HUMMINGBIRD BIOSCIENCE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Program Development
Alejandro Mas is the Vice President of Program Development. He leads Hummingbird Bioscience's clinical-stage programs in collaboration with various external partners and internal functions.
Prior to joining Hummingbird Bioscience in July 2021, Alejandro was an Engagement Manager at ZS Associates. Alejandro spent seven years advising biopharmaceutical and medtech companies on a broad range of areas, including pipeline and portfolio prioritization and go-to-market strategy in the EU, US, APAC and LatAm, as a management consultant in the UK, US and Singapore.
Alejandro holds a MSc in Management from the London Business School and a PharmD from the University of Barcelona.
Angèle is Chief Business Officer at Hummingbird Bioscience and leads business development and investor relations activities for the company. Angèle is a seasoned business development leader with a strong scientific background and 20 years of experience in the biotech and pharma industry. She has a track record of successful deals and partnerships across multiple therapeutic areas and modalities, including significant numbers in antibody therapeutics. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President and Head of Business Development at ReCode Therapeutics where she led business development, corporate development, investor and public relations. At ReCode Therapeutics, she was part of the team that raised a USD 120Mn series B extension. Prior to ReCode, Angèle held business development roles with increasing responsibility starting at Medarex followed by BMS (which acquired Medarex), Genentech, Merck & Co, and Eli Lilly. Angèle holds a PhD in Biological Chemistry from Stanford University.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Antibody - Drug Conjugates
Ben is the Vice President of Antibody-Drug Conjugates at Hummingbird Bioscience. With more than 16 years' experience in the biopharma sector, Ben leads the strategy and development of the Antibody-Drug Conjugates platform and programs at Hummingbird Bioscience. Ben also held strategy and preclinical roles since joining Hummingbird Bioscience in 2020.
Prior to joining Hummingbird Bioscience, Ben advised companies on commercial strategy in APAC at ZS Associates, a healthcare-focused management consulting firm. Ben has accumulated a decade of experience in medicinal chemistry research in a wide range of therapeutic areas including oncology, tropical disease, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and lysosomal storage diseases at Novartis, the Institute of Cancer Research, and the University of Oxford.
Ben holds a M.Chem. in Chemistry and a D.Phil in Organic Chemistry from the University of Oxford.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Discovery and Research Platforms
Brendon Hanson is the Vice President of Discovery and Research Platforms at Hummingbird Bioscience. He leads the planning and implementation of the company's early-stage discovery and development activities.
Brendon has been developing antibodies for nearly 30 years, initially to provide research reagents during his academic career. Moving to DSO National Laboratories in 2004, he was the Principal Scientist in the Biodefense Program, developing platforms for rapid therapeutic antibody discovery against infectious disease pathogens over the last 17 years. He then co-established and was later appointed Head of the Antibody Core Facility at the National University of Singapore's Life Sciences Institute. Prior to joining Hummingbird Bioscience, Brendon led efforts toward rapid discovery of potently neutralizing antibodies during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brendon holds a PhD in Biochemistry from La Trobe University (Australia). He has also authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications.
Job Titles:
- Non - Executive Director
- Member of Our Board of Directors
Dan Estes has served as a member of our board of directors since June 2021. Dr. Estes is a General Partner on the Frazier Life Sciences team and has been involved with investing in and building many of Frazier's biopharmaceutical portfolio companies over the past 11 years. Dr. Estes joined Frazier Healthcare Partners in 2011 and focuses on investments in both development-stage and commercial-stage pharmaceutical companies. He has led Frazier's investments in, and serves on the boards of, Arcutis (NASDAQ: ARQT, co-founder), Hawkeye Therapeutics, Lengo Therapeutics, Inipharm, Sudo Biosciences and Cirius Therapeutics. He previously served on the boards of Semnur Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Scilex) and Sierra Oncology (NASDAQ: SRRA) and led Frazier's investment in Tarsus Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: TARS). Dr. Estes has also been involved in Frazier's investments in Acerta Pharma BV (acquired by AstraZeneca), Tobira Therapeutics (acquired by Allergan), Ignyta (acquired by Roche), Iovance (NASDAQ: IOVA), Vaxcyte (NADAQ: PCVX), and PreCision Dermatology (acquired by Valeant). Prior to joining Frazier, Dr. Estes was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company's healthcare practice, where he led teams that advised leading global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on R&D strategy and business development strategy. He received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan and holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where he is a member of Tau Beta Pi. In 2018, Dr. Estes was named a "40-and-under Silicon Valley biotech investing star" by Business Insider.
