of public datasets plus proprietary patient-derived data

play_circle_outline Once a Week Topical vs Antibiotics, Steroids, and Injectables: A Key Commercial Differentiator

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Cheri Ackerman Araromi, Concerto Biosciences

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

CEO & Co-Founder, Concerto Biosciences

(INTRO)

Gemma Allen

>> Welcome back to theCUBE Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. I'm Gemma Allen with NYSE Wired, and today we are covering all things AI in biotech. Joining me now for a conversation on the future of eczema and what we can solve for in that space is Sherry Ackerman Araromi, CEO and co -founder of Concerto Biosciences. Welcome, Sherry.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Thank you. It's good to be here.

Gemma Allen

>> So we're talking about a lot of different things today, different drugs, different conditions. We've talked to oncologists. We've talked to folks who are helping scale drug discovery in lab mice. it is a fascinating space, but you are specifically focused on bringing a drug to market that solves for eczema.talk about the story here fill me in

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> sure so Concerto Biosciences started as a spin out from MIT and what we're really passionate about is making the microbiome of every person work for them so we want to make it possible to leverage all of the good bacteria that live in and on your body as tools whether those are medicines or consumer health products that can help keep you healthier. And by treating your body as a whole ecosystem, not just your own cells, but also the microbial cells, we can improve human health. And there are a lot of applications for this. So one of them is eczema. We have a drug that is a topical, basically multi -cellular therapy that we put good bacteria on the surface of skin as a way of treating and preventing eczema flares. but then we also have products like for odor control and we're starting to work on women's health so recurrent vaginal infection and vaginal odor as well there are lots and lots of different applications for this type of technology

Gemma Allen

>> and does one area of discovery oranalysis tend to kind of just lead accidentally or not so accidentally to another when you set about looking at eczema and you discovered other ways in which these bugs or these conditions have overlap or even interactions talk about how that comes to be in the space, do you set out with a very specific thesis Can you explain that to me a bit

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> sure so we did start with a very specific thesis around eczemait's related to a bacterium called Staph aureus on the surface of skin that can aggravate and set off these eczema flares but once you start digging into how the skin microbiology actually works, you can discover all kinds of different ways of treating lots of different skin conditions. So we've actually collected a data set that we call the Skin Universe Project, where we went after not just eczema, but acne, dandruff, chronic wounds, body odor, all these different things that are related to skin biology and how microbes grow on skin. And so, yeah, very much so one thing leads to another. Once you understand one aspect of the microbiology, you can solve the whole network. And that's because of the massive data sets that Concerto can collect and then the AI models that we build on top of that.

Gemma Allen

>> Well, let's get into the models. But first, you guys are further along in the drug to market stage than maybe some others that we've spoken to today. Some folks are still in that early stage of discovery. You guys are actually in the clinic.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> We finished Phase 1b.So fill me in.

Gemma Allen

>> and talk to me about what that last six years involved. we hear a lot about drugs to market and how it's a lengthy process and maybe AI can fundamentally condense some of those timeframes or particular parts of that cycle.

Gemma Allen

>> Yes.

Gemma Allen

>> talk me through your own personal journey here with this company.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Yeah.So for us, we started the company back in 2020 with just an idea that we should be able to take a technology we had invented at MIT, and use it to understand the skin microbiome very deeply and then develop a drug or other consumer products out of that. And we were very hyper-focused on eczema at the beginning and then generalized out from that. So our initial timeline was basically getting the concept all the way through the IND, investigational new drug application. In about four years, we were in the clinic, which is on the faster side. We actually didn't have a lot of AI backing us up at the time. It wasn't until 2024, 2025 that we really built out now what we have as an AI model that can accelerate understanding how these ecosystems work and then predicting the behavior of combinations of microbes that we haven't actually tested before using our high throughput technology.

