OVERLAND PHARMA - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Functional Leadership Team
- Head of Biometrics
Prior to Overland, Dr. Chen was a distinguished scientist in biostatistics at Merck Research Laboratories (US). He previously worked in China as Senior Global Group Head of Biostatistics at Novartis and as Senior Director and Head of Biometrics & Information Sciences at AstraZeneca and Merck Serono. He is also a member of the China Tripartite Coordination Committee, responsible for drafting and revising technical guidance for drug development in China. Dr. Chen holds 25 years of experience in biopharmaceutical R&D and has been invited to present at FDA/industry statistics workshops, EMA statistics symposia, and numerous other venues.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Head of Cell Therapy Platform Research
Dr. Weijie Lan serves as VP, Head of Cell Therapy Platform Research at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to joining Overland, Dr. Lan served as Senior Director at Walking Fish Therapeutics, where he led the efforts to build an industrial-leading B-cell therapy platform. Before Walking Fish, Weijie was a Senior Scientist at AbbVie Inc., where he built the internal platform for CAR-T cell therapy and synthesized a chimpanzee adenovirus-based vector for the oncolytic virus program. Prior to joining AbbVie, Weijie was a scientist at Fate Therapeutics, where he built the iPSC engineering platform and participated in the early development of first-in-class iPSC-derived NK and T cell therapies. Dr. Lan is a co-inventor of iPSC and B-cell engineering patents, and co-authored scientific papers in peer reviewed journals including Cell and Science. Overall, Dr. Lan brings 20 years of experience in cell biology research and cell therapy drug development.
Dr. Weijie Lan received his Ph.D. from University of Virginia and completed his post-doctoral training at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at University of California San Diego. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Wuhan University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Management Team
- Co - Founder and CEO, Overland Pharmaceuticals
Ed co-founded Overland Pharma as a venture partner at Hillhouse Capital in 2020 and has served as CEO since 2021.
Ed has a total of 20 years of biopharma industry experience. Before starting at Hillhouse, Ed was VP Corporate Development at Boston Pharmaceuticals as part of its initial founding team, leading corporate development and strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Boston Pharma, Ed headed global business development at Sanofi's Specialty Products BU and was Director of Strategic Development at Genzyme before its acquisition by Sanofi. He started his career as a medicinal chemist at Pharmacia & Upjohn.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy
Dr. Eric Hu serves as VP of Corporate Development and Strategy at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to Overland, Dr. Hu was Senior Director of Business Development at Turning Point Therapeutics where he contributed to all aspects of strategic initiatives, deal sourcing, and diligence efforts. Before Turning Point Therapeutics, Dr. Hu spent over ten years at Gilead Sciences with increasing responsibilities from drug discovery to business development diligence. Dr. Hu is a coauthor of several high impact publications including Nature and Nature Medicine. Dr. Hu is also a key contributor and co-inventor of multiple clinical programs in antiviral, oncology, and inflammation including first-in-class long-acting HIV Capsid inhibitor Lenacapavir currently in multiple phase III clinical trials. Dr. Hu brings over 17 years of biopharmaceutical industry experience to Overland.
Dr. Hu received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from University of California, Los Angeles, and BS from Beijing Normal University with honors.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Head of Clinical Operations & Project Management
Helen Yang, serves as VP, Head of Clinical Operations and Project Management at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to Overland, Helen served as Therapeutic Area Lead(Senior Director) at Roche China and led Study Management Teams of Clinical Operations to manage 80+ oncology clinical trials with contributing Chinese patients on global pivotal studies and with joining regional/global trials for China registration purpose including Atezolizumab, Alecensa, Gazyva, Kadcyla, Emicizumab successfully launched in China. Meanwhile, as a core member of Project Team, she joined in Clinical Development Strategy discussion to bring multiple innovative products to China, including Tiragolumab, Entrectinib, Glofitamab, Crovalimab, Polatuzumab, Giredestrant. Before joining Roche, Helen had served at GlaxoSmithKline China for seven years and held multiple clinical operation roles with increasing responsibilities, such as study management, clinical scientist and people management.
Helen brings to Overland over 18 years of clinical research experiences in Oncology(both solid tumor and hematology), Cardiovascular, Endocrinology, etc. Helen received B.S. in pharmacy from Shenyang Pharmaceutical University.
