Julie Gilmore, PhD

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Julie Gilmore is the Vice President and Global Head of Lilly Gateway Labs, a shared innovation lab with locations in the US, Asia and Europe, designed to speed the discovery of innovative medicines through collaboration with local biotech companies. She joined Eli Lilly after receiving her Doctorate in Membrane Biophysics from Purdue University and her Postdoctoral Fellowship in Drug Transport from Indiana University School of Medicine. During her 20-year plus career at Lilly, Julie has held several leadership and scientific positions across research and drug development. Julie is on the Board of Directors of Mozart Therapeutics, IgGenix, and the Board of Trustees of Franklin College. She serves as a mentor and advisor to several university graduate school programs including locally at UCSF.

Peter Hirth, PhD

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K. Peter Hirth, PhD, Co-founder and formerly Chief Executive Officer of Plexxikon, Inc., has over 30 years of biotechnology and pharmaceutical discovery and development experience and currently serves as a board of Aligos Therapeutics, Escient Pharmaceuticals, Iconic Therapeutics, IO-Biotech and Vaxcyte.

From 2001 to 2013 at Plexxikon, Dr. Hirth built a novel, structure-guided drug discovery platform, which brought several new chemical entities into the clinic, including Zelboraf®, an FDA-approved therapy for metastatic melanoma together with a companion diagnostic. From 1991-2000, as Sugen Inc.’s President and Founder, Dr. Hirth was instrumental in building the company from its inception and in advancing several kinase inhibitors through clinical trials in oncology. Prior to Sugen, he was Vice President of Research at Boehringer Mannheim where he successfully led the company’s erythropoietin program to approval in 1989. Dr. Hirth was also a research scientist with the Max Planck Institute.

He completed his post-doctoral work at the University of California, San Diego and received his PhD in Molecular Genetics from Heidelberg University, Germany.

Eric Huang, PhD

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Eric Huang is currently a Partner at Delos Capital. Prior to Delos, Eric held various leadership roles at Moderna Therapeutics, including as founding CSO of Moderna’s New Venture Labs, an industry-leading effort to explore novel applications of mRNA technology across immunology, neurology, tissue repair & regeneration, and cancer. In this role, he conceived of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine platform, which later led to the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Eric was recognized for this work with the prestigious Warren Alpert Foundation Prize. Additionally, Eric oversaw the invention of Moderna’s personalized cancer vaccine, now in late-stage clinical development with Merck, and the company’s first autoimmune program from inception through IND. Most recently, Eric served as General Manager and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Moderna Genomics.

Eric’s earlier career included roles of increasing responsibility in corporate and business development at venture-backed biotechnology companies, including Seaside Therapeutics, Stromedix, and Domantis.

Eric holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Medical Parasitology from New York University and an MBA from Boston University. He also earned a B.S. from Emory University and an A.A. from Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

Joel S. Marcus, JD, CPA

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Joel S. Marcus is Executive Chairman and Founder of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE), a REIT that pioneered life science real estate and transformed it from a specialty niche to a mainstream asset class. Alexandria is the preeminent, largest, and longest-tenured owner, operator, and developer uniquely focused on collaborative mega campuses in AAA life science innovation clusters.

Since co-founding Alexandria in 1994 as a garage startup with $19 million in Series A capital, Mr. Marcus has led its remarkable growth into an S&P 500 company that has become the leading REIT focused on the life science industry, with a total market capitalization of $33.1 billion and an operating asset base of 42 million square feet as of September 30, 2024. Alexandria, which celebrated its 25th anniversary on the NYSE in May 2022, has a total stockholder return of 1,459% from its IPO in May 1997 through September 30, 2024.

In 1996, Mr. Marcus founded Alexandria Venture Investments, the company’s strategic venture capital platform, and he continues to lead its investments. With approximately $1.5 billion under management as of September 30, 2024, Alexandria Venture Investments actively invests in disruptive life science companies. He introduced Alexandria’s thought leadership vertical in 2011 when he co-founded the renowned Alexandria Summit®.

He also leads Alexandria’s corporate responsibility initiatives, which aim to address some of the nation’s most urgent challenges, including mental health and addiction. To reverse the trajectory of the opioid epidemic, Alexandria partnered with Verily, an Alphabet company, to pioneer OneFifteen, an evidence-based full continuum of care model to treat addiction.

Prior to co-founding Alexandria, Mr. Marcus had an extensive legal career specializing in corporate finance and capital markets, venture capital, and mergers and acquisitions. During that time, he acquired expertise in the biopharmaceutical industry and was one of the principal architects of Kirin-Amgen, Inc., the trailblazing joint venture established in 1984. Mr. Marcus serves on the boards of Applied Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: APLT) and Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITCI) as well as several private biotechnology companies and non-profits, including the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Emily Krzyzewski Center, National Medal of Honor Museum, Navy SEAL Foundation, Office of Strategic Services Society, and TOPGUN Association. He received his BA and JD from UCLA.

Sanjay Mistry, PhD

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Sanjay is Vice President, Venture Investments, New Company Creation for Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc. He focuses on investments that create companies based on internal or externally derived innovations that can deliver transformational healthcare solutions based on new growth platforms. He is currently on the Boards of Rapport Therapeutics (Director), TRexBio (Director) and Manifest Technologies (Observer). Other past company creations include Provention Bio (acquired by Sanofi), Fusion Pharmaceuticals (public – FUSN) and Aro Therapeutics (private).

