MATWIN International Board

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.

Michel MARTY is Head of the Therapeutics innovation in oncology centre and haematologist at the Saint-Louis University hospital in Paris (France). Medical Doctor at the Paris VI university in 1975, he is Professor in oncology at the Paris VII University. Member of several International learned societies, he has published more than 450 publications. He is actively involved in new cancer treatments studies. He is head of the oncology and haematology working group at the French national drug agency and at the European medicine agency (EMA). He is also Head of the annual Eurocancer congress.

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.

Martine J. Piccart, M.D., Ph.D., is honorary professor of oncology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and scientific director at the Jules Bordet Institute (Brussels/Belgium). Earning her medical degrees at ULB and oncology qualifications in New York and London, she is also a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine. She held presidencies of the European CanCer Organisation (ECCO), the European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and served on the American Society of Clinical Oncology Board (ASCO). Presently she is a member of the Board of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) which nominated her as fellow of the AACR Academy in 2013.

A strong advocate for and leader of international research collaborations, Prof. Martine Piccart, together with Prof. Aron Goldhirsch, created the Breast International Group (BIG) in 1996 to foster collaboration and accelerate the development of better breast cancer treatments. The organisation, chaired by Prof. Piccart, became an international not-for-profit organization in 1999, and today unites 59 academic breast cancer research groups from around the world. BIG successfully managed high-profile phase 3 clinical trials that changed clinical practice: HERA (Herceptin Adjuvant), MINDACT (Microarray in Node negative/1-3 positive lymph node disease may avoid chemotherapy) and APHINITY (Adjuvant trastuzumab + pertuzumab superior to trastuzumab alone).

Throughout her career, Prof. Piccart has been honoured with numerous prestigious awards for her research contributions, including the Jill Rose Award (2009, USA), the William L. McQuire Award (2009, USA), the David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award (2013, USA), the Susan G. Komen’s Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction (2015, USA), the 2017 St. Gallen International Breast Cancer Award (Vienna) and most recently, the 2018 Prix Leopold Griffuel for translational and clinical research delivered by the “Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer” in France.

An accomplished clinician and scientist, Prof. Piccart is author or co-author of over 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Miguel A PIRIS is pathologist, author of more than 270 articles in lymphoma diagnosis and cancer molecular pathogenesis. He is currently the Chief of Service at the Pathology Department in the Hospital Universitario Marques de Valdecilla, Santander, Spain and Scientific Director at the Research Institute IFIMAV. Former director of the Molecular Pathology Program at the Spanish National Cancer Centre (CNIO) for 12 years and member of the Leopoldina Academy, he is currently the President of the Spanish Society of Pathology.

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 David Andrews trained as a pharmacist at Nottingham University and then undertook PhD research in organic synthesis at Liverpool University. From 1990-2003, he held positions of increasing seniority in medicinal chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline. In 2003, he joined the Oncology iMed Chemistry Department of AstraZeneca where he led projects delivering the development candidates AZD4547, AZD9496 and AZD0364. Scientifically, David’s current main interests lie in Oncology, with around 60 publications and patents that span cancer and infection medicinal chemistry as well as synthetic chemistry and Open Innovation.  He is currently Director of Pre-clinical Scientific Alliances, accountable for a large portfolio of Discovery-phase project collaborations across Asia, EU and North America.

Jay T. BACKSTROM, MD, MPH, Senior Vice President, is responsible for Global Regulatory Affairs and for the late stage clinical programs across the Hematology Oncology portfolio at Celgene. Prior to assuming this position in May 2014, Dr Backstrom served as Senior Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs and Pharmcovigilance a position he assumed in September 2012 after spending 2 years as Corporate Vice President, Hematology Clinical R&D. Dr Backstrom joined Celgene in March 2008 as Vice President, Clinical R&D after serving as Vice President, Global Medical Affairs and Safety at Pharmion. Dr Backstrom has 24 years in drug development with the last 12 years focused in Hematology/Oncology. Prior to joining Pharmion in 2002, Dr Backstrom was with Marion Merrell Dow and its successor companies including Hoechst Marion Roussel where he held positions in Clinical Research and Global Drug Surveillance and Pharmacoepidemiology.

