MATWIN International Board

Arthur Bertelsen is Academic Review Board member for the Starr Cancer Consortium (USA).

Arthur BERTELSEN worked for Bristol-Myers Squibb Research from 2010 to 202 as Vice President Research Collaborations. In this role, Art has overall responsibility for the management of external research collaborations.
Prior to joining BMS Art spent more than twelve years at Schering-Plough Research Institute where he was responsible for all aspects involving the formation and management of external research collaborations to discover therapeutics and integrate new technology into discovery operations. Among other accomplishments at Schering-Plough Art conceived and initiated the project that discovered a genetic marker for response to interferon-based HCV therapy. Trained as a cellular and molecular biologist, before PharmaGenics, Art led research directed toward recombinant protein discovery and development, particularly focused on post-translational modification of peptide/protein therapeutics.
Arthur Bertelsen holds an AB from Princeton University in biochemical sciences and received his MS and PhD degrees from the program for Cellular and Molecular Biology at New York University Medical Center.

Dr Veronique Birault is Head of Translation at the Francis Crick Institute and is accountable for one of the 5 strategic pillars of the Crick; to accelerate Translation for health and wealth benefits. Since joining, she has established translational science capabilities to enable a diverse portfolio of translatable projects and 3 spin outs.

Veronique has sixteen years’ drug discovery and development experience in industry. She has led multidisciplinary research teams and provided strategic leadership on translational work and clinical research programmes. She has worked in immuno-inflammation and respiratory areas, and delivered projects suitable for development to the clinic or to enhance disease pathway understanding. She led the allergic inflammation Discovery Performance Unit at GSK, and established and executed a plan to implement experimental medicine in order to change the way medicines are developed.

Veronique’s business acumen has been honed through developing business plans, securing funding and creating spinouts. She also mentors young entrepreneurs. 

Jean-Pierre BIZZARI, M.D., served as Executive Vice-President, Group Head, and Clinical Oncology Development (U.S., Europe, and Asia/Japan) at Celgene from 2008 to 2015. As a world-renowned oncology expert, he is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the French National Cancer Institute (INCa) and European Organization of Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and Chairman of the New Drug Advisory Committee. Mr. Bizzari is also an active board member in various biotech companies.
Bizzari joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1983 as Head of Oncology at the Institut de Recherches Internationales SERVIER (France). He then joined Rhône-Poulenc Rorer in 1993 as Vice President of Clinical Oncology, based in Paris and moved to Collegeville (PA – USA) in 1997. From 2002 until 2008, Mr. Bizzari served as Vice President of Clinical Oncology Development at Sanofi-Aventis in Malvern, PA before joining Celgene.
Jean-Pierre Bizzari holds a medical degree specialized in oncology from the University of Nice (France) and has trained successively at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, at Ontario Cancer Institute, and Montreal Mac Gill Cancer Center in Canada.

Olivier HERMINE is Professeur at Paris Descartes University (France), hospital practitioner and has the scientific degree of doctor.
He is responsible of a research group studying mechanisms of hematologic malignancy or “blood cancer”. He is also the mastocytoses reference centre coordinator (CeReMast). He has received in 2011 the medical research foundation price from the “Collège de France” and in 2008 the Jean-Bernard price at the French medical Victory.

Paul MOSS is Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Birmingham and Chairman of the Infection and Immunity Board at the Medical Research Council. He served previously as Chair of the Cancer Research UK Clinical and Translational Research Committee. He is a Clinical Haematologist with a large laboratory programme investigating immune mechanisms in cancer, transplantation and viral infection. He is the chief investigator of several clinical trials and contributes to a number of Biotech advisory Boards.

Pedro ROMERO obtained his MD at the School of Medicine of the National University of Colombia in Bogota. Then he performed experimental work in the field of immunology of malaria and participated in the development of malaria vaccines, initially at the Institute of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, National University of Colombia in Bogota and then as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Medical and Molecular Parasitology, New York University School of Medicine. He joined the Lausanne branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in 1989. He is currently a Member of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Research, is the head of the Translational Tumor Immunology Group at the Ludwig Center and Director of the Division of Fundamental Oncology at the Lausanne University Hospital. He was named Ordinary Professor at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine January 2011. He has been actively involved in pre-clinical and translational research in tumor immunology and immunotherapy. His main interests focus on the study of tumor antigens, human T cell responses and development of immunotherapy of cancer. Dr. Romero has co-authored over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals and serves as editor in various biomedical journals, including Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer.