Gemma Allen

>> Take us under the hood of those AI models in the biotech application space. are you using Frontier models that we're all familiar with? Are you using proprietary versions or creations in partnership with some of these frontier labs? what's actually happening here under the hood? Because I assume this is like a proprietary and patented space in and of itself, right? It has to be super closed off to protect the commercial viability futuristically. Help me understand that a bit more.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> I think one of the themes that you hear a lot in AI meets biology, because it's true, is that in the end it comes down to what's the data that you can train on. So really Concerto's moat comes from our data set and because we've built that whole data set in-house. And the only way we were able to build that data set is because of this high throughput technology that we invented at MIT. So it starts with a novel lab capability that then generates a novel data set that no one has ever been able to train on before. And then we can build our own AI models that use that data set to understand biology more deeply than it's been understood before. And so for us, it is proprietary models, not necessarily leveraging the LLMs or anything like that.

Gemma Allen

>> And that data set, because we hear that word a lot today.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Yeah, I bet.

Gemma Allen

>> Data is obviously fundamental for everything. But where does that data originate from? Is some of it, we've heard different versions of this too. Some of it comes from patients, some doesn't. talk me through what you guys use. Are you, because there are other eczema drugs in the market, right? There are other learnings that are in some ways publicly available to you. But how accessible is that patient data, for example, in your own investigation and trials?

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Yeah. So I would say that the way that we leverage publicly available data sets is helping us narrow in on what biology to target in the first place. So there are lots of people that have tried different eczema clinical trials, and there's actually clinical evidence that the microbiome plays an important role in the beginning of eczema flares and then the exacerbation of eczema flares. So we're building off of that information and then from that, we add our own proprietary data sets and then we're able to predict, OK, which combination of microbes should you put onto someone's skin to treat what is known as a clinical issue with eczema? eczema which combination should you use to calm that down and make it so that that aspect of eczema is not causing an issue for the patient anymore

Gemma Allen

>> and the decision to focus on eczema

Gemma Allen

>> which is a space that everyone knows straight

Gemma Allen

>> off like everyone can visualize that even right immediately but it also already has a competitive landscape from the perspective of drug use it really does I can't say personally I know how successful all of those drugs are but I know that there are a number of them. What makes you decide to hone in on that specific condition? Do you think from a marketability perspective, there's nuance? Talk me through the competitive thinking behind that.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Yeah, absolutely. So I think there are always two components that have to come together. One is you have to believe that you have a unique scientific angle and then that that scientific angle is going to give you a unique commercial angle. So for us going after the microbial component of eczema, there's just nothing else out there. If you want to address the microbial component of eczema, you're talking about antibiotics. And you can only keep someone on antibiotics for a couple of weeks before it starts messing with their entire body. And so that's really not, there's just no way to address that portion of the science. And we have a unique angle on that. And then the question is, okay, what does that look like from a commercial side? Can we get a unique commercial angle? One of the cool things about the drug that we're working on is that we envision it as a once a week topical, which if anything about the eczema market, all of the topicals that are out there, you have to apply at least once a day, if not twice a day, which is very frustrating for patients. Your other option is an injectable. So now you're like sticking a needle in your body. And that usually is somewhere between once a week and once every few months. So it's kind of this trade-off of, do you want the sledgehammer of like completely altering your immune system or do you want to kind of do this dance with topicals of like I'm using it I'm not using it and it's very very frustrating so the idea behind our drug is you can put these microbes on the surface of your skin once a week and they start to grow and over the course of that week they'll keep your skin healthy and then you just refresh them say every Sunday morning and then you just never have to deal with an eczema flare again. That's the dream. And so from a commercial angle, that's a very different type of drug and a very different value proposition, both for the patients and then also for the physicians from a compliance perspective, because they're not going to be nagging their patients saying, please use your steroid twice a day, or please use, whatever other topical I gave you twice a day, because you don't have to do that anymore.

