ABOUT SCORPION
Dr. Gary Glick is CEO and Co-Founder of Scorpion Therapeutics. Gary started his career as a faculty member at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he is currently the Werner E. Bachmann emeritus professor of chemistry. While at Michigan, Gary founded Lycera Corp. to develop new therapies for inflammation and cancer based on small molecules that modulate cellular metabolism. Under his direction, Lycera initiated six discovery programs, partnered three of these programs with Merck & Co. in deals collectively valued at over $600M, and advanced two programs into clinical testing.
In 2015, Gary founded FirstWave Bio, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing new cost-effective treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, and IFM Therapeutics, Inc., to develop first-in-class modulators of the innate immune system as treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases. Under his leadership as CEO, IFM progressed three programs from ideation to clinical development and executed three major transactions: in 2017, the company sold two cancer assets to Bristol-Myers Squibb in a deal valued over $2.3B and in 2019, he directed the sale of IFM’s NLRP3 inhibitor program to Novartis for $1.6B and led the structuring and negotiation of a collaboration and option agreement with Novartis valued at over $840M to develop inhibitors of the cGAS/STING pathway to treat serious inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. He currently serves as Executive Chairman.
Gary obtained a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from Columbia University and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of more than 100 papers, the inventor on 33 issued U.S. patents and the recipient of numerous awards recognizing his scientific contributions and accomplishments as a life science executive.
Lina Gugucheva brings a decade of business development, strategy, and finance experience to her role as Chief Business Officer at Scorpion Therapeutics. Lina joins Scorpion from her previous role as Chief Business Officer at Northern Biologics, where she led and consummated the sale of the company’s preclinical portfolio to Boehringer Ingelheim in 2020.
Lina previously led business development and strategy efforts at IFM Therapeutics, where she spearheaded the restructuring of the company to finance its pipeline on a target-by-target basis with each target in its own subsidiary. Executing on that strategy, she led the consummation of the Series A financings of IFM Tre, IFM’s subsidiary focused on NLRP3 inhibitors, as well as IFM Quattro, IFM Cinque, and IFM Discovery, with each subsidiary focused on the discovery and development of novel inflammasome targets. In 2019, Lina successfully led the sale of the IFM Tre subsidiary to Novartis for $1.575B as well as the consummation of IFM Due’s $840M collaboration and exclusive option agreement with Novartis to develop immunotherapies that inhibit the cGAS/STING pathway to treat serious inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.
Lina began her career as a corporate attorney at the law firm of Covington & Burling, representing clients such as IFM, AstraZeneca, and Regeneron on a range of complex life sciences, healthcare and technology transactions. Lina also spent time at Royalty Pharma, where she negotiated a series of royalty purchases and co-development transactions, including the $2.85B purchase of a royalty interest on sales of multiple sclerosis drug TYSABRI®.
Lina holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in molecular biology and political science from New York University.
Dr. Angel Guzman-Perez is the head of drug discovery at Scorpion Therapeutics, bringing extensive medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, and leadership experience. Prior to joining Scorpion, Dr. Guzman-Perez held leadership roles in Amgen’s research organization, serving as Executive Director, Head of Medicinal Chemistry and was responsible for the small-molecule portfolio across therapeutic areas. Previously, Dr. Guzman-Perez spent 14 years at Pfizer, holding roles of increasing seniority in the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases Medicinal Chemistry group. Dr. Guzman-Perez has co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, been a co-inventor on more than 20 patents and contributed to the advancement of more than 20 compounds to pre-clinical development.
Dr. Guzman-Perez received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University working with E. J. Corey and focusing on enantioselective organic synthesis.
Dr. Adam Friedman is an accomplished physician, scientist and life sciences entrepreneur with extensive experience in oncology. He currently serves as Executive Vice President, Corporate Development & Operations at Scorpion Therapeutics. Prior to joining Scorpion, Dr. Friedman served as Director at Serien Therapeutics, a next-generation immunometabolism company, and founder of Vivid Biosciences, an oncology platform discovery company, where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer. As an entrepreneur-in-residence at Atlas Venture, he helped launch several portfolio companies exploring new areas of biology, including Raze Therapeutics, a next-generation cancer metabolism company, where he served as Founder & Director of Corporate Development. He has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications on systems biology, cell signaling, genetics and cancer biology.
