TESSERA THERAPEUTICS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chief Regulatory Officer
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Job Titles:
- Chief Human Resources Officer
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Becky joined Tessera in November 2021 as Chief Human Resources Officer. Ms. Lillie brings over 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience focusing on the design and execution of talent management strategies and corporate governance structures.
Prior to joining Tessera, Ms. Lillie modernized the Human Resources operations at Alexion Pharmaceuticals as Chief Human Experience Officer, overseeing HR, IT, and Patient Advocacy. She revamped the R&D operating model before driving organizational efficiencies and effectiveness at both AstraZeneca and Pfizer Inc.
Ms. Lillie earned her B.A. in Communications with an emphasis in Public Relations from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- Senior Vice President, Therapeutic Discovery and Translational Sciences
Job Titles:
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Operational Excellence
- Tessera in 2022 As Senior Vice President of Financial Planning and Operational Excellence
Chris joined Tessera in 2022 as Senior Vice President of Financial Planning and Operational Excellence. Having over 16 years of experience across multiple industries, Mr. Lucas brings a strong background in financial management, leading and developing finance teams, operational excellence, strategic insights/planning, capital raising, and manufacturing strategy. As a member of the Tessera leadership team, he is responsible for Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Procurement & Sourcing, and Manufacturing Strategy/Planning.
Before joining Tessera, Chris was the Head of Strategy and Business Operations at 2seventy bio (post bluebird bio spin-out) and previously Interim CFO of bluebird bio pre-spin remain-co. Most recently, he oversaw operating governance, clinical manufacturing construction, spin-off readiness, strategic planning & insights, FP&A, and procurement/sourcing. He originally joined bluebird bio as VP, Finance (FP&A + Global Procurement & Sourcing). Before bluebird, Chris was the Executive Director, Global FP&A at Amicus Therapeutics where he grew and developed a Global FP&A team to support the global commercial launch of Galafold, development of biologics, and multiple acquisitions to build a Gene Therapy Portfolio/Pipeline. Prior experience includes business formation consulting, hedge fund (deal origination), investment banking and equity research.
Chris has a B.B.A in Finance and Accounting and an M.B.A., both from St. Bonaventure University.
Job Titles:
- General Counsel
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- Member of the View Full Team
- Secretary
- General Counsel and Secretary of Tessera
Cynthia serves as General Counsel and Secretary of Tessera. She brings over 20 years of leadership experience in corporate legal affairs in the biotech and healthcare industries.
Before Tessera, Cynthia served as the General Counsel and Secretary at Verily Life Sciences, where she had responsibility for all transactional, employment, IP, governance, litigation, privacy, compliance and government affairs matters. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer at Amgen, where she was responsible for Amgen's global privacy, trade compliance and healthcare compliance organizations, including providing oversight of the EH&S, quality, corporate security, regulatory and manufacturing compliance functions. She also served as board chair of the Amgen Foundation. Prior to Amgen, she served as General Counsel of SCAN Health Plan. Cynthia began her career working in law firms specializing in corporate, health and securities law.
She has been honored with the 2019 ECI Carol R. Marshall Award for Innovation in Corporate Ethics as well as recognized by BlackDoctor.org and The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health as one of the 2019 Top Blacks in Healthcare. She was named one of 2018's and 2022's Most Influential Black Lawyers by Savoy Magazine and honored by the Black Women Lawyers Association of L.A. with the Corporate Excellence Award in 2018.
Cynthia received her J.D. degree from George Washington University and her B.S. degree from Vassar College. Cynthia currently serves as a board member for Organon, Inc., the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles and Vassar College.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- Chief Medical and Development Officer
David joined Tessera in 2021 as Chief Medical and Development Officer. David brings over 20 years of expertise in clinical drug development focused on rare diseases and gene therapy.
Most recently, David served as Chief Medical Officer of bluebird bio for nearly a decade, where he played a critical role in advancing a broad genetic medicine pipeline across blood disorders, rare diseases and oncology, successfully leading numerous genetic medicine programs into the clinic and delivering two first-in-class approvals for genetic medicines in the U.S. and Europe. Prior to bluebird bio, David led clinical research for a wide range of therapeutic programs at Genzyme and GelTex, spanning biologics, polymers, and gene therapy.
David completed a fellowship in infectious diseases at the Harvard Longwood Combined ID Program, his residency training in internal medicine and an endocrinology research fellowship at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and received his M.D. from New York University and B.A. from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Scientific Advisory Board Member
David Schaffer is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, Molecular and Cell Biology, and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at U.C. Berkeley.
