Alessandra Cesano, MD, PhD is the Chief Medical Officer at ESSA Pharma since July 2019. 

Previously she was the Chief Medical Officer of NanoString Inc from July 2015 until June 2019 where she focused on the development of translational and diagnostic multiplexed assays for the characterization and measurement of mechanisms of immune response/resistance.

Prior to joining NanoString, Dr Cesano was Chief Medical Officer at Cleave Biosciences, Inc and before then she served as Chief Medical Officer and Chief Operations Officer at Nodality, Inc, where she built and led the R&D group, while providing the overall clinical vision for the organization. Between 1998 and 2008, Dr Cesano held various management positions at Amgen, Biogen Idec and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, where she helped to advance various oncology drugs through late stage development and FDA approvals. 

Early in her professional career Dr Cesano spent 12 years conducting research in tumor immunology, including nine years at the Wistar Institute, an NCI Basic Cancer Center connected with the University of Pennsylvania.

She also holds membership in several professional and scientific societies including ASCO, ESMO, ASH, EHA, AACR and SITC. In the latter she serves as co-chair in the SITC Industry Committee, Associate Editor for the Biomarker section of JITC and is an active member of the SITC Biomarker Working Group.

Over her career she has been an author on over 140 publications. Dr Cesano received an MD summa cum laude, a Board Certification in Oncology and a PhD in Tumor Immunology from the University of Turin.

Dr Austin Chiang is the first Chief Medical Officer for the gastrointestinal business of Medtronic, the global leader in health technology. He is also currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Jefferson Health (Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals) in Philadelphia, PA, and serves as the Director of the Endoscopic Weight Loss Program and Chief Medical Social Media Officer for the health system. He completed his undergraduate studies at Duke University before earning his MD at Columbia University. He stayed for Internal Medicine residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital and completed his GI and bariatric endoscopy fellowships at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He obtained his MPH from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health before completing an advanced endoscopy fellowship at Jefferson. He is founding president of the Association for Healthcare Social Media (AHSM) and has been featured by The New York Times, CNBC, Insider, and BBC News.

Dr Daniel Chung is the Chief Medical Officer for SparingVision, an ocular genomic medicine company, focusing on gene agnostic gene therapy and CRISPR gene editing approaches to combat blinding diseases. Prior to his recruitment to SparingVision, Dr. Chung was the Ophthalmology Therapeutic Leader for Spark Therapeutics, Where he led the medical affair group and contributed to areas of clinical development and operations, marketing, commercial, patient advocacy, pre-clinical research and development and business development. Dr. Chung was intimately involved with the development of Luxturna, the first gene therapy approved by the FDA and EMA for use in a blinding genetic disease.

Prior to joining Spark Therapeutics, at the Scheie Eye Institute, University of Pennsylvania, working in retinal gene therapy. Also serving as a sub-PI on the RPE65 gene therapy clinical trial at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and made major contribution to the development of the Phase 3 MLMT novel endpoint, was PI of the MLMT study, and the RPE65 Natural History Study. He completed his ophthalmology residency at Summa Health Systems in Akron, Ohio. He then completed fellowships in pediatric ophthalmology and ocular genetics research at the Cole Eye Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, and in retinal gene therapy at the National Eye Institute/NIH in Bethesda, MD.

Jessica Chutter is a Vice Chair and Chair of Biotechnology Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley. During Ms Chutter’s 30+ year career of building Morgan Stanley’s Biotechnology Franchise, she has been responsible for $70Bn of capital raising and $85Bn of strategic transactions. Ms Chutter is focused on company-building, examples of which include raising $3Bn for Moderna (4 offerings), $2.4Bn for GW (6 offerings) and $2.2Bn for BeiGene (5 offerings). During the pandemic, Ms Chutter has led 18 IPOs totaling ~$4Bn. Strategic transactions include advising Agios in its Oncology Business sale to Servier, Galapagos in its $5.1Bn transformative partnership with Gilead and Company sales of Clementia, Cubist, Pharmasset and Elan. She has also been involved in the creation of a new asset class involving royalty backed debt (PhaRMA) where over $24Bn has been raised.

