Susan Daniels is VP of Patient Strategy and Engagement at Lumanity where she supports the authentic integration of patients and communities in medicine development in partnership with pharmaceutical and biopharma clients and patient organizations. A licensed pharmacist, she has over 20 years’ experience in the healthcare industry and has completed EUPATI, PFMD and EUCAPA training. She is also a passionate patient advocate and sits on the board of Lymphoma Action in the UK and recently completed her Masters in International Patient Advocacy Management.

Pascal Piedbois, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Medical Oncology and former Head of Oncology at Paris University. He held leadership roles at AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Boehringer-Ingelheim. Since June 2024, he serves as Chief Medical Officer at One2Treat, focusing on patient-centered clinical trial design and analysis.

Maartje Mangelaars is the Patient Engagement Manager EMEA at Johnson & Johnson. She has been working in the pharmaceutical industry for almost 20 years, having experience in clinical research, medical affairs and patient engagement. Motivated by deep understanding of the patient experience and drive to make a profound contribution to improving the treatment paradigm for families who experience rare and chronic disease, she is responsible for developing and executing the patient engagement strategy for autoantibody diseases within J&J in the EMEA region. She is a true believer in collaborative efforts and contributed to several multi-stakeholder projects, including IMI Paradigm, IMI EU-Pearl and is a trainer for the EUPATI fellow program in the Netherlands.

Additionally, Maartje holds a Master’s degree in Nutrition and Health from the Wageningen University (Netherlands).

At One2Treat, Sébastien Coppe is is motivated by a strong belief in the transformative power of digital solutions to address patient needs and streamline clinical research. He is committed to pioneering approaches that prioritize patient-centricity in clinical trial design, decreasing sample size and therefore enhancing biopharma productivity.

Jacqueline (Jack) Johnson is celebrating 20 years with Govig & Assoc, marking two decades as a dedicated leader in Life Science Recruiting. Her career began in Sales and Marketing with Fortune 500 companies, including Pitney Bowes, Xerox, and General Motors where she honed her ability to understand and meet customer needs. Joining Govig was a transformative step, enabling Johnson to leverage her experience to build lasting partnerships with clients. More than a vendor, Johnson is regarded as a trusted partner, deeply familiar with the cultures of the companies she serves. This understanding allows her to match candidates not only to roles but also to company cultures, ensuring long-term success. During Johnson's tenure, she has achieved significant milestones, including being ranked the #1 recruiter in an international organization in 2017 and consistently ranking among the top 10 recruiters globally. She is an 18-time Presidents Club winner and a Govi Award recipient for Person of the Year. These honors reflect her dedication to excellence and her ability to deliver results. Currently, she is leading the business development efforts for Govig's Life Sciences practice. While her personal focus is on the executive, C-Suite, and board level, she is part of a high-performance team that focuses across all levels reporting up on both the commercial and clinical sides. This comprehensive approach reflects her commitment to driving success and growth in the life sciences sector.

Cindy Xiong, PhD, joined Foresite Capital in 2019 as a member of the investment team, focusing on evaluating investment opportunities of private and public biotech companies. Dr Xiong serves on the boards of ImmPACT Bio (board director), Raythera (board observer), Remix Therapeutics (board observer) and Xinthera (board observer, acquired by Gilead).

Prior to Foresite, Dr Xiong earned her MBA in Healthcare Management from the Wharton school. During her time at Wharton, she interned at Lilly Asia Ventures and was a summer analyst at Tybourne Capital. Dr Xiong received her PhD in Biology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she studied neural regeneration and degeneration post axonal injury. After that, she was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with Dr Wendell Lim at UCSF, developing new technologies for genome and cell engineering. She then joined Agenovir as the first scientist, where she led a team to develop CRISPR based therapeutics for HPV induced cancers.

Nikolaos “Nick” George, PhD has more than 30 years of experience developing and evaluating biologics-based patent portfolios.

