Ben Scruggs, PhD

General Partner

Ben is a Partner at Hatteras, where he focuses on biotechnology and life science tools companies. He has been involved in building and scaling transformative healthcare companies across a range of therapeutic areas, including inflammation, oncology, neurodegeneration, ophthalmology, cell therapy, and gene therapy.

Ben currently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Altis Biosystems, a human stem cell–derived platform company advancing more predictive in vitro models for drug development. Prior to Altis, he led strategic initiatives at Tune Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering epigenetic editing. He has extensive experience working alongside scientific founders and academic innovators, and also serves as Manager of L2 Ventures, a seed- stage fund supporting startups affiliated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ben currently serves on the boards of IMMvention Therapeutix and Veralox Therapeutics, and is a board observer at GeneCentric Therapeutics. He has previously served as a board observer at Dropworks (acquired by Bio-Rad), Qpex Biopharma (acquired by Shionogi), and Rodin Therapeutics (acquired by Alkermes). Before joining Hatteras in 2016, Ben completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Epigenetics and Stem Cell Biology Laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, where his research focused on transcriptional regulation and stem cell biology.

Ben received his Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, supported by an NIH/NHLBI fellowship, and holds a B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. His scientific training spans genomics, metabolism, and RNA biology, and his work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals including Molecular Cell and Cell Metabolism.

Professional Engagements:
Ben is a member of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation Corporate Advisory Group and the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering’s Council of Advisors. He is also a committee member the NC State Chancellor’s Innovation Fund. He previously served on the NHLBI National Network of Mentors and North Carolina Microbiome Steering Committee. He participates in multiple national working groups focused on accelerating the adoption of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) and reducing reliance on animal testing in biomedical research.