Prioritizing Development Programs that Align with Fundraising Catalysts

Albert Kim is a physician-scientist with more than 23 years of interdisciplinary experience in novel therapeutic product development, translational science, and clinical medicine. He is currently a Venture Partner at RA Ventures, part of the RA Capital ecosystem. Most recently, he was Chief Medical Officer at Cytel, Inc. where he led clinical and medical development interests across business units including the award-winning Solara© software platform for clinical trial design and served as general manager for the Therapeutics Development Team consulting group of over 80 colleagues. Prior to Cytel, Dr. Kim held leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Novartis and Pfizer across early and late clinical development programs. During his Pfizer tenure, he served as Vice President, Clinical Research Head for the Internal Medicine Research Unit and oversaw clinical research efforts for the legacy neuroscience portfolio and cardiometabolic diseases including NASH, diabetes, obesity, heart failure, and cachexia. He chaired the Cardiovascular Safety Advisory Council and was a clinical safety advisor to the Pfizer Comirnaty® development team and to the Pfizer internal Covid 19 pandemic response team. Dr. Kim earned his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Harvard, MD and PhD degrees from UCLA, completed internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital, cardiology fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, and clinical cardiac electrophysiology training at UCSF. His efforts at Novartis and Pfizer contributed to development programs for Ilaris® (IL-1Rß mAb), Gilenya® (S1P modulator), bococizumab (PCSK9 inhibitor mAb), clesacostat (hepatic ACCi small molecule), ervogastat (DGAT2i small molecule), Comirnaty® (Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine), ponsegromab (GDF-15 mAb), and danuglipron (GLP1-RA small molecule), a body of work supporting numerous enterprise milestones and authorship on publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science Translational Medicine, and Nature Medicine. He also previously worked at the FDA in the Division of Cardiac Devices as a medical reviewer and project lead for the industry guidance document on catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation. Dr. Kim achieved board certification in internal medicine, cardiology, and clinical cardiac electrophysiology and practiced clinical medicine for 18 years. He has held academic appointments in the VA Boston Cardiac Electrophysiology Section, at Boston University, and Harvard Medical School and is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) and the Heart Rhythm Society (FHRS).

In April 2022, Mustafa Noor, MD, FACP joined Olatec’s Drug Development Team as Chief Medical Officer. At both large and small pharma companies, Dr Noor has contributed to numerous clinical drug development programs, leading and collaborating with teams in the development of novel therapeutics for inflammation, cardiometabolism, lipid and endocrine disorders as well as rare diseases. From 2001 to 2006, as medical director at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dr Noor held positions of increasing responsibility in metabolic, cardiovascular, and antiviral programs. From 2006 to 2014 at GSK and at Pfizer he served as vice president and clinical head for GSK’s Center of Excellence in External Drug Discovery and for Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation focusing on open innovation, translational research and collaboration with biotech and academic partners on a portfolio of early-stage programs in indications for inflammatory diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and sarcoidosis. For the last several years Dr Noor has been a consultant CMO to emerging companies in the Boston/Cambridge area. Dr Noor completed his medical training at the University of Chicago and fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of California, San Francisco. He holds a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation from Vanderbilt University and is a board-certified Internal Medicine specialist in Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Bernard Ravina is an Entrepreneur In Residence at Atlas Venture with over 20 years of drug development experience in government, academia, and industry. Most recently he was CMO of Praxis Precision Medicines. Prior to that he served as CMO of Voyager Therapeutics and worked in clinical development at Biogen. Dr Ravina holds an MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed training in neurology. After training, Dr Ravina held positions at NINDS/NIH in neurogenetics and at the University of Rochester School of Medicine where he was Associate Professor of Neurology and Director of the Movement and Inherited Neurological Disorders Unit.