Job Titles:
- Vice President - Target Biology & Pharmacology
- Vice President of the Target Biology and Pharmacology Group
Dipti Thakkar is the Vice President of the Target Biology and Pharmacology group at Hummingbird Bioscience. She leads the company's pre-clinical pharmacology and toxicology programs in collaboration with internal and external partners.
As a molecular biologist by training, she has garnered over 12 years of experience developing disease-relevant assay models to support in vivo/in vitro efficacy and safety assessment for disease therapeutics. Dipti's work has led her to be shortlisted by the prestigious Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer from a global search, as one of 29 young lead investigators, to address obstacles in the field of cancer immunotherapy in 2018.
In her previous academic roles at University of Oxford and National Neuroscience Institute, she worked extensively towards understanding patient heterogeneity and identifying gene signatures for patient stratification. She plays a pivotal role in the development of Hummingbird Bioscience's two lead assets from discovery to IND filing.
Job Titles:
- Vice President
- CMC Strategy and Operations Leader
Gary is VP of CMC at Hummingbird Bioscience.
With over 16 years of experience in biopharmaceuticals, Gary is a CMC strategy and operations leader with experience at leading cross functional CMC programs, external/internal manufacturing product technology transfer and process development programs. Gary previously held leadership and research roles at various large pharmaceutical and biotech companies, such as Tessa Therapeutics, Takeda, Baxter Bioscience, A-Biopharma (currently Luye Pharma), UCB Celltech, and A*STAR Bioprocessing Technology Institute. From his long-spanning career in biomedical manufacturing, he has amassed expertise across modalities including antibodies/recombinant proteins, recombinant virus products and cell/gene therapies.
Gary holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering (Biochemical Engineering) from the University of Birmingham.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Finance
Iris is the Vice President of Finance and oversees finance operations and financial reporting. She has over 25 years of accounting and finance experience including SEC reporting and technical accounting, taxation, capital markets transactions and compliance. Prior to joining Hummingbird Bioscience, Iris served as the Director of Accounting & Corporate Reporting at Maxeon Solar, and the VP Finance at Razer. Earlier in her career, she worked at KPMG and Ernst & Young (San Jose, US & Hong Kong) in external audit to support clients in SEC and US GAAP reporting. Iris is a US Certified Public Accountant as well as a Chartered Accountant in Singapore.
Jan Møller Mikkelsen has served as Chairman of the Board since November 2021. Jan Møller Mikkelsen founded Ascendis Pharma and has served as President and Chief Executive Officer as well as Board member since December 2007. From 2002 to 2006, Mr. Mikkelsen was President and Chief Executive Officer of LifeCycle Pharma A/S, now traded under the name Veloxis Pharmaceuticals A/S. From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Mikkelsen was President of the Pharmaceutical Division of Maxygen, Inc.. Prior to that, Mr. Mikkelsen co-founded ProFound Pharma A/S, a biopharmaceutical company acquired by Maxygen, Inc., and at ProFound, he served as Co-Chief Executive Officer from 1999 to 2000. From 1988 to 1999, Mr. Mikkelsen held various positions at Novo Nordisk A/S, a global healthcare company, including Vice President of Protein Discovery. Mr. Mikkelsen currently serves on the advisory board of Inspirion Delivery Technologies, a specialty pharmaceutical company. Mr. Mikkelsen received a Cand. Scient. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Odense, Denmark, and pursued his post-doctoral research at Children's Hospital in Oakland, CA.