Dr. Khatereh Ahmadi has worked in the biotech/pharma industry for 18 years. She  currently leads the Search and Evaluation Business Development team in Europe and Middle East at MSD and covers oncology BD&L in those territories. Previous to her role at MSD, she was a co-founder and CEO of reViral Ltd, a Phase II anti-viral company, leading a Series A round of $21M with Andera Partners and Orbimed.  She played a significant role in the spin out of Piramed Ltd, an oncology company, and subsequently became head of business development culminating in a significant deal with Genentech and acquisition of Piramed by Roche.  She has consulted for a number of EU and US companies in the oncology field. She obtained a PhD in biochemistry from King’s College London and held a post-doctoral position at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London working in the PI 3-kinase field. Dr. Ahmadi was awarded her MBA from Henley Management College.

Jim Carmichael is currently working at Bristol Myers Squibb, in Integrative Sciences and is based in the UK.  He was an academic Oncologist who joined industry in 2002 with AstraZeneca and subsequently joined Celgene as Chief Scientific Officer for the Celgene Institute Translational Research Europe (CITRE) in July 2011.

Early Medical Oncology training was at the University of Edinburgh, followed by a Fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. He held senior positions, initially at the University of Oxford, then as the Head and Chair of the Cancer Research UK Department of Clinical Oncology at the University of Nottingham.

He joined the pharmaceutical industry in 2002 joining AstraZeneca to lead the Experimental Medicine group, based at Alderley Park, Cheshire.  In 2006 he moved to take up the role of Chief Medical Officer for KuDOS Pharmaceuticals, where the focus was the development of cancer drugs targeted at DNA repair and was responsible for the early clinical development of Olaparib.  In 2011, he moved to Celgene to take up the position of Chief Scientific Officer at CITRE, where he built the research team from scratch and was Site Head from 2011-2019. In 2015-2017 he had a secondment to San Diego where he led the Protein Homeostasis Thematic Centre of Excellence as part of Celgene R&D.  Following the Celgene acquisition in December 2019 he joined BMS as VP for Integrative Sciences, which bridges R&D with key collaborators in Industry and Academia, and is currently based in Europe.

Laurent DEBUSSCHE obtained his PhD in biological chemistry at Université Pierre et Marie Curie and Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon. His work on Vitamin B12 biosynthesis pathway eluciadtion was recognized by Doisteau-Blustet French National Academy of Sciences in 1992. Located in Vitry Research site, he has close to 30 years experience in pharmaceutical industry. Since 1987, he has been involved in several research projects in oncology. He is Research Director at Sanofi, joined the management team of Oncology Research Department in 1998, has an extensive experience in industrial and academic project direction at national and international level, as well as in external opportunity evaluation. He contributed to entry in clinical development of several chemical and biological entities. He is co-author of more than 60 scientific publications. He is currently leading the Sanofi Oncology Research Department in Vitry.

Laure de Parseval has more than 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, both in clinical development and research. She has held different medical positions at Novartis over the past 7 years, and most recently in Translational Clinical Oncology (TCO) as Clinical Site Head (Switzerland). In her previous role she was Senior Global Clinical Leader and a core member of the MEK162/LGX818 Global Project Team and during this time was instrumental in establishing the registration development program for LGX818. Prior to this she led the RAF early clinical development program in Oncology Translational Medicine. Before joining Novartis, Laure held research and medical positions in clinical development and drug discovery at Celgene and Signal Pharmaceuticals.  Laure obtained her MD from University René Descartes (Paris V, France) and completed her residency in Internal Medicine with training in hemato/oncology and infectious disease. She did her post-doctoral fellowship at UCSD (San Diego, California) on HIV pathogenesis and drug resistance.