Ms Chutter has a BA in Commerce/Honours Economics from McGill University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Ms Chutter is a director of Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners and the Upper Canada College Foundation, and a member of the Board of Trustees of SickKids and McGill’s Toronto Advisory Board. She resides in Toronto with her husband, Derek Berghuis, and has three children – Andrew, Jennifer and Kevin.

Bettina Cockroft, MD, MBA, has served as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer since September 2019 and oversees all clinical development activities and operations. She has over 20 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and has worked across multiple therapeutic areas and led programs in several countries. Prior to joining Sangamo, Dr Cockroft served on the senior leadership team at Cytokinetics, Inc, where she was responsible for clinical development of fast skeletal muscle troponin activators in diseases such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Before that, Dr Cockroft served as Chief Medical Officer of Auris Medical AG, where she led and grew the clinical development team responsible for two Phase 3 programs. Dr Cockroft also held roles of increasing responsibility at Merck Serono SA, Novartis Consumer Health and Menarini Ricerche earlier in her career.

Dr Cockroft earned her MBA at MIT Sloan School of Management and her MD from the University of Genova.

Richard Colvin, MD, PhD, has served as chief medical officer of bluebird since March 2021. Dr Colvin joined bluebird in 2018 and was medical lead of the thalassemia program and led clinical research and development prior to becoming CMO. Since Dr Colvin has been CMO, bluebird submitted and gained FDA approval for beti-cel and eli-cel. Prior to bluebird, Dr Colvin was an executive director in translational medicine at Novartis where he led early-stage anti-infective drug development programs. Dr Colvin clinically trained at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and remains on faculty at Harvard Medical School. He sees patients in the Infectious Diseases clinic at MGH. Dr Colvin received his MD and PhD from Duke University School of Medicine.

Simon Cooper is the Chief Medical Officer of LifeMine Therapeutics.  He is an accomplished leader in drug development with an extensive background in translational medicine and clinical development. Over the course of his career, he has worked across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas from first-in-human studies through FDA submissions and approvals of highly successful therapeutics.

Prior to joining LifeMine, Simon was CMO of Morphic Therapeutic (acquired by Eli Lilly). Earlier, he served as Chief Medical Officer of Keros Therapeutics, Kadmon Holdings and Anokion, where he drove significant advances in program development and built key functional areas to support clinical development for assets in the autoimmune, inflammatory, and immuno-oncology areas.  Earlier in this career, Simon held roles of increasing responsibility at research and development organizations including Wyeth Research, Roche, Human Genome Sciences, Novartis, Sanofi and AbbVie.

Barbara Day leads Penfield’s Biometrics recruiting practice, and she personally specializes in senior level retained and contingent biometrics and biostatistics recruitment across the pharmaceutical, biotech and CRO industries. Ms Day brings over 24 years of experience in the biostatistics space with a deep understanding of the drug development industry as a whole. Her in-depth knowledge of the industry, as well as trends that affect the candidate landscape, position her to deliver sound hiring guidance to her clients as they start and build their biometrics departments. Ms Day brings the highest level of integrity to each search and provides competitive intelligence to clients to help ensure they are properly positioned in the marketplace to attract and retain the best talent. Prior to joining Penfield’s leadership team in 2015, Ms Day worked at Smith Hanley Associates and its parent company inVentiv Health.

Elisabet de los Pinos is the founder and CEO of Aura Biosciences, a publicly traded, clinical-stage biotechnology company. Dr de los Pinos created Aura from the ground up: developing the company concept in collaboration with Lasker award winner Dr John Schiller at the National Cancer Institute. Prior to founding Aura, she worked in Eli Lilly & Company’s oncology business unit, where she was part of the leadership team responsible for the market launch in Europe of Alimta, a drug for the treatment of lung cancer. Earlier in her career, Dr de los Pinos worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. She previously completed fellowships at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Institute of Molecular Medicine and at the Georgetown School of Medicine. Dr de los Pinos holds a PhD, magna cum laude, in Molecular Biology from the University of Barcelona and an MBA from IE Business School.

