Precision Therapeutics for Genetic Obesities

Mr. Ferrara was most recently President and CEO of Medeor Therapeutics, Inc., a transplant immunology company where he completed the world’s first multi-center, international Phase 3 clinical study that successfully induced immunotolerance in transplant patients allowing them to eliminate the use of toxic immunosuppressive drugs. Prior to that, he was Founder, President and CEO of NeuroVia, Inc., a clinical stage orphan CNS disease company, where he raised a Series A financing, built an efficient team and established the clinical and regulatory strategy to lead the company into an efficacy study. Previously, he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Novartis Venture Fund (NVF), where he founded NeuroVia in 2013 amongst his other activities as an operating partner. He joined NVF from portfolio company Sorbent Therapeutics where he was consulting Chief Business Officer, raising $58M in oversubscribed financing and led the refocusing of the company’s lead program. Prior roles include General Partner and Managing Director at Burrill & Company after starting his venture capital and business development career at GeneChem Management (including CEO of portfolio company Targanta Therapeutics) and BioChem Pharma. He received his MBA and MSc (molecular endocrinology) from McGill University.

Roger Cone joined the University of Michigan in 2016 as the Director of the Life Sciences Institute, and was appointed Vice Provost for the Biosciences in 2017. Prior to Michigan, Cone was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University from 2008–2016. Cone is credited with the discovery of multiple fundamental biological roles for the melanocortin system in energy homeostasis. These findings resulted from studies cloning and characterizing the five receptors for the melanocortin peptides, and analyzing the pharmacological and physiological functions of these receptors. Cone’s group provided the genetic and pharmacological validation of the melanocortin-4 and melanocortin-3 receptors as critical regulators of energy homeostasis, leading to the discovery of mutations in the MC4R as the leading cause of syndromic obesity, and development of the first drug for syndromic obesity, the MC4R agonist Imcivree, approved by the FDA in 2020. Cone has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2010), and the National Academy of Medicine (2016) for his work, and received numerous awards, including the Berson Award, Berthold Memorial Award, Ipsen Prize, and the Rolf Luft Prize.

Dr. Sawyer is head of drug discovery at Courage. He is an accomplished drug hunter with a track record in both peptide and small molecules. He is the inventor of the MC1R agonist NDP-MSH (Scenesse® by Clinuvel) that was recently approved by the FDA. He also is the inventor of the drugs ALRN-6924 (Aileron) and Iclusig® (Ariad/Takeda). His pharma/biotech career includes being Distinguished Scientist (Merck), CSO (Aileron), SVP (Ariad) and Sr. Director (Pfizer). Tomi has recently founded a worldwide Peptide Drug Hunter Consortium and was a past-president of the American Peptide Society.

Dr. Blaug has over 15 years of broad biotech and life science experience as a biotech executive, banker, scientist and investor. Over the course of his career, Sasha has helped build companies in the US and Asia via strategic transactions and negotiations including public and private capital markets transactions, joint ventures, licensing, syndicate formation. Sasha was a biotechnology equity analyst and the equity and convertible debt capital markets healthcare analyst at Piper and Nomura Securities, respectively, and invested in and helped build healthcare companies via his roles at Portola Capital, Lux Capital, Jane Investments, and Nomura Securities. In these roles, Dr. Blaug worked with portfolio companies on strategic initiatives including corporate development and partnerships, portfolio strategy, equity offerings and investor relations, and financial planning and analysis. Most recently, Dr. Blaug was the SVP of corporate development at Biomea Fusion, helping to take the company from a co-founder start-up to a publicly traded biotech, where he positioned the company and helped execute capital markets transactions, and led the corporate development strategic process, partnership interaction, discussion and negotiations. Prior to his professional career, he wrote for his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley and read for his MBA at Berkeley and Columbia University.

Dr. George Grass is an accomplished pharmaceutical executive and scientist with extensive experience leading preclinical and translational development across multiple therapeutic areas. As Head of Non-Clinical at Courage Therapeutics, he directs strategy and execution of IND-enabling programs, to advance Courage’s pipeline toward clinical proof of concept.

Before joining Courage, Dr. Grass founded G2 Research Inc. and advised numerous biotech and pharmaceutical organizations on preclinical development, due diligence, and asset strategy and has extensive experience as an expert witness for pharmaceutical patent cases. He has been a founder of NaviCyte, Inc., Precision Instrument Design, Inc., and PDxRx Inc. He has served in senior R&D and corporate leadership roles at multiple venture-backed companies, including Trega Biosciences, Sorbent Therapeutics, and NeuroVia, guiding assets through IND-enabling studies and clinical entry.