Mary FARIS est Executive Director, External Innovation, Oncology pour GILEAD

PhD in Mathematics, expert in bioinformatics, machine learning and mathematical & statistical modeling focused on the analysis and visualization of complex biomedical systems, Magnus Fontes has extensive industrial and academic experience, including several high-level leadership positions and numerous international commissions of trust.

He is Member of the Royal Physiographic Society, Member of the Executive Committee for the Centre of Excellence for Personalized Medicine, Persimune in Copenhagen, Member of the Council & Executive Board of the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry (ECMI). Co-founder in 2007 of the bioinformatics software company Qlucore, Magnus Fontes was Principal Scientist in Cancer Immunology at Genentech in South San Francisco, CA, USA before to take the position as General Manager of Institut Roche on June 1^st, 2020.

Ken Hance has worked in the field of Cancer Immunology for 17 years and currently serves as a Senior Director and Head of Immune Biology in the Immuno-Oncology and Combinations Research Unit (IOC RU) at GlaxoSmithKline. In this role, he is responsible for new target identification/validation and the delivery of critical path biology to support a growing portfolio of immune-based therapies within GSK Oncology. Within this early discovery research focus, GSK is actively collaborating with scientific organizations such as 23andMe, Immunocore and the Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT), a component of the Cancer Moonshot Program. From 2016-2018, Ken held a joint appointment as a Visiting Scientist at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA. Prior to joining GSK, Ken worked in the biopharmaceutical division of Merck KGaA where he contributed to the development of the approved anti-PD-L1 antibody (Bavencio (Avelumab)) and the clinical stage anti-PD-L1/TGF-βRII bispecific antibody (Bintrafusp-alfa (M7824)). Ken received his postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology at the National Cancer Institute, a PhD from Purdue University and MPH from George Washington University.

Anna KRUCZYNSKI obtained her PhD in cellular pharmacology at Paul Sabatier University Toulouse in 1991. Then she completed her training at the National Veterinary School in Toulouse and Lyon. She started her professional carreer for Pierre Fabre in 1991 with various positions being involved in different Drug Discovery Programmes, that led to the identification and selection of four novel anticancer agents and in the setting up of a new innovative group of Experimental Oncology (Oncopôle – Toulouse). In 2016, Anna Kruczynski was appointed Director, External Innovation in Oncology for Pierre Fabre, in charge of the identification and critical analysis of external opportunities to license into Pierre Fabre pipeline.

Dr. Mark Pearson received his BA from the University of Oxford and completed his doctoral studies at the University of Manchester in 1996. Subsequently, he worked on the role of the PML-RARa fusion oncogene in regulation of p53 at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) in Milan with Professor Pelicci.

After leaving academia, Dr Pearson joined Novartis as a laboratory head from 2001 until 2007 and returned to England to work at Astra Zeneca as an Associate Principal Scientist. Since 2010, Dr Pearson has worked within the Oncology Therapeutic Area at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vienna site, first as a Group Leader and then subsequently as a Department Head in the Cancer Cell Signalling and, as of the beginning of April 2022, in the Cancer Pharmacology and Disease Positioning Departments.

Steve Shak, M.D., is Chief Medical Officer of Exact Sciences, which is focused on improving the quality of treatment decisions and outcomes for cancer patients. He and his colleagues have worked together with leading global oncology clinical research groups to develop the Oncotype DX® breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer assays. He spearheaded the innovative collaboration between Exact Sciences and the SEER program to enhance public insights into genomics in clinical practice. Dr. Shak has previously worked at Genentech, Inc. where he led the clinical team that gained approval of trastuzumab (Herceptin®). In addition, Dr. Shak discovered, cloned, and expressed the therapeutic human enzyme human DNase I or dornase alfa (Pulmozyme®), a mucus-dissolving enzyme that continues to be a global standard of care for cystic fibrosis patients. Dr. Shak previously held faculty positions in Medicine and Pharmacology at New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Shak is currently on the Board of Directors of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, The Children’s Cause for Cancer Advocacy, and The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. Dr. Shak has an undergraduate degree from Amherst College, an MD degree from New York University School of Medicine, and post-graduate training in medicine and research at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and the University of California, San Francisco.