He has served as the Director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center since 2011. In addition, he is co-founder and since 2013 has served as Chief Scientific Advisor and a member of the board of directors of 4D Molecular Therapeutics. He has also co-founded five other companies.
He has served on the board of directors of the NASDAQ-listed company uniQure NV since January, 2014. Dr. Schaffer received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1993 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998.
Job Titles:
- Board Director
- Executive
- Member of the Board
Derica Rice is an accomplished executive with decades of experience managing and overseeing a wide range of financial and accounting matters, including financial oversight, risk management and the alignment of financial and strategy initiatives. He led the pharmacy benefits business of CVS Health as Operational, Executive Vice President and President of CVS Caremark. Prior to his time at CVS Health, Mr. Rice spent 27 years guiding Eli Lilly's financial and strategy functions, eventually serving as the Executive Vice President of Global Services and as Chief Finance Officer.
In addition to Mr. Rice's tenure in the pharmaceutical industry, he is a board member of Disney, The Carlyle Group and Target, and serves on the Audit Committee for BMS.
Mr. Rice earned his MBA from Indiana University and graduated with a B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Kettering University.
Job Titles:
- Board Director
- Member of the Board
Elliott Sigal brings decades of clinical experience in drug discovery, drug development, and corporate strategy to Tessera's Board of Directors. He currently serves as a senior advisor to the healthcare team of New Enterprise Associates and is a member of the Board of Directors for Adaptimmune Therapeutics, Surface Oncology, Vir Biotechnology, and Affinia Therapeutics. He co-chairs the Scientific Advisory Board for Amgen and is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee for the Sean Parker Institute for Cancer Immunology. He previously served on the Board of Directors for the gene therapy company, Spark Therapeutics. Dr. Sigal is a former Executive Vice President and Director of Bristol-Myers Squibb, and served as the company's Chief Scientific Officer and President of R&D from 2004 until 2013. He was instrumental in increasing R&D productivity, developing the company's strategy in biologics and acquiring external innovation. He is known for building BMS research into a lead position in the promising area of immuno-oncology.
Under his leadership, fourteen new medicines came to market in multiple therapeutic areas including virology, oncology, immunology, psychiatry, metabolic diseases and cardiovascular disease. During his tenure, Dr. Sigal was named the best R&D chief in the pharmaceutical industry by Scrip Intelligence.
Dr. Sigal received his M.D. from the University of Chicago in 1981 and trained in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He served on the faculty of UCSF Medical School from 1988 until 1992. Prior to medical school, he received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Scientific Advisory Board Member
Erik J. Sontheimer, PhD, is the Pillar Chair in Biomedical Research and Professor and Vice Chair in the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts.
He conducted his graduate research in the laboratory of Joan Steitz at Yale University, where he uncovered key mechanistic features of pre-mRNA splicing. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Piccirilli. Before moving to the RNA Therapeutics Institute in 2014, he was a Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Dr. Sontheimer's laboratory has made fundamental contributions to the fields of RNA interference, CRISPR biology, and genome editing. Among many key discoveries, his group provided the first demonstration that small RNAs known as CRISPR RNAs can target DNA molecules and was one of the first to recognize and describe the transformative potential of CRISPR for biotechnology and human therapeutics. Additional contributions include the co-discovery of naturally occurring off-switches for CRISPR-Cas9, novel Cas enzymes for genome editing, and split prime editing platforms.
He is an Associate Editor of RNA and was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2016. He has served on the Board of Directors of the RNA Society and as Steering Committee Co-chair for the NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium. He currently co-chairs the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Sontheimer has received numerous awards, including a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, a New Investigator Award in the Basic Pharmacological Sciences from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a Basil O'Conner Award from the March of Dimes, a Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society, a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, the 2008 Nestle Award from the American Society for Microbiology, and the 2017 Mid-Career Award from the RNA Society. He is a co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member at Intellia Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board
- Co - Founder
- CEO of Quotient Therapeutics
Geoffrey von Maltzahn is co-founder and board chair of Tessera Therapeutics, as well as a general partner at Flagship Pioneering. Geoffrey von Maltzahn joined Flagship Pioneering in 2009. He is an inventor, entrepreneur, CEO, and the co-founder of multiple groundbreaking companies that integrate biology and data science to transform human health and sustainability. Geoffrey has co-founded companies that have, in aggregate, achieved over $10 billion in public and private market capitalization. Through his role in Flagship Labs, the company's innovation foundry, Geoffrey has created companies that include Quotient Therapeutics, Tessera Therapeutics, Generate:Biomedicines, Indigo Agriculture, Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), and Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB). These are pioneering, respectively, somatic genomics, Gene Writing™, generative biology, carbon farming and plant microbiome products, engineered cells and cell-specific gene therapies, and the first human microbiome therapeutics.