Sanjay also spent 5 years as an investor with healthcare venture capital firm Quaker Partners, where he focused on biopharmaceuticals and diagnostic/tools investing. Key investments included Durata Therapeutics (acquired by Actavis), RainDance Technologies (acquired by BioRad) and Rapid Micro Biosystems (public – RPID).

Prior to joining JJDC he held several roles across J&J including being the Head of JLABS at San Diego, Senior Finance Director, Business Operations for Janssen R&D and a Co-founder of an internal venture at Centocor which developed a Phase 2b ready cell therapy for age related macular degeneration. Prior to this he was an entrepreneur at Morphogen Pharmaceuticals, where he led pre-clinical development of cell therapies for cardiovascular and neurological indications.

Sanjay attained a PhD in Pharmacology & MSc. in Clinical Pharmacology from the University of Aberdeen and a BSc. in Biomedical Sciences/Pharmacology from Nottingham Trent University.

Eric Pham, PhD

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Eric Pham joined Avego BioScience Capital in 2024 and is a Managing Director. Previously, he was a Vice President at Blue Owl Healthcare Opportunities (formerly known as Cowen Healthcare Investments), where he was an investor in mid-to-late stage private and public biotechnology companies developing novel therapies for patients with high unmet need. His key investments while at Blue Owl included Escient Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Incyte), Prometheus Biosciences (acquired by Merck), and Akouos (acquired by Lilly).

Prior to Blue Owl, he was a Senior Analyst on the Investments Team at Roivant Sciences, where he focused on identifying, evaluating, and acquiring promising therapeutic programs for further development.

Eric received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from University of Houston and B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from University of California, Berkeley.

Mike Ross, PhD

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Mike Ross, PhD, has had a career that spans 21 years in venture capital, which followed 21 years in senior operating executive roles for leading biotechnology companies. He joined SV Health Investors as a Venture Partner in 2001 and became a Managing Partner in 2002. Mike was the tenth employee at Genentech, where he worked for 13 years. He served as Genentech team leader for the Humulin® Roferon®, Protropin® programs and was Vice President of Development during the development of Activase®, Nutropin® and Pulmozyme®. He then started Genentech’s antibody engineering, protein engineering and small molecule discovery effort as Vice President of Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry. Dr. Ross was the founding CEO of Arris Pharmaceutical, MetaXen, ExSAR and CyThera (now Viacyte).

He received his PhD in Chemistry from Caltech and went on to do his post-doctoral work at Harvard. He serves on the Board of the Thayer School of Engineering (Dartmouth College). Dr. Ross has served on numerous venture and public biotech boards.

Nikola Trbovic, PhD

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Nikola joined SV Health Investors in 2022 and is a Managing Partner in the Biotech team. Nikola currently serves as a Director on the Boards of Artios, Catamaran Bio, Prilenia, Sitryx and TRexBio. Previously, Nikola was a Partner at Pfizer Ventures, Pfizer’s corporate venture capital group. There he was responsible for investments in emerging companies developing transformative medicines spanning all therapeutic areas and modalities aligned with the future directions of Pfizer. In prior roles at Pfizer, Nikola held responsibilities for R&D technology investments, R&D strategy and early clinical portfolio management within the R&D organization. Nikola joined Pfizer from McKinsey & Co., where he served as an Associate Principal and senior member of the Pharmaceuticals Practice, advising top pharmaceutical, biotech, and healthcare companies on a range of strategy, corporate finance and commercial topics across geographies and therapeutic areas. 

 

Nikola received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Columbia University, and holds a Diplom in Biochemistry from Goethe University Frankfurt.

Adil Daud, MD

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Adil Daud, MD, is an HS Clinical Professor, Department of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology) at UCSF and Director, Melanoma Clinical Research at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. In addition to caring for patients, he directs research to better understand the biology of melanoma and to develop new treatments. He has developed and led many clinical trials that have expanded the use of gene therapy for melanoma. At UCSF, he co-directs the melanoma program and is the Principal Investigator of several early-phase and melanoma-specific clinical trials. He is particularly interested in investigating immunotherapy used in combination with PD-1 antibodies, as well as in understanding resistance to PD-1 – notably site-specific immunity.

Dr. Daud earned a medical degree at the Government Medical College, Nagpur. He completed both an internship and a residency in internal medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine, followed by a fellowship in hematology-oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Prior to joining UCSF Medical Center, he was a researcher at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, for seven years.

Dr. Daud has won numerous awards, including a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology and selection as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor.

Jim Wells, PhD

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Jim Wells, PhD, is a Professor in his home Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and holds a joint appointment as Professor in the UCSF School of Medicine’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology. At UCSF, Dr. Wells’ research group focuses on the discovery and design of small molecules that trigger or modulate cellular processes in inflammation and cancer. Dr. Wells’ research spans the multiple disciplines of biophysics, cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry and chemistry. Dr. Wells also directs the Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC), which he founded. The SMDC is located at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), where Wells is a faculty affiliate.

Before joining UCSF, Dr. Wells was a founding scientist in Genentech’s Protein Engineering Department. He then founded Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where he served as President and Chief Scientific oOfficer and co-invented a novel drug discovery process, called Tethering, to efficiently screen molecules in search of the most potent compounds to block specific protein action.

In addition to his membership in the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Wells is a recipient of many honors, including the Hans Neurath Award by the Protein Society, the Pfizer Award given by the American Chemical Society, the du Vigneaud Award given by the American Peptide Society and the 2006 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award. He earned a PhD degree in biochemistry from Washington State University and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University School of Medicine.