Dr de los Pinos serves on the board of directors of Aura, and she is also a member of the board of overseers at the Museum of Science, Boston. Dr de los Pinos has been named to Boston Business Journal’s “Top 40 under 40” list; as a Mass High Tech “Woman to Watch”; as a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum; and as one of Goldman Sachs’ “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.”

Dr Eslie Dennis is a physician with 10 years’ experience in clinical practice (internal medicine and hematology/oncology), 20+ years’ international experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, 2+ years leadership of public-private partnerships, and laboratory research experience (immunology).

She is currently SVP, Chief Medical Officer and Head North America Medical Affairs for Kyowa Kirin, Inc. Previously, she was Vice President and Global Head of Medical Affairs at Roche Tissue Diagnostics, for over years, focusing on the development, manufacturing and commercialization of tissue-based cancer diagnostics. In this role, she established and led all global Medical Affairs activities supporting Companion Diagnostics, Advanced Staining, Primary Staining and Digital Pathology.

Prior to joining Roche Tissue Diagnostics, she was Executive Director of the Predictive Safety Testing Consortium and Executive Director for the Polycystic Kidney Disease Outcomes Consortium at the Critical Path Institute (C-Path) where she led collaborations with global health authorities, the pharmaceutical industry, academia, the NIH, patient organizations, and other private sector and non-profit organizations. She was responsible for the development and execution of strategic research plans to support the regulatory qualification of biomarkers and led interactions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and the Japanese Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency.

Prior to joining C-Path, she was Vice President and Medical Head Northeast for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, where she led a field-based medical affairs team and developed patient- and customer-focused medical strategies.

She has spent over 20 years in the biopharmaceutical industry overseeing registration studies, pre-launch activities and post-marketing medical activities for both pharma and diagnostics organizations. She has led commercial communications strategies on a global brand team and her Medical leadership experience includes responsibility for non-registration studies, epidemiology and health economics and outcomes research, publications, medical information services, physician and pathologist training, medical education programs, drug safety activities and regulatory interactions including FDA Advisory Committee presentation.

Dr Dennis received her MBChB from the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine in Harare, Zimbabwe, and was the recipient of the Winston Churchill, Margaret Low, and Prankard-Jones Scholarships, as well as the Guy Elliot Bursary. She is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of South Africa and received her internal medicine and hematology/oncology training at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.

Elliot Ehrich, MD, is Chief Medical Officer at LifeMine Therapeutics. Over the course of 25+ years in pharma and biotech, he has led or directly contributed to the discovery, development, and successful registration of 8 medicines across a spectrum of therapeutic areas.

Dr Ehrich joined LifeMine from Skyhawk Therapeutics, where he served as President and led research, drug discovery, and drug development activities. Prior to Skyhawk, Dr Ehrich was a Venture Partner at 5AM Ventures.

Dr Ehrich had previously spent 18 years at Alkermes, Inc, where he served as Executive Vice President of Research & Development and Chief Medical Officer. During his tenure, Dr Ehrich led the discovery, development, and, ultimately, the FDA registration of a series of medicines for multiple therapeutic indications, including schizophrenia, alcohol and opioid dependence and multiple sclerosis.

Dr Ehrich began his industry career in the clinical pharmacology and pulmonary-immunology groups at Merck Research Labs Elliot received a BA in Biochemistry from Princeton University. He was then a pre-doctoral fellow in molecular genetics at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. He subsequently received an MD from Columbia University and completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Stanford University. After residency, Dr Ehrich continued at Stanford and completed a clinical fellowship in immunology and rheumatology followed by a Cancer Research Institute-sponsored postdoctoral fellowship in T Cell biology.