Geoffrey currently serves as CEO of Quotient Therapeutics, board chair of Tessera Therapeutics, chief innovation officer and board director of Indigo Agriculture, board director of Generate:Biomedicines, and as CEO of multiple new stealth therapeutics and sustainability companies. Geoffrey has served as founding chief executive officer of several Flagship companies including: Tessera Therapeutics, where he led the development of its pioneering Gene Writing™ technology; Cobalt Biomedicine, which he led from inception to merger with Sana Biotechnology; and Indigo, where he led the development of the company's plant microbiome platform and the discovery of the company's first commercial products: Indigo Cotton, Indigo Wheat, Indigo Corn, and Indigo Soy, which are now used on millions of acres. Previously, Geoffrey was the chief technology officer of Seres Therapeutics, where he led the discovery of SER-109, the first microbiome therapeutic to report positive Phase 3 data, and built out the company's discovery platform.
Geoffrey has deep expertise in genome engineering, the microbiome, bioengineering, and nanotechnology. He is listed as an inventor on over 200 patent applications and patents, and he has co-authored more than 20 peer-reviewed articles. Geoffrey has received a number of awards and honors, including Bloomberg 50's Ones to Watch; Business Insider's 30 Biotech Leaders Under 40; Endpoints 20 Biopharma Leaders Under 40; Fierce Pharma's Most Influential People in Biopharma; Codex's World's Top 50 Innovators; Boston Chamber of Commerce Ten Outstanding Young Leaders; the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, awarded to the most innovative students at MIT; the National Inventors Hall of Fame Graduate Student Prize; the Biomedical Engineering Society Graduate Research Award; and the Harvard-MIT Martha Gray Prize. Geoffrey and his inventions have been profiled by Forbes, The Economist, CNN, Bloomberg, WIRED, Fast Company, Business Insider, Scientific American, Popular Science, Boston Globe, TechCrunch, Barron's, Endpoints, Fierce Biotech, MIT Technology Review, and other media.
Geoffrey was awarded a PhD in biomedical engineering and medical physics from MIT under the mentorship of Sangeeta N. Bhatia, MD, PhD; an MS in bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego; and an SB in chemical engineering from MIT.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School
- Scientific Advisory Board Member
George Church is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute.
Dr. Church is a pioneer of genome engineering, systems and synthetic biology. He has co-founded more than 14 biotech companies, has authored over 400 papers, and holds 60 patents in his name. He is the Principal Investigator of the Center for Genomically Engineered Organs (CGEO), the Harvard/MIT DOE Genomes-to-Life Center, the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics, and is a founding core member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Dr. Church was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2011) and Engineering (2012), and the Franklin Institute's Bower Award for Achievement in Science (2011). He holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University.
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- Chief Operating Officer of Tessera
Hari is Chief Operating Officer of Tessera, as well as Operating Partner at Flagship Pioneering. At Tessera, his responsibilities span across research, manufacturing, program strategy and management and IP. Hari is a global Biopharmaceutical executive with 20+ years of value creation in the biologics and vaccine industry.
Before Flagship, Hari served as Chief Technology Officer of Spark Therapeutics, leading the technical operations, process and technology development and quality assurance organizations. At Spark, Hari was responsible for growing and scaling the company's cutting-edge technology capabilities for an expanding development pipeline.
Prior to Spark, Hari was head of Technical Development & Manufacturing at Moderna Therapeutics. At Moderna, he built and led the technology and early manufacturing organizations that delivered on supply for more than a dozen clinical programs in a brand-new technology area. Previously, Hari held a variety of scientific and cross-functional leadership positions during 18+ years at Merck & Co in the company's commercial, R&D and manufacturing divisions, culminating in the franchise leadership of pediatric and adult vaccines representing over $2B in revenue.
Hari has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers.
