Biotech 2050 Podcast

Todd Zavodnick has over 20 years of leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Dermavant in November 2018, Mr. Zavodnick served as Chief Commercial Officer and President of Aesthetics and Therapeutics at Revance. He served in global leadership roles at ZELTIQ Aesthetics prior to the company’s acquisition by Allergan; at Galderma Laboratories, where he was President and General Manager of North America; and at Alcon Laboratories. He is a member of the board of directors of the Children’s Skin Disease Foundation. On August 10, 2021, after this interview was recorded, Dermavant Sciences announced that the FDA accepted for filing a New Drug Application (NDA) for tapinarof for the treatment of plaque psoriasis in adult patients. Tapinarof is an investigational, novel, therapeutic aryl hydrocarbon receptor modulating agent, in development as a once-daily, steroid-free and cosmetically elegant topical cream for the treatment of plaque psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. The FDA has assigned a Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) target action date in Q2 2022.

Alison serves as the chief medical officer at Surface Oncology. She has over 20 years of experience in clinical research, oncology drug development and clinical neuro-oncology. Prior to joining Surface, Alison held several leadership roles in clinical research and development at Radius Health, Synta Pharmaceuticals and at Sanofi in the global oncology division. Prior to entering the biotech industry, she served on faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital where she focused on early phase clinical studies and treating patients with malignancies of the central nervous system. Alison earned both her bachelor’s degree and her medical degree from the University of Chicago. She completed her residency training at the University of Michigan in neurology and her neuro-oncology fellowship training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Nancy Lurker: President & Chief Executive Officer Our President, CEO, and a director since September 2016, Ms Lurker has broad-ranging experience in the pharmaceutical industry and a track record of maximizing the potential of new therapies and successfully implementing innovative US and global drug launches. Said Saim, PhD: Chief Technology Officer Dr Saim has more than 25 years of product development experience. Dr Saim has published 22 papers in engineering and science journals, holds 18 patents, and earned a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Kansas.

Mike Nally is the Chief Executive Officer of Generate Biomedicines and a CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. Mike brings significant experience leading global organizations and is passionate about working with teams and partners to bring innovations to patients. Mike previously served as Chief Marketing Officer at Merck & Co. In this role, Mike was responsible for Global Marketing and Brand Strategy across a vast portfolio, exceeding $40B in revenue, of innovative medicines and vaccines. Prior to this role, Mike served as President of Global Vaccines at Merck, providing a broad portfolio of pediatric, adolescent, and adult vaccines to the world. In this position, Mike and his team worked to drive a dramatic increase in the reach and public health impact of vaccines, while delivering significant business growth. Additionally, Mike has led the company's business in Sweden and the UK, focusing on the development and implementation of innovative, customer-centered approaches that delivered improved business results and accelerated patient access to our medicines. He has also held a variety of positions in Commercial Operations, Business Development and Investor Relations. Geoffrey von Maltzahn is an inventor, entrepreneur, CEO, and the co-founder of multiple groundbreaking companies in therapeutics and agriculture. Geoffrey is a General Partner at Flagship Pioneering and has co-founded companies that represent, in aggregate, over $10 billion in public and private market capitalization. Through his role in Flagship Labs, Geoffrey has created companies that include Generate Biomedicines, Tessera Therapeutics, Indigo Agriculture, Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Axcella Health (NASDAQ: AXLA). These are pioneering, respectively, generative biology, gene writing, plant microbiome products for crop improvement, engineered cells and cell-specific gene therapies, novel chemistries to drive the human microbiome, the first microbiome therapeutics, and amino acid-based drugs. Geoffrey recently served as founding CEO for Generate Biomedicines and currently serves as a Board Director. Additionally, he is Chief Executive Officer and Director of Tessera Therapeutics, Chief Innovation Officer and Director of Indigo, and Director of Kaleido Biosciences and Sana Biotechnology. He recently served as Chief Executive Officer of Cobalt Biomedicine, which he led from inception to merger with Sana Biotechnology, and as Kaleido’s Chief Executive Officer, where he led the company from inception to the launch of multiple clinical studies. Geoffrey also served as Chief Executive Officer of 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 over a million 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 News' 20 Biopharma Leaders Under 40; Boston Chamber of Commerce's 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.

Ron Cohen, M.D. is President, CEO and founder of Acorda Therapeutics, Inc., a public biotechnology company developing therapies for disorders of the nervous system, including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and migraine. Dr. Cohen previously was a principal in the startup and an officer of Advanced Tissue Sciences, Inc., a biotechnology company engaged in the growth of human organ tissues for transplantation uses. He serves as a Director on the Board of Directors of VBL Therapeutics. He previously served as a Director on the Board of Dyax Corp. until its acquisition in 2016. He also previously served as Chair of the Board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), as Chair of the Emerging Companies Section of the BIO Board, and as Director and Chair of the New York Biotechnology Association (NYBA). Acorda Therapeutics has been recognized as one of the Best Companies to Work for in New York State seven years in a row (2011-2017), among the Fortune 100 Best Medium-Size Workplaces the U.S. (2017), and among the Fortune 100 Best Workplaces for Women (2016-2017), Millennials (2017) and Baby Boomers (2017). Dr. Cohen is a recipient of the NY CEO Lifetime Achievement Award and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the New York Metropolitan Region. He was named Neuroinvestment’s CEO of the Year and is an inductee of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association’s “Spinal Cord Injury Hall of Fame.” Dr. Cohen received the Burke Award from Burke Rehabilitation Hospital for his contributions to helping people with disabilities gain independence, and was awarded Columbia University’s Alumni Medal for Distinguished Service.. He has been recognized by the New York Biotechnology Association as the NYBA “The Cures Start Here” Business Leader of the Year, by the Westchester County Association as its Leadership Award recipient, by Life Science Leader Magazine as True Life Science Leader of the year, by PR Week/MM&M as one of the Health Influencer 50, and by PharmaVOICE Magazine as one of the 100 Most Inspirational People in the Biopharmaceutical Industry. Dr. Cohen received his B.A. degree with honors in Psychology from Princeton University, and his M.D. from the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Virginia Medical Center, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine.