Dr. Friedman received his B.A. in molecular biology from Princeton University and received both his M.D. and Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Friedman completed residency training in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Darrin Stuart has spent the last 20 years leading and mentoring teams in small molecule drug discovery in the oncology therapeutic area. Darrin is the Chief Scientific Officer at Scorpion Therapeutics. Prior to joining Scorpion, Darrin was executive director of cancer biology and drug discovery at Novartis where he oversaw the oncology small molecule portfolio at the Cambridge, Massachusetts site. Over the course of 14 years at Novartis, Darrin led and oversaw 10 oncology small molecule programs into first-in-human trials. Notably, Darrin was the project leader for the encorafenib program which is now approved to treat patients with BRAFV600mut melanoma and colorectal cancer. Darrin also led an active basic research lab which published multiple high impact manuscripts on MAPK pathway biology and therapeutics. Darrin joined Novartis through the acquisition of Chiron where he held roles of increasing responsibility, including project and group leadership.
Darrin earned a doctoral degree in pharmacology from the University of Alberta and holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in biology from the University of Waterloo.
Amanda Valentino brings two decades of experience and leadership in talent acquisition, human resources and employee experience in the pharma/biotech industry. Prior to joining Scorpion, Amanda served as the Chief People Officer of Ambys Medicines, where she was responsible for designing the company’s approach to hiring and retaining talent, advising the executive leadership team on people initiatives, building competitive compensation and benefits programs, overseeing diversity and inclusion initiatives and fostering an employee experience that allowed people to do their best work.
During her tenure as a senior HR leader at Genentech, Amanda was known for driving people strategy and practices that enabled consistent and strategic business growth in a highly competitive market. As the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition and Strategy at Genentech, Amanda developed novel approaches for talent discovery, recruitment, mobility and hiring. As a member of Genentech’s HR Leadership team and strategic partner to the Business Development organization, she was responsible for ensuring that HR strategy, goals, and priorities were driven by and aligned with business objectives, as well as championing cultural initiatives that fostered a differentiated employee experience. Prior to joining Genentech, Amanda served for eight years with the firm Albrecht & Associates Executive Search Consultants, conducting executive-level searches to fill management and executive positions for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies nationwide.
Amanda earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Erica L. Jackson has spent the past 20 years leading teams and mentoring scientists in oncology target validation and large and small molecule drug discovery. Prior to joining Scorpion, Erica was Senior Director of Oncology Discovery at AbbVie, where she led a cross-site team of biologists responsible for all biology aspects of drug discovery from target ID through candidate nomination. Before AbbVie, she spent two years at ORIC Pharmaceuticals leading the biology and in vivo pharmacology programs, helping to move ORIC-101, their glucocorticoid receptor inhibitor, into the clinic.
Erica began her industry career at Genentech, where she spent 10 years across roles of increasing responsibility in oncology discovery. She spearheaded the use of in vivo cancer models for target discovery and devised a research strategy for studying drug-resistant tumor cell populations. During her time at Genentech, she led several large molecule project teams and was involved in small molecule drug discovery programs for several epigenetic targets. Her group’s research led to multiple high impact manuscripts on intratumoral heterogeneity and mechanisms of therapeutic resistance.
Erica earned her Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Brandeis University.
Joseph Campisi, Jr., Esq. has more than 30 years of experience in mergers and acquisitions, collaborations, and securities offerings. Prior to joining Scorpion Therapeutics, Joseph was Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, where he oversaw the Transactional Practice Group of the BMS Law Department.
During his more than 15 years with BMS, Joseph was responsible for the completion of more than 100 strategic transactions, including the sale of BMS Medical Imaging, the divestiture of the BMS diabetes business, the sale of ConvaTec, and the initial public offering and subsequent split-off of Mead Johnson Nutritionals, as well as the acquisitions of Medarex, Inc. and Celgene Corporation. Prior to joining Bristol-Myers Squibb, Joseph was a partner with the law firm of Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pitman LLP, where he was a member of the firm’s Corporate and Securities and Life Sciences practice groups, and spent time in the firm’s offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and San Francisco. Joseph also spent the first two years of his professional career in the Audit services practice of Deloitte & Touche LLP.