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- President
- Tessera in 2021 As President and Chief Financial Officer
Howard Liang joined Tessera in 2021 as President and Chief Financial Officer. Howard brings nearly three decades of combined experience in management, financing, strategy, and research in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and investment research on Wall Street. Prior to joining Tessera, he was Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at BeiGene for six years, where he was a member of the senior team that led the company's growth from a research organization with fewer than 200 employees to a fully integrated global biotechnology company with more than 6,000 employees on five continents. Under his leadership, BeiGene pioneered a global financing strategy that included three IPOs, on NASDAQ, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange respectively, raising more than $11 billion through equity and other financings, and grew its market capitalization from less than $300 million to more than $30 billion during his tenure. Prior to BeiGene, Howard spent 10 years at Leerink Partners, where he was Managing Director and Head of Biotechnology Equity Research. His prior investment research experience included positions at A.G. Edwards, JMP Securities, and Prudential Securities, covering biotechnology, and major and specialty pharmaceutical sectors. He started his career in R&D at Abbott Laboratories, where he was a Senior Scientist and member of an industry-leading structure-based drug discovery team. Howard is a member of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Biotech Advisory Panel. He was named a member of the All-America Research Team by Institutional Investor magazine and "Best of the Street" by The Wall Street Journal. As a scientist, he authored 14 papers, including 6 in Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and a review in the Journal of Molecular Biology. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and his B.S. in Chemistry from Peking University.
Job Titles:
- Chief Data Officer
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Iain joined Tessera in October 2021 as Chief Data Officer, bringing his experience working across various modalities (including mRNA, proteins, and vaccines) and scientific areas to Tessera's GENE WRITING™ technology platform and various clinical programs.
Dr. McFadyen has deep technical expertise in genomics, transcriptomics, protein structure analysis to structure-based drug design, chemoinformatics, deep learning, and translational bioinformatics, which he honed during his time as Chief Data Officer at LifeMine Therapeutics and as Vice President of Computational Sciences and Next Generation Analytics at Moderna. During his time at Moderna, Dr. McFadyen founded, built, and led the Computational Sciences department, which included people working in data science, and helped develop the platform that delivered mRNA and lipid nanoparticles to patients in the form of the coronavirus vaccine.
Dr. McFadyen earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Loughborough University (UK) and the University of Michigan in the Traynor Lab, later serving as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Minnesota. He received his B.S. in Medicinal and
Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Loughborough University. Dr. McFadyen is the author of 21 publications and the inventor on eight patents and patent families with 16 patent applications pending.
Job Titles:
- Chief Innovation Officer
- Co - Founder
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- Scientist
Jake is Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Tessera Therapeutics and an Origination Partner at Flagship Pioneering. Previously, Jake was the founding Chief Scientific Officer at Tessera and led the research and development of the company's platform and pipeline.
At Flagship, Jake is a scientist entrepreneur and leads a team that founds, builds, and grow companies based on new biotechnology. Jake co-founded Quotient Therapeutics, where he currently serves as president. He has also co-founded Sana Biotechnology, launched Kaleido Biosciences and was the Head of Innovation at Cobalt Biomedicine, where he co-invented and developed the company's Fusosome platform prior to its merger with Sana Biotechnology.
Before joining Flagship, Jake received his Ph.D. in microbiology from MIT, working in the Synthetic Biology Center with Professor Tim Lu with the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. At MIT, Jacob invented gene circuits that allow engineered cells to do novel analog, digital, and hybrid computations, enabling the emerging field of "intelligent" cell therapies.
Jake's work has resulted in multiple pending patents and publications, including articles in Nature and Nature Communications. Jake was honored in 2017 in Forbes' 30 under 30 list in science.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Scientific Advisory Board Member
Jef D. Boeke, Ph.D., D.Sc., founded and directs the Institute for Systems Genetics at NYU Langone Health. From 1985-2014, Dr. Boeke was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is known for foundational work on mechanistic and genomic aspects of retrotransposition and his lab develops new technologies in genetics, genomics and synthetic biology. He elucidated a major form of mobile DNA, based on reverse transcription of RNA. He coined the term "retrotransposition" to describe this process, common to virtually all eukaryotic genomes and now studied by a worldwide scientific community. His systems-level studies helped elucidate intricate molecular mechanisms involved in retrotransposition in yeasts, mice and humans.
