Mark A. Tepper, PhD, Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Tepper has over 30 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. He has led drug discovery & drug development programs that span a wide range of therapeutic areas including Oncology, Immunology, Rheumatology, Endocrinology, Metabolic Diseases, CNS, Inflammation and Pain. Following a 15-year career in large Pharma R&D, in 2002 Dr Tepper left large Pharma to become an entrepreneur whereby he founded multiple successful biotech companies. In leading these companies, he served on the executive management team in C-level positions where he conceived of and led the execution of the business & commercialization plan. In the last 15 years, Dr. Tepper has raised over $200M in capital for his ventures. He has taken two of his companies’ public (Corbus Pharmaceuticals and RXi Pharmaceuticals) and sold another company (Primatope sold to Kiniksa) in a trade sale.
Dr. Tepper earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Biophysics from Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, and a B.A in Chemistry with Highest Honors from Clark University, Worcester, Mass. He did his postdoctoral fellowship at University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester in the laboratory of Michael P. Czech. He has over 50 scientific publications and is the co-inventor of multiple drug related patents.
Aristidis Veves, MD, Co-Founder
Dr. Veves is a pioneer of the biotechnology industry. He is an outstanding biomedical entrepreneur with an international reputation in cytokines, therapeutic antibodies, and pharmaceutical drug development. During his 25-year career, he has written or coauthored eight books, over 250 papers/chapters, over 30 patents, and he has served on the editorial boards of six journals. His work on therapeutic antibodies and other protein therapeutics has spanned the entire range of biopharmaceutical product development from target discovery, process science to advanced clinical trials.
David Mooney, PhD, Co-Founder
David Mooney is the Robert Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. He is a member of several national academies and has won numerous awards for his research and his mentorship/teaching. He has published over 400 articles and has been issued numerous patents, several of which have been licensed to companies, resulting in successful commercial products. He is also an active member in major engineering professional societies, an editorial advisor to multiple journals, and serves on several industry and government advisory boards. Dr. Mooney is a leader in the fields of biomaterials, mechanotransduction, drug delivery, tissue engineering and immunoengineering. He is interested in understanding how cells sense signals in their environment and how this alters cell behavior. His laboratory develops biomaterials that exploit these signals to regulate specific cells and their function. They were the first to demonstrate in 3-D culture that the mechanical properties of a substrate regulated stem cell fate. His lab also developed the first implantable biomaterial cancer vaccine that contained biochemical cues to recruit and re-educate the immune system to destroy cancer cells. Dr. Mooney’s goal is to use our knowledge of cell biology in conjunction with materials to boost therapeutic effects.
Lijun Sun, PhD, Co-Founder
Dr. Sun is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Center for Drug Discovery and Translational Research at BIDMC. Prior to his role at BIDMC, he was the Vice President of Chemistry at NASDAQ listed Synta Pharmaceuticals and Flagship funded Theracrine, Inc. He has over 25 years of experience in leading small molecule drug discovery and development programs, resulting in multiple clinical development candidates and collaborations with Roche and GSK. He is a co-author of 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications and an inventor of 100 US patents. Dr. Sun received his Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from Emory University and was a postdoctoral fellow in biomaterial research at Emory Medical School.
Advisory Board
