Dr. Derrell Porter: The Black Physician-Entrepreneur Leading Next-Gen Cancer Therapy

Let me tell you about Dr. Derrell Porter.

There aren’t many Black physician-entrepreneurs leading biotech companies in this country. And there’s one — a Black man with a medical degree, a Wharton MBA, and a decades-long track record in drug development — who has spent his career building the companies that treat the diseases others won’t touch. His name is Dr. Derrell Porter.

The Work

Derrell is now the CEO of cTRL Therapeutics, a solid-tumor cell-therapy company. In plain English: he’s leading the work to train the body’s own immune cells — “circulating tumor reactive lymphocytes” — to attack cancer. He recently announced a partnership with Moffitt Cancer Center, and his company’s science was presented at SITC, the big immunotherapy conference. This is next-generation cancer treatment, and a Black man is running it.

Before cTRL, he founded and led Cellevolve Bio, a cell-therapy biotech focused on neglected diseases — the ones big pharma avoids because there’s not enough profit in them. That alone tells you who Derrell Porter is. He’s spent more than 20 years in drug development and commercialization across Amgen, AbbVie, Gilead, and Atara Bio.

He also sits on the boards of Passage Bio, a CNS gene-therapy company, and Portal Innovations, a venture-development engine. He advises, he builds, he leads.

The Roots

Derrell’s path is one of the most rigorous in medicine and business: a B.S. in neuroscience from UCLA, an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and an MBA from Wharton. He started his career at McKinsey & Company. This is a man who trained at the absolute top of both worlds — science and business — and chose to point all of it at building treatments for people who’ve been forgotten by the industry.

Why It Matters

Here’s the thing: who leads a field shapes who gets served by it. For decades, the people running biotech and deciding which diseases get research dollars have looked one way. Dr. Derrell Porter is part of changing that — a Black physician-entrepreneur steering real cancer science, at the table where the biggest treatment decisions get made.

The next cure your family member receives might well be traced back to a lab run by someone who looks like us.

Quick facts:

• CEO, cTRL Therapeutics — solid-tumor cell therapy
• Founder & former CEO, Cellevolve Bio (neglected-disease cell biotech)
• New Moffitt Cancer Center partnership · science at SITC
• M.D. UPenn · MBA Wharton · B.S. UCLA (neuroscience)
• Board member, Passage Bio & Portal Innovations · ex-McKinsey