In the area of Synthetic Genomics, his research group uses yeast as a platform for exploring the construction of fully synthetic chromosomes for practical and theoretical studies. He leads the international team synthesizing an engineered version of the yeast genome, Sc2.0, the first synthetic eukaryotic genome, and a consortium to explore the design and synthesis of even larger genomes. In 2018, he launched the "Dark Matter Project" (www.thedarkmatterproject.org) designed to better understand the "instruction manuals" that specify how human genes are expressed, using big DNA technology to build mammalian gene loci in yeast and then deliver those loci and their variants to stem cells. This has among other things to a technology to very rapidly design and deploy humanized mouse models. During the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, he led a team of volunteers to develop ultra-high throughput coronavirus PCR testing, which led to the formation of the Pandemic Response Lab, the largest COVID-19 testing operation in New York City. Dr. Boeke has founded several biotechnology companies, including Avigen Inc., CDI Labs, Neochromosome, Inc. and the Pandemic Response Laboratory (Reopen Diagnostics, LLC) and serves on a number of Scientific Advisory Boards.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Scientific Advisory Board Member
John V. Moran is the Gilbert S. Omenn Collegiate Professor of Human Genetics and a Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.
During the past 21+ years, Dr. Moran's laboratory has been at the forefront of human transposable element research and has made discoveries about the mechanism of Long Interspersed Element-1 (LINE-1) and Short Interspersed Element (SINE) retrotransposition and their impact on the structure and function of the human genome. His laboratory currently uses a battery of multidisciplinary approaches to answer the following questions: What are the molecular mechanisms responsible for LINE-1 and SINE retrotransposition? To what extent do somatic and germline LINE-1 and SINE retrotransposition affect the human genome? What host factors influence LINE-1 and SINE retrotransposition? Dr. Moran has worked in the mobile genetic element field for over 30 years and has published approximately 90 articles (the total includes articles, book chapters, perspectives, and a thesis). Dr. Moran takes pride in teaching and in the accomplishments of his former trainees. To date, he has trained nine postdoctoral fellows and ten graduate students, many of whom are now independent principal investigators throughout the world. He is the Director of the NIH-funded University of Michigan Interdisciplinary Genetics Predoctoral Training Program, has organized national and international meetings on mobile genetic elements, and has earned several research and teaching honors during his time at the University of Michigan.
He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He conducted his graduate studies with Dr. Philip S. Perlman, earning a M.S. degree in Molecular Genetics from The Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. His graduate research focused on elucidating group I and group II intron mobility mechanisms in Saccharomyces cerevisiae mitochondrial DNA. He conducted postdoctoral studies with Dr. Haig H. Kazazian Jr. in the Department of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute and the Department of Genetics at University of Pennsylvania Medical School as a Damon Runyon/Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund Fellow. His postdoctoral research focused on developing systems to study the mobility of LINE-1 retrotransposons in cultured human cells. Dr. Moran became a faculty member at the University of Michigan Medical School in 1998. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in the Departments of Human Genetics (with tenure) and Internal Medicine (without tenure) in 2003, was promoted to Full Professor of Human Genetics (with tenure) and Internal Medicine (without tenure) in September 2008, and was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, received the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics in 2013, and currently serves on the American Society of Human Genetics Board of Directors.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Scientific Advisory Board Member
Jonathan Weissman is the Landon T. Clay professor of Biology at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the Department of Biology at MIT, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
He serves as the co-director of the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) of Berkeley and UCSF and on the President's Advisory Group for the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. He also is the chairman of the scientific advisory board for the Stowers Institute and serves on the scientific advisory board for Amgen and the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. Additionally, Jonathan is a co-founder of KSQ therapeutics and Maze therapeutics.
He has received the Ira Herskowitz Award from the Genetic Society of America, Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award from the Protein Society, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, the National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Discovery, and the Keith R. Porter Lecture Award from the American Society for Cell Biology. Jonathan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Director of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy
- Scientific Advisory Board Member
Luigi Naldini is the Director of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy and professor at the San Raffaele University in Milan, Italy.
For the past 25 years, he has pioneered the development and applications of lentiviral vectors for gene transfer, which have become one of the most widely used tools in biomedical research and, upon recently entering clinical testing, are providing a long-sought hope of cures for several currently untreatable and otherwise deadly human diseases. Throughout this time, he has continued to investigate new strategies to overcome the major hurdles to safe and effective gene transfer, bringing about innovative solutions that not only are being translated into new therapeutic strategies for genetic disease and cancer, but have also allowed novel insights into hematopoietic stem cell function, induction of immunological tolerance, and tumor angiogenesis. His work also contributed to advance the use of artificial nucleases for targeted genome editing in cell and gene therapy. In his early career, he identified the ligand for the Met receptor with hepatocyte growth factor. Has published 266 scientific papers cited >39,000 times. SCOPUS Author h-index: 93.
