Team Members Archive - Page 2 of 3

JOHN A. JOSEY, PhD

Dr. Josey joined The Column Group as a Venture Partner in 2020. Previously he served as the President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of Peloton Therapeutics, Inc., from 2013 until its acquisition by Merck in 2019. He joined Peloton in 2011 as the first employee in the role of President and Chief Scientific Officer. For over thirteen years, Dr. Josey was employed at Array BioPharma Inc., a company that he helped to build as a member of the founding management team. There he rose to Vice President of Discovery Chemistry. Dr. Josey’s previous experience also includes Amgen, Inc. and the Glaxo Research Institute. He received a BS degree in chemistry from Colorado State University, a PhD in organic chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from the University of Colorado. He was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

Board of Directors: Atavistik Bio, Inc. (Chair); Circle Pharma, Inc. (Chair); Day One Biopharmaceuticals, Inc.; Nura Bio, Inc; VHL Alliance

BRYAN E. STUART

Bryan E. Stuart is Chief Executive Officer of Atavistik Bio and a Director on the Board. Bryan has more than 20 years of experience in executive leadership, corporate strategy, and business development in biopharma industry. Bryan was most recently CEO of Fulcrum Therapeutics, where he initially served as Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining Fulcrum, he served as president and CEO of Yarra Therapeutics (a subsidiary of Array BioPharma) and CEO of Kastle Therapeutics, both companies focused on developing therapies for rare and severe diseases. Previously, Mr. Stuart served as Chief Business Officer of Civitas Therapeutics (acquired by Acorda Therapeutics) and also led business development, corporate development and strategy at both EKR Therapeutics (acquired by Chiesi Farmaceutici) and Ovation Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Lundbeck A/S). Mr. Stuart earned his MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois.

JEFF GOATER

Jeff Goater joined The Column Group as a Venture Partner in 2021. Previously, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Surface Oncology. During his tenure at Surface, the company fostered an award-winning culture, advanced four programs into clinical development, completed its initial public offering and secured multiple strategic collaborations, including a transformative partnership with GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to Surface, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Voyager Therapeutics where he was one of the members of the founding management team. While at Voyager, he led its crossover financing, initial public offering and strategic partnership with Sanofi Genzyme. Previously, Jeff spent nearly a decade in investment banking, most recently as a managing director at Evercore Partners, advising on more than $100 billion in strategic transactions in the biopharma industry. He began his career as a research scientist in the field of AAV gene therapy and holds master’s degrees in microbiology/immunology (MS), pathology (MS) and business administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester. Jeff also currently serves on the boards of Ribon Therapeutics, Surface Oncology, Vaccinex and LogicBio Therapeutics.

HELEN HOBBS, MD

Helen H. Hobbs is a physician-scientist and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) in Dallas Texas. After attending Stanford University and Case Western Reserve Medical School, she trained in internal medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian and UTSW. She joined the faculty of UTSW in 1987 where she is Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Genetics. Together with Jonathan C. Cohen, she identified new sequence variations/genes contributing to differences in plasma lipid levels, which led to the development of two new lipid-lowering therapies for the prevention of heart attacks. She also has identified the first and most important genetic difference contributing to susceptibility to fatty liver disease. Gene identification is just the starting point for her studies. She has performed functional studies to elucidate the pathways and processes that are altered by the defective genes she has identified. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is on the board of Pfizer Inc. and a Science Partner of the Column Group. Among the prizes she has received are the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Grand Prix Award from the Institute of France, and the Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine.

SHAQ VAYDA

Shaq is a Principal on the Lux Capital team with a passion for technology and a desire to invest in people. Helping turn their vision for a better world into reality. Specifically, he is excited by “building block” ideas where the value and markets unlocked downstream are greater than that of a single product. Some examples of these building blocks include: biotech, drug discovery platforms, molecular & computational tools, synbio, data infrastructure, and developer tools.

Shaq’s career journey in some ways mirrors the ethos of Lux, investing at the intersection of technology and the natural sciences. Shaq started his professional career in the aerospace and defense sector spending time at NASA and Northrop Grumman. Following, Shaq got exposure to the emerging life sciences sector at Illumina, seeing firsthand the impact DNA sequencing has had on ending human suffering. Most recently, Shaq worked at Parthenon (SSG) in San Francisco, where he advised premier private equity and growth equity firms on enterprise technology and healthcare investments.

THILO SCHROEDER, PhD

Thilo Schroeder is a Partner at Nextech Invest and has a passion for precision medicines in cancer with a focus on identifying first and best-in-class targeted therapies.

Thilo has been a leading investor in several precision medicine oncology companies and is a board member of Revolution Medicines (RVMD), PMV Pharma (PMVP), Circle Pharma, Atavistik Bio, MOMA Therapeutics, Silverback Therapeutics (SBTX), Exo Therapeutics and Alterome Therapeutics. Past board seats include Blueprint Medicines (BPMC), Peloton Therapeutics (acquired by Merck), Black Diamond Therapeutics (BDTX), IDEAYA Bioscience (IDYA) and ImaginAb.