Jie Li serves as CRO at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to Overland, Jie held different Regulatory Affairs positions at Pfizer China since 1999 and led the department from 2010 until April 2020. In this role, she supported all facets of Pfizer China's pharma business for registration strategy of all new products including small and large molecule drugs, and vaccines, in addition to license maintenance of approved products. She proactively partnered with industry associations and government agencies to introduce international best practices into China for NMPA's regulatory system reform. In addition to Pfizer, she has experience working at other MNCs, such as SmithKline Beecham China, BMS China and Wyeth. She has also served as the Co-Chair of Regulatory Affairs Working Group in RDPAC (R&D Based Pharmaceutical Association Committee) in China. Jie holds over 25 years of regulatory affairs experience covering multiple therapeutic areas including cardiovascular and metabolic disease, neuroscience, oncology, infectious disease, inflammation & immunology, rare disease, endocrinology, and vaccine.
Jie received her MS from Peking Union Medical Colleague and BS in Medicine from Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Dr. John Maraganore serves as Strategic Advisor at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to Overland, Dr. Maraganore served as the founding CEO and a Director of Alnylam from 2002 to 2021, where he built and led the company from early platform research on RNA interference through global approval and commercialization of the first four RNAi therapeutic medicines, ONPATTRO®, GIVLAARI®, OXLUMO®, and Leqvio®. At Alnylam, he also led the company's value creation strategy, building $25B in market capitalization, including over 20 major pharmaceutical alliances. He continues to serve on the Alnylam Scientific Advisory Board. Prior to Alnylam, he served as an officer and a member of the management team for Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he was responsible for the company's product franchises in oncology, and cardiovascular, inflammatory and metabolic diseases, in addition to leadership of M&A, strategy, and biotherapeutics functions. Before Millennium, he served as Director of Molecular Biology and Director of Market and Business Development at Biogen, Inc. where he invented and led the discovery and development of ANGIOMAX® (bivalirudin) for injection. Previously, he was a scientist at ZymoGenetics, Inc. and the Upjohn Company.
Dr. Maraganore received his M.S. and Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Chicago. He is currently a Venture Partner at ARCH Venture Partners, a Venture Advisor at Atlas Ventures, and an Executive Partner at RTW Investments. He is also Chair of the Board of Directors of Hemab Therapeutics and a member of the Board of Directors of Agios Pharmaceuticals, Beam Therapeutics and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, where he was Chair from 2017-2019. In addition, he serves on the Board of the Termeer Foundation - committed to continuing the legacy of the late Henri A. Termeer, as Chair of the n-Lorem Foundation Advisory Council - committed to meeting the needs of patients with nano-rare diseases, and as a strategic advisor to SalioGen, SQZ Biotechnologies, and other innovative companies.
Dr. Peter Ho serves as Strategic Advisor at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Ho's career has focused on cancer drug discovery and development. He previously served as Chief Medical Officer at Boston Pharmaceuticals and Epizyme Inc. In these roles, he oversaw clinical development functional areas including medical, clinical operations, clinical pharmacology, regulatory affairs, translational medicine, biostatistics and data management. Prior, he was Co-Founder and President of BeiGene Ltd. located in Beijing, China. His prior leadership roles includes serving as Senior VP of oncology discovery at GlaxoSmithKline and VP of oncology development at Johnson & Johnson. Dr. Ho completed his pediatrics residency at The Children's Hospital of Boston followed by clinical fellowships in pediatric hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and in clinical oncology and regulatory sciences jointly through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Cancer Institute. Since 1995, he has been responsible for the first-in-human dosing of 19 anticancer agents and has overseen the development of over 60 hematology and oncology compounds in clinical phases of testing, contributing to 11 NCE approvals to date: Gleevec®; Arranon®; Tykerb®; Promacta®; Votrient®; Synribo®; Tafinlar®; Mekinist®; Sylvant®; and Rydap®, and Tazverik®.
Dr. Ho earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in pharmacology from Yale University. He currently serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina's Eshelman School of Pharmacy, a Scientific Advisory Board Member for Accent Therapeutics, and on the Board of Directors for Aravive Inc.