Luigi received his medical degree from the University of Torino, Italy, and his PhD from the University of Rome. He is Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), has been President of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ESGCT), and has been appointed as expert on the "Human Gene Editing Study" of the US National Academies of Sciences and of Medicine, and on the Italian National Committee for Biosafety, Biotechnology and Life Sciences. He was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) in 2014 and from ESGCT in 2015, an Honorary doctorate from the Vrije University, Brussel, in 2015, the Jimenez Diaz Prize in 2016, the Beutler Prize from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in 2017 and the 2019 Jeantet-Collen Prize for Translational Medicine. He was nominated "Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana", one of the highest ranking honor in Italy, from the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister of Italy on December 27th 2019.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
- Chief Technology Officer, Cell Therapy
Job Titles:
- Board Director
- Member of the Board
Mary Rozenman brings more than 15 years of scientific expertise, company building, and transactions leadership in the biotech industry to Tessera's Board of Directors. She serves as the CFO and CBO of insitro, leading strategic and operational finance and accounting strategy, business development, investor relations, corporate communications, as well as project and portfolio management.
Prior to insitro, Dr. Rozenman served as the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy at Aimmune Therapeutics, where she oversaw business development and partnerships with companies including Regeneron/Sanofi and Nestle Health Science and supported the company's strategic finance and investor relations efforts. Across her time at both insitro and Aimmune, Dr. Rozenman has raised more than $1 billion in capital through a range of public and private transactions, including co-leadership of Aimmune's IPO in 2015. Before Aimmune, Dr. Rozenman was a vice president at Longitude Capital, where she focused on biotechnology investments and participated in multiple therapeutics investments and boards of directors, including observing on Aimmune's board. Mary was also previously a junior partner at McKinsey & Company, focused on pharmaceuticals and corporate finance.
She received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University and her B.A. in Biochemistry and Russian Literature from Columbia University. Her scientific work has been published in premier scientific journals, and she is a named inventor on several patents.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Scientist
- Board Director, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Melissa Moore is a renowned scientist with over three decades of experience in RNA research and pharmaceutical development.
From 2016-2021, she served as Chief Scientific Officer at Moderna where she led the early-stage research teams developing Moderna's platform technologies in mRNA design and delivery. Prior to that, Dr. Moore co-founded the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where she was a Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology, Eleanor Eustis Farrington Chair in Cancer Research, and a long-time Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Her academic research encompassed a broad array of topics related to the roles of RNA and RNA-protein (RNP) complexes in gene expression, and touched on many human diseases including cancer, neurodegeneration, and preeclampsia.
Dr. Moore is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2017), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019) and recipient of the RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2021). She currently sits on multiple Scientific Advisory Boards and has co-founded two companies (Comanche Biopharma and Via Scientific) stemming from her academic research.
Dr. Moore holds a B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from the College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from MIT, where she specialized in enzymology under Prof. Christopher T. Walsh. She began working on RNA metabolism during her postdoctoral training with Phillip A. Sharp at MIT.
Job Titles:
- Chief Scientific Officer
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Michael joined Tessera in December 2021 as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Holmes has over 20 years of experience working on the development and clinical translation of different genome editing- and gene therapy-based strategies for the treatment of inherited and acquired diseases. He has a proven track record of translating genomic engineering technologies to product candidates as evidenced by leading ten therapeutic programs across a landscape of ex vivo and in vivo therapies.
Prior to joining Tessera, Dr. Holmes served as the Chief Scientific Officer with Ambys Medicines, where he led the research and development efforts in the identification, creation, and advancement of novel therapies for severe liver diseases. Previously, Dr. Holmes worked for 17 years at Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. raising through the ranks to Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. During this time, he was heavily involved in the company's research and pipeline development of genetic therapies.
Dr. Holmes has authored over 60 publications in the field of genome editing and gene regulation and is listed as an inventor of over 40 issued and pending U.S. patents related to genome editing and targeted gene regulation technologies. He holds his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley after earning his B.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of California, San Diego. He was also listed as one of "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds" in 2014 and 2015 by Thomas Reuters and named to the 2020 list of Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate.