Job Titles:
- Chief Scientific Officer
- Co - Founder
Jerome Boyd-Kirkup has served as our Chief Scientific Officer since co-founding Hummingbird Bioscience in 2015, and served on our Board of Directors from 2015 to 2021. Between 2011 and 2015 Dr. Boyd-Kirkup held the position of Young International Fellow in Molecular Systems Biology at the CAS-MPG (Chinese Academy of Sciences-Max Planck Group) Partner Institute for Computational Biology. Between 2010 and 2011 Dr. Boyd-Kirkup was a Research Communications Officer at the Alzheimer's Society UK. He holds a MSci degree in Biochemistry from Imperial College London and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Cambridge University.
Job Titles:
- Non - Executive Director
- Member of Our Board of Directors
- Partner at Novo Ventures
Kenneth Harrison has served as a member of our board of directors since June 2021. Dr. Harrison is a Partner at Novo Ventures (U.S.) Inc., which provides consulting services to Novo Holdings A/S, an investment firm focused on life sciences and finance, and has been employed by Novo Ventures (U.S.) Inc. since November 2015. Prior to joining Novo, Dr. Harrison served as Senior Market Planning Manager at Genentech, USA Inc., a private biotechnology company, from 2013 to 2015, where he helped guide strategic decision making for the Ophthalmology and HER2 franchises. Dr. Harrison previously worked as a management consultant at L.E.K. Consulting LLC, a consulting firm, and as the Entrepreneurship Program Manager at QB3, a nonprofit research and technology commercialization institute, and Mission Bay Capital LLC, an early stage life science venture capital firm, where he helped create new programs to launch and support life sciences companies in the Bay Area. Dr. Harrison studied cellular lipid storage and metabolism as an A.P. Giannini Foundation Fellow at the J. David Gladstone Institutes, received a PhD in pharmacology from Yale University, and received a BS in molecular biology from Texas Tech University, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute undergraduate research fellow.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President of Clinical Development
Kon Yew is Senior Vice President of Clinical Development at Hummingbird Bioscience. Prior to joining the company, Kon Yew was Vice President of Clinical Development at Akeso Biopharma (HKEX: 9926), where he was responsible for Phase I to III immune-oncology clinical trials outside China; and represented clinical development to regulatory authorities, investigators, investors and key opinion leaders. His broad industry experience also includes serving as an investigator at Eli Lilly's clinical research unit and the Head of Phase I and Drug Development Safety at IQVIA, advising on both oncology and non-oncology early clinical development studies.
Konrad Paszkiewicz has served as the Chief Technology Officer of Hummingbird Bioscience since October 2017. Dr. Paszkiewicz leads Hummingbird Bioscience's internal platform technologies, including mAbPredict, biomarker discovery and omics-technologies such as single-cell analysis and spatial transcriptomics, machine learning and high performance computing and IT infrastructure. Between 2016 and 2017 Dr. Paszkiewicz was Director of the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Informatics Hub and the Head of the Genomics Sequencing Facility at the University of Exeter, UK. Dr. Paszkiewicz holds an MSci in Physics and a PhD in Bioinformatics from Imperial College, London.
Kon Yew completed his undergraduate medical training at Oxford Medical School; and read for a doctorate in Molecular Biology on an EP Abraham Research Studentship at Oxford University. He also holds graduate diplomas in Family Medicine and Palliative Medicine from the National University of Singapore; and a Certificate in Human Pharmacology from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, Royal Colleges of Physicians.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President of Strategy
Lisa is the Senior Vice President of Strategy at Hummingbird Bioscience. Lisa has more than 18 years of experience in the biomedical industry in the areas of oncology/hematology, oncology biomarker development, clinical pharmacology, preclinical and clinical development, as well as large-scale private and public research partnerships and investment promotion. She has previous experience at the Singapore Economic Development Board, ASLAN Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Healthcare, the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), and served on the boards of multiple biomedical entities such as Precision Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE) and the Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI). Lisa holds a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a MSc and PhD from Stanford University in Chemical Engineering and Chemical and Systems Biology.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Co - Founder
- Executive Director
Piers Jamie Ingram has served as our Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our board of directors since co-founding Hummingbird Bioscience in 2015. Between 2013 and 2015 Dr. Ingram was employed by Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) as Head of Strategic Planning, South East Asia, and between 2011 and 2013 at Monitor Group (and then Monitor Deloitte) as a Manager in the Strategy Consulting practice. Between 2008 and 2010, Dr. Ingram was first a Research Fellow and then acting Research Group Head at the Centre for Integrative Systems Biology, Imperial College London. Dr. Ingram holds an MSci in Mathematics, an MSc in Bioinformatics and a PhD in Systems Biology from Imperial College London, and an MBA from INSEAD.