Joseph obtained a Juris Doctor with distinction from Hofstra University School of Law, a Master of Business Administration (Finance), and a Bachelor of Science (Accounting) from St. John’s University. He is admitted to the bar in both the State of New York and the State of California, and is licensed in the State of New York as a Certified Public Accountant.
Dr. Liron Bar-Peled is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on deciphering fundamental mechanisms of stress signaling in cancer states and employing chemical proteomic platforms to discover new therapies for cancer. Liron’s lab has made key contributions to understanding how cells sense and respond to oxidative stress and developing small molecule inhibitors against difficult to drug cancer drivers.
Liron’s achievements have been widely recognized and include the AACR-MPM Transformative Award, the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, the Melanoma Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Weintraub Award and the Science-SciLifeLab Prize.
Liron earned a Ph.D in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute.
Dr. Keith Flaherty is Director of Clinical Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As described in the more than 300 peer-reviewed primary research reports he has authored or co-authored, Dr. Flaherty and colleagues made several seminal observations that have defined the treatment of melanoma when they established the efficacy of BRAF, MEK and combined BRAF/MEK inhibition in patients with metastatic melanoma in a series of New England Journal of Medicine articles for which Dr. Flaherty was the first or senior author. Dr. Flaherty also has been a leader in assessing and identifying mechanisms of de novo and acquired resistance to BRAF inhibitor therapy and clinically evaluating next generation inhibitors, work that has had implications for resistance to targeted therapy regimens used to treat other malignant diseases. He is the principal investigator of the NCI MATCH trial, the first NCI-sponsored trial assigning patients to targeted therapy independent of tumor type on the basis of DNA sequencing detection of oncogenes.
He serves Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) as chair of the Developmental Therapeutics Committee and in 2013 was appointed as ECOG Deputy Chair for Biomarker Science. Dr. Flaherty joined the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors in 2018 and AACR Board of Directors in 2019. He serves as editor-in-chief of Clinical Cancer Research. In 2013 he co-founded Loxo Oncology, served on the Board of Directors and chaired the Scientific Advisory board until its acquisition by Eli Lilly for $8 billion. He is co-founder of Strata Oncology, X4 Pharmaceuticals and Apricity.
Dr. Flaherty earned a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University, trained in internal medicines at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and completed a medical oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Gaddy Getz is an internationally acclaimed leader in cancer genomics and is pioneering widely used tools for analyzing cancer genomes. Dr. Getz is an institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he directs the Cancer Genome Computational Analysis Group. Dr. Getz is a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, and he is a faculty member and Director of Bioinformatics at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center and Department of Pathology. He is also the inaugural incumbent of the Paul C. Zamecnik Chair in Oncology at the MGH Cancer Center.
The Getz Laboratory specializes in cancer genome analysis, which includes two major steps. The first is characterization — cataloging of all genomic events and the mechanisms that created them during the clonal evolution of cancer (starting from normal cells and progressing to premalignancy, primary cancer and emergence of resistance), and comparing events at the DNA, RNA and protein levels between tumor and normal samples from an individual patient. The second is interpretation — analysis of the characterization data across a cohort of patients with the aim of identifying the alterations in genes and pathways that drive cancer progression or increase its risk, as well as identifying molecular subtypes of the disease, their markers and relationship to clinical variables.
In addition to his roles at the MGH and the Broad Institute, Dr. Getz is the principal investigator of the Processing Genome Data Analysis Center (GDAC), as part of the NCI Genome Data Analysis Network; a co-leader of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) project; and a co-principal investigator of the Broad’s Proteogenomics Data Analysis Center. Getz was a member of the NCI’s Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel and co-led one of three NCI Cloud Pilots. He has published numerous papers in prominent journals describing new methodologies to study cancer genomes that have identified new genes and pathways involved in different tumor types, mutational signatures and tumor evolution.
Dr. Getz received his B.S. degree in physics and mathematics from Hebrew University and an M.Sc. in physics from Tel Aviv University. He later earned a Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard with Todd Golub, where he focused on developing computational tools and analyzing expression of miRNAs across cancer.