Anette Sommer is a biochemist by training and has more than 20 years of experience in Pharma R&D. Anette is the Emerging Science & Innovation – Lead Oncology Europe at Pfizer. Prior to joining Pfizer, Anette held several positions in drug discovery at Schering AG and Bayer AG, Berlin, Germany. During her career, she moved several drug candidates for oncology into development and was involved in in-licensing, out-licensing and managing external academic alliances and consortia. Her academic career included a PostDoc at the pharmaceutical company Schering AG in Berlin, Germany. She obtained her PhD at the Medical School Hannover. Prior to this, she studied biochemistry at the Universities of Hannover (Germany) and Glasgow (UK). Anette is author of >50 scientific publications and >10 patent applications.

Philip Tagari is currently Vice President of Research (Therapeutic Discovery) at Amgen Inc, the world’s largest independent biotechnology company. His global laboratories (US, Canada, Germany, China, India)  are responsible for biologics discovery, scaffold engineering, optimization and early manufacturability assessment; medicinal, oligonucleotide and peptide chemistry; protein conjugates (Ab-RNAi, peptibodies) and reagents; assay development, screening, enzymological and pharmacological characterization and profiling (in vitro), as well as structural biology, biophysics, analytical chemistry, data sciences, materials logistics and automation. His teams have advanced over 30 innovative molecules into clinical development in recent years, including AMG 510 (first-in-class KRASG12C inhibitor) and AMG701 (half-life extended bispecific T-cell engager). Additionally, he is an active member of Amgen Ventures and has participated in numerous research collaborations as well as the integration of Immunex, Tularik, Abgenix, Micromet and Nuevolution into the Amgen laboratories. He is board Chair for Amgen Biopharmaceutical Research and Development (Shanghai) Co., Ltd and a Director of CQDM (Consortium Quebecois sur la Decouverte du Medicament; Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery).

Prior to joining Amgen in 1998, Philip was a Research Fellow at Merck Frosst (Canada) Inc, where he contributed to several programs in eicosanoid and inflammatory  biology, culminating in the discovery of odanacatib and rofecoxib, as well as the clinically active leukotriene D₄ receptor antagonist MK-571 and the leukotriene biosynthesis inhibitor MK-591. Philip is a graduate of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University (UK), and performed research at McGill and Oxford Universities on automated image analysis, quantitative immunohistochemistry and neurotransmitter measurements in neurodegeneration and cerebrovascular research.

Viia VALGE-ARCHER is Senior Director, External R&D Scientific and Clinical Alliances at AstraZeneca.  Her research interests are in tumour immunology, particularly identification of barriers to development of an effective anti-tumour immune response, and the discovery and development of novel therapeutic approaches.  Viia received her PhD from MIT, where her interest in immunology was sparked studying T cell receptor signalling with Anjana Rao at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.  Following postdoc research on leukaemia oncogenes in the laboratory of Dr. Terry Rabbitts at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, she joined Cambridge Antibody Technology and has over 20 years of experience in large and small molecule pharmaceutical R&D.  Viia joined AstraZeneca from MedImmune in 2016, where her current role has responsibility for initiating and supporting multiple facets of AZ engagement with the external scientific community, including collaborations, consortia and advisory panels.

Sarah Warren is the Senior Director of Translational Science at NanoString Technologies where she leverages multiplexed, molecular profiling technologies to address key research areas in oncology, immunology, and beyond. Her role enables her to work with academics, biopharmas, and clinicians to identify unmet needs in translational research and create novel products for transcriptional and proteomic profiling. She is also active in the immuno-oncology research community to promote the science and application of cancer immunotherapy to improve patient outcomes. Prior to joining NanoString, she was a founder and director of research at Oncofactor Corp., a Seattle biotech startup focused on developing therapeutics which targeted novel immune checkpoints. She has a PhD in immunology from the University of Washington and performed her graduate work at the Institute for Systems Biology.