Dr. Grass holds Pharm.D., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Pharmaceutics and has authored numerous publications and textbook chapters in biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics. He combines scientific depth with entrepreneurial insight in transforming early-stage science into clinical and commercial opportunity

Isaac Barchas is a founding partner of Arsenal Bridge Ventures. He previously served as CEO of Research Bridge Partners, which he co-founded with Reid Hoffman, and continues to serve as a special advisor to the company. Barchas is a managing director of Research Bridge Partners’ Catalyst Fund and Arsenal Bridge Ventures II, II-B, III, and IV. He also served as founding board member of Tetricus, Eradivir, and MorphImmune (NASDAQ: IMNM) and as lead turnaround board member of Novosteo (NASDAQ: QNCX) and Courage Therapeutics. Prior to founding Research Bridge Partners, Barchas led the Austin Technology Incubator where he raised ~$1B in investor capital and, before that, was a leader in McKinsey & Co.’s healthcare and organization practices.

Roger Cone joined the University of Michigan in 2016 as the Director of the Life Sciences Institute, and was appointed Vice Provost for the Biosciences in 2017. Prior to Michigan, Cone was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University from 2008–2016. Cone is credited with the discovery of multiple fundamental biological roles for the melanocortin system in energy homeostasis. These findings resulted from studies cloning and characterizing the five receptors for the melanocortin peptides, and analyzing the pharmacological and physiological functions of these receptors. Cone’s group provided the genetic and pharmacological validation of the melanocortin-4 and melanocortin-3 receptors as critical regulators of energy homeostasis, leading to the discovery of mutations in the MC4R as the leading cause of syndromic obesity, and development of the first drug for syndromic obesity, the MC4R agonist Imcivree, approved by the FDA in 2020. Cone has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2010), and the National Academy of Medicine (2016) for his work, and received numerous awards, including the Berson Award, Berthold Memorial Award, Ipsen Prize, and the Rolf Luft Prize.

Mr. Ferrara was most recently President and CEO of Medeor Therapeutics, Inc., a transplant immunology company where he completed the world’s first multi-center, international Phase 3 clinical study that successfully induced immunotolerance in transplant patients allowing them to eliminate the use of toxic immunosuppressive drugs. Prior to that, he was Founder, President and CEO of NeuroVia, Inc., a clinical stage orphan CNS disease company, where he raised a Series A financing, built an efficient team and established the clinical and regulatory strategy to lead the company into an efficacy study. Previously, he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Novartis Venture Fund (NVF), where he founded NeuroVia in 2013 amongst his other activities as an operating partner. He joined NVF from portfolio company Sorbent Therapeutics where he was consulting Chief Business Officer, raising $58M in oversubscribed financing and led the refocusing of the company’s lead program. Prior roles include General Partner and Managing Director at Burrill & Company after starting his venture capital and business development career at GeneChem Management (including CEO of portfolio company Targanta Therapeutics) and BioChem Pharma. He received his MBA and MSc (molecular endocrinology) from McGill University.

Dan is a serial entrepreneur who founded and led multiple companies in the healthcare technology space. His start-up Recombinant Data Corp. ["RDC"] focused on analytics on genomics and patient data to support translational research. Following the acquisition of RDC by Deloitte he remained at the company as a Managing Director of the Healthcare and Life Sciences practice leading initiatives around life sciences uses of analytics and AI for drug discovery and development. He holds a BS in Chemistry and Biology from MIT and continues to mentor entrepreneurs through the MIT VMS entrepreneurship service. He is a parent of daughter with Anorexia Nervosa and son with ARFID.

Dr. Bruce Leuchter is President, CEO, and board member of Neurvati Neurosciences and GRIN Therapeutics. A physician by training and neuropsychiatrist by specialty, Dr. Leuchter served in senior roles for over a decade in biotechnology equity research at Goldman Sachs, healthcare investment banking at Credit Suisse, and mergers and acquisitions at PJT Partners, where he provided strategic and capital markets advisory to leading biopharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Leuchter served as the Director of Clinical Neuropsychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he currently holds a voluntary faculty appointment. He is a co-founder and the founding neuropsychiatrist of Click Therapeutics. He serves on the board of Arrivo BioVentures, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Daedalus Fund for Innovation at Weill Cornell, and sits on the Life Sciences Institute Leadership Council at the University of Michigan.