Job Titles:
- Chief Development Officer, Head of Clinical & Preclinical Development
Dr. Luo serves as CDO, Head of Clinical and Preclinical Development of Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to joining Overland, Dr. Luo worked for several biotechnology companies in China serving in various executive leadership positions with primary responsibilities including overseeing the global clinical development of target therapy and immunotherapy assets as well as overall portfolio management. In addition, Dr. Luo previously held multiple clinical development roles of increasing responsibility at major pharmaceutical companies including The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson as well as at Daiichi Sankyo Pharma Development and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dr. Luo brings to Overland over 20 years of industry experience in translational research and clinical development for innovative oncology, immunology and hematology therapeutics. he led and supported multiple NDA programs for novel oncology drugs, most notably Abivertinib, an EGFR inhibitor for lung cancer, Erdafitinib, a FGFR inhibitor for urothelial cancer, and Dasatinib, a BCR-ABL inhibitor for leukemia. Additionally, he engaged in the development of multiple biologic drugs including Cetuximab, Tigatuzumab, anti-VISTA antibody, anti-PD-1/Tim3 dual body, CD137 agonist and anti-CTLA4 antibody.
Dr. Luo completed his postdoctoral fellowship training at Cancer Institute of New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in clinical pharmacology/cancer pharmacology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his M.S. in biochemistry from Bowling Green State University, and his B.S. in chemistry from Peking University.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Head of Finance, IT, & Procurement
Serena Wang serves as VP, Head of Finance, IT and Procurement at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to Overland, Serena served as Head of Corporate Finance in Epimab Biotechnology, covering the area of Corporate Finance management, Finance Analysis &Planning, Finance Strategy Set-up and Financing activities, etc. Previously, she also held various finance managerial positions in in multinational companies such as Alfasigma Pharma, Roche Pharma China, Roche Pharma Germany and Siemens.
In total, Serena brings over 18 years of extensive finance management area in Pharmaceutical industry with corporate finance set up, finance analysis, compliance, financing & IPO Planning, etc. She held MBA degree from Hongkong University and is also the member of Australia CPA, CIMA, FIMA, IPA, FIPA.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Head of Translational Medicine
Dr. Weimin (Warren) Li serves as VP, Translational Medicine at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Prior to Overland, Dr. Li was Translational Development Head, Cell Therapies at Takeda Pharmaceuticals leading translational and precision medicine strategies for Takeda's cell therapy portfolio. Before Takeda, Dr. Li was a Director of Translational Medicine/Precision Medicine at AstraZeneca, where he led translational medicine, clinical biomarkers and diagnostics development for AZ's immuno-oncology programs in gastrointestinal, genitourinary, and head & neck cancers. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, Weimin spent 10 years within the Oncology Translational Research group at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, where he led the transition from preclinical development to FIH of several IO assets. Weimin also led clinical biomarkers strategies for several full development programs, including abiraterone (anti-androgen), niraparib (PARPi) and trabectedin. Overall, Dr. Li brings over 18 years of experience in oncology drug development with a focus on translational medicine.
Dr. Li received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed his postdoc training at the University of Chicago. He received his MS from Chinese Academy of Sciences and BS from Fudan University.
Dr. Liu serves as CTO at Overland Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Liu will continue serving in his role as Senior Advisor at Hillhouse Investment, a position he has held to date. Prior to joining Overland and Hillhouse, Dr. Liu was the Vice President of Hengrui Medicine and the President of its Biomedicine Development and Business Division where he oversaw the development of over 50 new biological products, 23 of which entered clinical trials and 3 were approved for market launch. Previously, Dr. Liu was a tenured Staff Scientist at the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he was in charge of process development and clinical manufacturing of therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines. Prior to his role at the NIH, he was the Principal Engineer at Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, serving as Commercial Production Specialist for Kogenate®, Bayer's top selling drug. Earlier in his career, he worked at Amgen and Vertex Pharmaceuticals in various drug development roles.
Dr. Liu earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Beijing University and Ph.D. degree in biophysical chemistry from Rutgers University. Following his education, he was trained at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a post-doc fellow in the Nobel Laureate Professor Gobind Khorana's laboratory for three and a half years.