Avanish Vellanki is passionate about offering cancer patients better treatment options, and he firmly believes that precision oncology strategies are the best manner in which to achieve that goal. He has 20 years of experience across the healthcare and investment banking sectors and began his career on Wall Street at Bear, Stearns & Co. in 2004 in equity research, covering small/mid-cap biotechnology companies. Following his time at Bear, Stearns, Avanish transitioned to Global Healthcare Investment Banking at Citigroup where he focused on large-cap global biopharmaceutical strategic and financing transactions. He subsequently moved to industry, joining Proteolix in 2009 prior to its acquisition by Onyx Pharmaceuticals, where he helped develop carfilzomib (Kyprolis(R)) for patients with multiple myeloma. Prior to founding Rain, Avanish was senior vice president and chief business officer at Aptose Biosciences. Avanish holds a BA from Carleton College, an MBS in biochemistry from the University of Minnesota and MBA from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

Benjamine Liu is the co-founder and CEO of TrialSpark, a technology company that is reimagining drug development. Benjamine received his DPhil at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, conducting his work with Sir Simon Lovestone. His doctoral thesis leveraged machine-learning, AI, and healthcare big-data -- genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, imaging -- to develop diagnostics and therapeutics for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. During his graduate work, he observed the way clinical trials bottlenecked the development of new treatments for patients, compelling him to start TrialSpark. TrialSpark's tech-forward clinical trial engine accelerates the drug development process. With an integrated data layer as its foundation, TrialSpark offers unprecedented study quality and speed through real-time access to data, process standardization, and operational agility. TrialSpark acquires majority or minority positions in drugs from other pharma companies/biotechs to run through its own trial engine, enabling these drugs to be tested far faster and more efficiently. Before TrialSpark, Ben graduated from Yale where he was awarded the college’s highest honor at graduation and received his MPhil with distinction in Computational Biology from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge as a Paul Melon Fellow.

Ankit Mahadevia is the CEO of Spero Therapeutics and a member of the Board of Directors. He was formerly a Venture Partner in the life sciences group at Atlas Venture, located in Cambridge, MA. In that capacity he supported the formation of eight companies focused on novel drug discovery platforms and therapeutic products including Nimbus Therapeutics, Arteaus Therapeutics (acquired by Lilly), and Translate Bio (Nasdaq: TBIO). He led three of these as Acting CEO, including Synlogic (Nasdaq: SYBX). Prior to joining Atlas in 2008, Ankit worked on product and business development with the founding team at Arcion Therapeutics. He has also held positions in business development both at Genentech and at Vanda Pharmaceuticals. Previously, he worked in the health care groups of McKinsey & Company and Monitor Group. Ankit began his career in health care policy, with roles in the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committees, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS). He has spoken widely on entrepreneurship, including at Harvard University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and the Berkeley Forum. Ankit has also been active in the policy of life science innovation, including service on the Advisory Council at the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Studies.

Jonathan Rigby is an experienced CEO with three decades of experience creating value and opportunities for companies in the pharmaceutical, biotech and drug delivery technology industry. He currently serves as the CEO of Revolo Biotherapeutics, a biotechnology company setting out to revolutionize the treatment for autoimmune and allergic diseases, through the development of therapies that reset the immune system to achieve superior long-term disease remission. Prior to leading the charge at Revolo, Mr. Rigby established SteadyMed Therapeutics Inc. and focused the company on the development of drug device combination products to treat Pulmonary Hypertension. As the CEO, he led the company through a Nasdaq listing in 2015(Nasdaq: STDY) and a public-to-public company sale to United Therapeutics (Nasdaq: UTHR)in late 2018. In 2006 he co-founded Zogenix, Inc. (Nasdaq: ZGNX) a specialty pharmaceutical company now focused on the development and commercialization of drug products to treat rare diseases and was instrumental in its listing on Nasdaq in 2010. Earlier in his career, Jonathan held commercial and business development positions of increasing responsibility at large pharmaceutical companies including Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb and Profile Therapeutics, now Phillips Medical. Jonathan has served as Executive Board Member at SteadyMed Ltd. (Nasdaq: STDY), Non-Executive Board Member at Xeris Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: XERS) and Chairman of the Board at CollPlant Biotechnologies (Nasdaq: CLGN). He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree with Honors in Biological Sciences from Sheffield University, UK, and an MBA from Portsmouth University, UK.

Balkrishan (Simba) Gill, Ph.D. has served as our President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of our Board of Directors since September 2015. Dr. Gill also has served on the board of directors of Realm Therapeutics PLC since 2016, and as a Venture Partner at Flagship Pioneering, a life sciences innovation enterprise, since 2015. From 2006 to 2015, Dr. Gill served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of moksha8 Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pharmaceutical company. From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Gill served as a director at Realm Therapeutics PLC. Dr. Gill received his Ph.D. from King’s College, London and his M.B.A. from INSEAD.