Thilo began his biotech career at the pioneering cancer immunology company Micromet (acquired by Amgen) while studying at Ecole Supérieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg, conducted research at the University of Sydney and obtained his PhD from the University of Zurich, focused on protein engineering in the development of Designed Ankyrin Repeat Proteins (DARPins), a technology now commercialized by Molecular Partners (SWX:MOLN). He also holds a MS in biotechnology from the Ecole de Supérieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg in France, and a BS in biology from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.

MOHAMMAD HIRMAND, MD

Mohammad Hirmand, M.D., serves as co-founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Avenzo Therapeutics, responsible for clinical development, clinical operations and regulatory affairs. Dr. Hirmand has more than 20 years of biotechnology clinical development experience, most recently as executive vice president and CMO for Turning Point Therapeutics, which was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in August 2022. Prior to joining Turning Point, Dr. Hirmand was CMO of Peloton Therapeutics, which was acquired by Merck in July 2019. Prior to joining Peloton in 2017, Dr. Hirmand served as CMO of Medivation through its acquisition by Pfizer. He played a vital role in advancing XTANDI® (enzalutamide) through clinical trials that led to its approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. His responsibilities also included the in-licensing and global clinical development of the poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, talazoparib. Before his 10-year tenure at Medivation, he held clinical development roles of increasing responsibility at Nuvelo, Inc. (now ARCA Biopharma), SuperGen, Inc. (now Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.), Tularik, Inc. (now part of Amgen), and Theravance Biopharma, Inc. Dr. Hirmand received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his B.A. in Biological Sciences and Economics from Cornell University.

RALPH DEBERARDINIS, MD, PhD

Dr. Ralph DeBerardinis joined the faculty of UT Southwestern Medical Center in 2008 and joined the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UTSW (CRI) shortly after its founding in 2012. He is Chief of Pediatric Genetics and Metabolism at UTSW and Director of the Genetic and Metabolic Disease Program at CRI. Dr. DeBerardinis is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and has received numerous awards including the William K. Bowes, Jr. Award in Medical Genetics, the National Cancer Institute’s Outstanding Investigator Award, The Academy of Medicine, Engineering & Science of Texas’s Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Medicine, and the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians.

Dr. DeBerardinis’ laboratory studies the role of altered metabolic pathways in human diseases, including cancer and pediatric inborn errors of metabolism. The lab has pioneered the use of metabolomics and isotope tracing to characterize disease-associated metabolic states directly in patients, and to use disease-relevant model systems to explore how metabolic perturbations contributes to tissue dysfunction. Work from the DeBerardinis laboratory has produced new insights into disease mechanisms in numerous metabolic diseases, including by defining unexpected fuel preferences in human cancer and uncovering new metabolic vulnerabilities in cancer cells.

Dr. DeBerardinis received a BS in Biology from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia before earning MD and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. He completed his post-graduate clinical training at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in Pediatrics, Medical Genetics and Clinical Biochemical Genetics. Before coming to UT Southwestern, he performed postdoctoral research at the Penn Cancer Center.

JARED RUTTER, PhD

Dr. Jared Rutter is a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and holds the Dee Glen and Ida Smith Endowed Chair for Cancer Research at the University of Utah where he has been on the faculty since 2003. He has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2015. Dr. Rutter performed undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University and received his PhD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 2001, working with Dr. Steve McKnight. After receiving his PhD, he spent 18 months as the Sara and Frank McKnight Independent Fellow of Biochemistry before joining the faculty at the University of Utah.

The Rutter laboratory has characterized the PAS kinase protein as an important factor in states of metabolic dysregulation—including obesity and diabetes. More recently, the Rutter laboratory and collaborators have identified the functions of several previously uncharacterized mitochondrial proteins, including the discovery of the long-sought mitochondrial pyruvate carrier. This knowledge has now enabled for the first time the demonstration that this critical metabolic step is impaired in a variety of human diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. In addition, the Rutter lab is taking multiple approaches to understand how metabolic state influences cell fate and cell behavior decisions.

Dr. Rutter is actively involved in translating academic discoveries into therapies for patients. This has included founding and/or serving as a consultant or member of the advisory board of several companies. Dr. Rutter also serves as co-Director of the Diabetes and Metabolism Center at the University of Utah and co-Leader of the Nuclear Control of Cell Growth and Differentiation at Huntsman Cancer Institute.

KAREN ALLEN, PhD

Karen Allen, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of Chemistry at Boston University. For over 25 years, she has led research teams at Boston University, in the Departments of Physiology and Biophysics at the School of Medicine, and Chemistry. She is also a Professor of Material Science and Engineering and on the faculty of the Bioinformatics program at Boston University. The structure-aided design approach in the Allen lab encompasses the use of macromolecular X-ray crystallography, small-angle X-ray scattering, bioinformatics, and kinetics.

Karen received her B.S. degree in Biology, from Tufts University and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Brandeis University in the laboratory of the mechanistic enzymologist, Dr. Robert H. Abeles. Following her desire to see enzymes in action she pursued X-ray crystallography during postdoctoral studies as an American Cancer Society Fellow in the laboratory of Drs. Gregory A. Petsko and Dagmar Ringe.