Dr George has devised worldwide patent prosecution strategies for dozens of pre-clinical, clinical, and approved products involving such diverse technologies as therapeutic antibodies, antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), cellular therapeutics (including natural killer [NK], macrophage, monocyte, regulatory T [Treg] cell, and induced pluripotent stem cell [iPSC] therapeutics), gene therapies, gene editing, oncolytic viruses, RNA (ribonucleic acid) therapeutics, peptide therapeutics, diagnostics, and enzyme replacements.

Dr George also routinely conducts freedom-to-operate, noninfringement, invalidity, and patentability assessments and performs IP diligence in connection with investments, partnerships, licensing, and private and public financings.

He advises clients ranging from emerging company start-ups to mid- and large-cap biotech and pharmaceutical companies, as well as life sciences venture capital and incubator firms.

Dr George holds a PhD in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley and prior to entering patent law did postdoc research at Columbia University (The Chalfie Lab).

Grace Han McMahon, MBA, JD serves as Associate Vice President and Head of Merck’s BD&L Pacific Innovation Hub which encompasses the North American West Coast and Asia Pacific. Her team is responsible for structuring and negotiating partnerships with companies that offer differentiated early-stage therapeutic opportunities.

Ms Han McMahon re-joined Merck after five years at Genentech where she led a team of transactional attorneys and negotiated collaboration, licensing, M&A and manufacturing transactions. Prior to Genentech, Ms Han McMahon was an in-house lawyer at Merck headquarters for ten years where she was the lead attorney on numerous early-stage, clinical and commercial transactions with biotech and biopharma companies in the US, Europe, Japan, China, India and southeast Asia.

In addition, Grace has experience working in Europe where she helped launch US internet companies and prior to that, in New York City where she represented biotech and high technology companies as a law firm associate for Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. Ms Han McMahon holds a MBA from INSEAD in France and Singapore, a JD from New York University School of Law and a BA from the University of Virginia.

Frank Fekete is a Managing Director  at Centerview on the healthcare team in the New York office. He has over a decade of experience providing advice to boards and senior management teams regarding strategic initiatives including mergers and acquisitions, private and public financings, and other corporate processes totaling more than $75 billion in value across developed and emerging markets. 

Select recent M&A experience includes: Merck’s $11.5bn acquisition of Acceleron, Cerevel’s $8.7bn sale to AbbVie, Chinook’s sale to Novartis for up to $3.5bn, Viela’s sale to Horizon Therapeutics for $3.1bn, EyeBio’s sale to Merck for up to $3.0bn and Ambrx’s sale to JnJ for $2.0bn.

Select recent China M&A includes: Gracell’s sale to AstraZeneca, Proteologix’s sale to JNJ, Curon’s CD3xCD19 asset sale to Merck, and Lian Bio’s sale of Mavacamten rights to Bristol Myers.

Additionally, Mr Fekete has advised on some of the largest financings in the industry raising capital for innovative biopharmas including: Allogene, Cerevel, Intellia, Juno, Sana, SpringWorks and uniQure.

Prior to joining Centerview, Mr Feket was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs in the Healthcare group. He received an MS in Physiology and Biophysics from Georgetown’s School of Medicine and a BA from Villanova University’s Honors College. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, daughter and labrador retriever.

Dr. Christophe Quéva is the CEO of Egle Therapeutics bringing two decades of experience in immuno-oncology, spanning target identification to clinical trials and regulatory approvals. Before Egle, he founded and led Ovie Therapeutics, a company focused on an innovative treatment for brain cancer. Since 2022, he served as Chief Scientific Officer at DEM BioPharma, driving the development of cancer macrophage-targeting therapies. Prior to this, Dr. Quéva was Chief Scientific Officer at Oncorus, where he advanced next-generation immunotherapies using oncolytic viruses and RNA therapeutics. He also held the same role at iTeos Therapeutics, overseeing the development of a groundbreaking immuno-oncology portfolio. Earlier in his career, Dr. Quéva held leadership roles at Gilead Sciences, Amgen, and AstraZeneca, contributing to oncology and inflammation drug discovery. He holds a Ph.D. in Life and Health Sciences from the University of Lille in France and completed postdoctoral research in cancer biology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Olga Marchenko is the Vice President and Head of Clinical Statistics and Analytics at Bayer. She earned her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Marchenko is an Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Distinguished Science Fellow at Bayer.