Gemma Allen

>> That is so interesting. And as someone who didn't grow up in the U.S. and when I first would see ads for medications on the television and the ads would fascinate me because they would come with so many caveats. And, it's so new to me, right, as somebody who grew up in Europe. But the commercial storytelling and the messaging in this landscape is equally as important as it is in any other, right? How you address audiences.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Absolutely.

Gemma Allen

>> What do you think about this moment right now where AI is also helping people understand their health more holistically, having people self -diagnose even a little bit more everything is changing very very quickly and at once right how do you guys think about that and also I imagine when these bugs are ready to go to market there is a huge investment in just the marketing the commerciality is huge right there's a big overhead there how do you guys plan and prepare for both of those things for a changing digital landscape and what I'm sure is going to be a pretty significant spend.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> So the way that we're thinking about it is very much as medicine moving into the hands of the consumer.

Gemma Allen

>> Okay.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> And the more that knowledge becomes available to people through AI, being able to chat with ChatGPT or Claude or whoever, the more people will have their own sense of ownership over their own data and their own health trajectories. And so it's a combination, I think, of both trying to make the information available to people. this is how your microbiome influences the health of your skin, your gut, vaginal canal. And actually trying to move these products more into the hands of people. And we're seeing this, for example, I think the poster child of this is GLP-1s. Being able to actually order these cash pay in a way that no one's ever seen drugs go out to people in that way before. And so it's disrupting the entire sense of what is a drug, where's the border between something that's technically a pharmaceutical versus something that is over the counter. And I think people are looking for things that are more and more natural. And this is another area where microbes can offer people something that these are microbes that should be on your skin anyway. So we're not talking about introducing a novel chemical, which may have odd side effects that you're dealing with. this is something that is ultra safe and leverages mechanisms from millions of years of co -evolution with humans and then if we can get it more and more into the hands of people then they can basically have these astools to make their own skin ecosystems better and live healthier

Gemma Allen

>> lives. It's a fascinating thought because people are probably asking LLMs questions more than they're asking doctors.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Absolutely.

Gemma Allen

>> And the world 10 years from now.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> It's not even a probably at this point. I think it's just that is how it works now.

Gemma Allen

>> So what that LLM tells you back, even if it's just information, it might not necessarily be a recommendation or a prescription for anything that obviously can't be prescribed. But it proposes a world whereby you are actually bringing your own solution to the system, right? So from a marketing perspective, it truly is fascinating.

Gemma Allen

>> Yes. And I wish you guys all the best. like I said, I know a number of friends who have definitely asked doctors and Frontier models about eczema for babies, which is huge, or even postnatal or different things. So Sherry, wish you the best. Thank you. Keep in touch. We look forward to hearing more about this story and hopefully maybe seeing this drug in the market in the not so distant future.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Thank you. It's great to be here.

Gemma Allen

>> I'm Gemma Allen here at theCUBE Studio at the New York Stock Exchange. this is NYSE Wired and today we are talking all things AI and biotech. We have some great leaders some really interesting conversations coming up stay tuned

Cheri Ackerman Araromi, Concerto Biosciences

(INTRO)

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Thank you. It's good to be here.

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> We finished Phase 1b.So fill me in.

Gemma Allen

>> Yes.

Gemma Allen

>> talk me through your own personal journey here with this company.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

Gemma Allen

>> And that data set, because we hear that word a lot today.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Yeah, I bet.

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

Gemma Allen

>> and the decision to focus on eczema

Gemma Allen

>> which is a space that everyone knows straight

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Absolutely.

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> So the way that we're thinking about it is very much as medicine moving into the hands of the consumer.

Gemma Allen

>> Okay.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

Gemma Allen

>> lives. It's a fascinating thought because people are probably asking LLMs questions more than they're asking doctors.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Absolutely.

Gemma Allen

>> And the world 10 years from now.

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> It's not even a probably at this point. I think it's just that is how it works now.

Gemma Allen

Cheri Ackerman Araromi

>> Thank you. It's great to be here.

Gemma Allen