Job Titles:
- Director of Bio Investment Group at SK Inc
- Member of Our Board of Directors
Seungmin Lee has served as a member of our board of directors since January 2024. Ms. Lee is a Director of Bio Investment Group at SK Inc. and has driven deal processes from target identification, due diligence, and valuation to post-merger integration at an investment-focused holding company of SK Group for its Bio business over the past 7 years. Ms. Lee joined SK Inc. in 2017 and established mid/long-term growth strategies for SK's Bio business and led investment in the new growth driver by spearheading investment processes and managing additional financial planning. After a series of strategical investment and acquisitions, she established SK Pharmteco in the US to integrate acquired assets and seven global facilities for SK CDMO business by developing a governance structure to manage AMPAC/CBM (USA), Ireland facility/Yposkesi (EU), to SK Biotek (Korea) and also serves on the boards of Visible Patient, Standigm, LVIS, GenEdit. Ms. Lee also advised a market access strategy for the third generation epilepsy drug (Xcopri) launched in the US for SK Group's biopharmaceutical business by leveraging her previous career experiences. Prior to joining SK Inc., Ms. Lee was a dedicated consultant for an Integrated Payer and Provider Model (IPPM) Project at Genentech
Job Titles:
- Non - Executive Director
- Member of Our Board of Directors
- President and Director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Thomas Lynch has served as a member of our board of directors since July 2021. Dr. Lynch is currently President and Director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, an Attending Physician at UW Medicine Harborview Hospital, and a Professor at University of Washington School of Medicine. Prior to that, Dr. Lynch was Chief Scientific Officer of Bristol-Myers Squibb and he also previously held leadership roles including CEO of Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, Director of Yale Cancer Center, Physician-in-Chief at Yale's Smilow Cancer Hospital, Chief of Hematology-Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lynch is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. He received his BS in Biology from Yale College and his MD from Yale University.
Job Titles:
- Non - Executive Director
- Member of Our Board of Directors
- Partner at Decheng Capital
Victor E. Tong has served as a member of our board of directors since April 26, 2019. Currently, Mr. Tong is also a Partner at Decheng Capital and has been with the firm since its inception. At Decheng, Mr. Tong focuses on investments in biotechnology and medical technology companies in China and the U.S. He currently serves on the boards of AccuraGen, Cellares, Cue Health, EpimAb Biotherapeutics, GenapSys, LevitasBio, Mammoth Biosciences and Take2. Mr. Tong also served as Chairman at ReadCoor, which was acquired by 10X Genomics, and he previously served on the boards of Cirina (acquired by GRAIL), GeneWEAVE Biosciences (acquired by Roche), Sema4 (NASDAQ: SMFR) and SentreHEART (acquired by Atricure). Prior to joining Decheng, Mr. Tong was a Principal at Bay City Capital, where he was instrumental in the incubation of Nevro (NYSE: NVRO) from medical device start-up to leader in pain management. Previously, he was an investment banker with Morgan Stanley, where he advised healthcare companies on initial public offerings and specialized in strategic advisory work. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Mr. Tong was an entrepreneur at Hana Biosciences (acquired by Spectrum Pharmaceuticals), where he was responsible for pipeline development, licensing and product launch for cancer products. Mr. Tong began his career participating in The Human Genome Project and its race to sequence the human genome as a research assistant at Incyte in 1999. Mr. Tong is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his BA degree in Molecular and Cell Biology and his BS degree in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business.