Job Titles:
- Board Director
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Board
- Member of the Senior Leadership Team
Michael joined Tessera in 2022 as Chief Executive Officer and a CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. Mike brings more than two decades of biopharmaceutical leadership and significant contributions to the research, development, registration, and commercialization of more than a dozen approved therapies.
Mike joined Tessera from AbbVie where he was Vice Chairman and President responsible for research and development and the corporate strategy office. During his tenure at AbbVie, Mike oversaw a rapid expansion of AbbVie's pipeline and built critical new capabilities in areas such as genetics and genomics, computational biology, and precision medicine. Under his leadership, AbbVie achieved several important new molecular entity approvals and built leading franchises in hematologic oncology, immunology, and neuroscience.
Prior to joining AbbVie, Mike served in roles of increasing responsibility at Amgen, Inc., leading to his appointment as Senior Vice President, Global Development and Chief Medical Officer. As Senior Vice President he oversaw the company's clinical development efforts across all therapeutic areas, including oncology, inflammation, neuroscience, cardiovascular, and metabolic disorders. Mike was previously Senior Director at Merck & Co., Inc. where he was responsible for leading research in multiple areas, including clinical genomics, molecular profiling, and experimental medicine.
Mike earned his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he graduated summa cum laude and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He earned his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University and completed his residency and post-doctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In addition to serving on the board of Tessera as a director, Mike also serves on the Board of Directors for Avantor and Montai Health.
Job Titles:
- Board Director
- Member of the Board
- Member of the View Full Team
- Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering
Noubar Afeyan is the Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering.
Noubar has dedicated his career to improving the human condition by systematically creating science-based innovations that serve as the foundation for startup companies. At Flagship Pioneering, which he founded in 2000, Noubar has created an enterprise where entrepreneurially minded scientists invent seemingly unreasonable solutions to challenges facing human health and sustainability. They begin by asking "What if?" and iterate toward the unexpected answer "It turns out," resulting in the creation of first-in-category companies with significant impact. Flagship has fostered the development of more than 100 scientific ventures resulting in $80 billion in aggregate value, thousands of patents and patent applications, and more than 50 drugs in clinical development.
During his career as inventor, entrepreneur, and CEO, Noubar has cofounded and helped build over 50 life science and technology startups. Prior to founding Flagship Pioneering, Noubar was the founder and CEO of PerSeptive Biosystems, a leader in bio-instrumentation that grew to $100 million in annual revenues. After PerSeptive's acquisition by Perkin Elmer/Applera Corporation in 1998, he became senior vice president and chief business officer of Applera, where he initiated and oversaw the creation of Celera Genomics.
He serves on the boards of a number of public and private Flagship companies, including Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), where he is chairman and Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY). Previously, he was a member of the founding team, director, and investor in highly successful ventures including Chemgenics Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Millenium Pharmaceuticals), Color Kinetics (acquired by Philips), Adnexus Therapeutics (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb), and Affinnova (acquired by AC Nielsen).
Job Titles:
- Corporate Controller
- Senior Vice President, Finance
- Tessera in 2021 As the Head of Finance
Steve Garbacz joined Tessera in 2021 as the Head of Finance and is responsible for financial reporting, planning, taxes, and treasury.
Steve has more than 25 years of experience in financial management for a range of companies, including Biogen, Epizyme, Spero, and Anika. He has a passion for building scalable financial organizations leveraging new technology, and drove successful IPOs at Epizyme and Spero. At Anika, Steve was a key leader in acquiring and integrating two private companies.
Steve has a B.S. in Economics from George Mason University and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Leonard Stern School of Business at New York University.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, Corporate Development
Vik joined Tessera in 2020 as the Head of Corporate Development. Vik drives corporate strategy, business development, and investor relations for Tessera.
Vik was previously at McKinsey & Company, where he was an Associate Partner in the healthcare practice. At McKinsey, Vik worked with large biopharma and early-stage biotech companies on strategy, M&A, and R&D topics. He led diligence efforts for over $15B in completed deals and advised on clinical strategy for more than 20 programs. Vik also co-led McKinsey's Center for Asset Optimization, which focuses on clinical-stage asset development strategy. Vik holds a Ph.D. in Genetics and Development from Columbia University, where he studied transcriptional regulation of developmentally important genes at the molecular level. He has a B.S. in biochemistry from Brandeis University, where he was awarded highest honors for his research on DNA damage repair pathways.