Arthur BERTELSEN joined Bristol-Myers Squibb Research in April of 2010 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.

Adrian Bot, M.D., Ph.D. is the Vice President of Translational Sciences at Kite, a Gilead Company. Kite is a biotechnology company developing genetically engineered T cell therapies, based in Los Angeles, CA. He has more than 20 years of experience in biomedical research and development.

Dr. Bot obtained his M.D. at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timisoara – Romania and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.  Subsequently, he was a Guest Scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and Scientist, Principal Scientist and Director of Immunology Research at Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp. in San Diego.  In Nov 2002, Dr. Bot joined Allecure Pharmaceuticals which became MannKind Corp, where he was a Director of Research and Development.  He had several other appointments at MannKind: Sr. Director of Translational Medicine, Vice President of Scientific Management and Vice President of Research, prior to the appointment first as Chief Scientific Officer and then Vice President of Translational Sciences at Kite.

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.

Patrice DENÈFLE Ph.D HDR and Associate Professor at Paris-Descartes, has pioneered the field of gene therapy, and has initiated multiple programs in Human genetics, functional genomics and Onco-pharmacogenomics at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer then Sanofi-Aventis. After 3 years as CSO and head of translational R&D at Genethon, he joined Ipsen in 2010 as Senior VP, Digital and Translational Sciences, to build and run a global platform fully integrated Medical and Scientific approaches to Precision Medicine. He founded MedBiomiX Partners SAS in 2014. He was appointed VP, Head of the Roche Institute for Research and Translational Medicine in January 2015.

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 Ph.D. is currently Senior Director and Oncology Lead in Pfizer’s Emerging Science and Innovation group. She is responsible for identifying and evaluating early stage R&D programs across Oncology and Immunology therapeutic disciplines and enabling research technologies stemming from academic and biotechnology communities that could form the basis of collaborations or partnerships with Pfizer. Dr. Faris also manages Emerging Science Initiatives, bringing together external KOLs and Pfizer stakeholder to advance areas of cutting edge science. She sits on several external boards and selection panels for competitive seed funding, and manages the competitive Pfizer CDRD Innovation Fund.

Dr. Faris brings over 18 years of research and development experience in Oncology in biotechnology settings. She has extensive experience in drug discovery & early development having held positions of project leader and scientific management lead. She has initiated and led several successful projects from concept thru early development and generated small molecule and biomolecule therapeutics for oncologic applications. Leveraging her experience in translational sciences and early clinical development and various treatment modalities, she developed the strategy for the oncology pipeline in her prior organization, and led efforts evaluating novel technologies and assessing the potential of cutting-edge concepts for new product development in oncology. She headed scientific governance boards and sponsored strategic partnerships and academic-industry collaborations.

Dr. Faris has co-authored over 40 patent applications, published several peer-reviewed papers, received funding from non-for profit organizations including the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society and CIRM, and presented her work at international meetings. Dr. Faris is an Associate Editor of International Reviews of Immunology.

Sean Ferree, Ph.D., is the Vice President of Product Development at NanoString Technologies where he manages a team of scientists and engineers developing breakthrough technologies for translational research as well as in vitro diagnostics and companion diagnostics for oncology applications.  Dr. Ferree led the team that developed the Prosigna Gene Signature Assay as the first decentralized multi-gene expression signature for prognosis in early stage breast cancer including submitting and defending the test through regulatory clearance in the US and EU.  Dr. Ferree has spent the last 13 years in roles of increasing responsibility at NanoString, first developing the research-use-only assays, instruments, and software comprising the nCounter Analysis System, then tailoring the platform for use in multiple genomics research applications, and later developing a second generation system suitable for diagnostic applications.  He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Axel Hoos is Senior Vice President, TA Head Oncology R&D at GSK.

Abderrahim MAHFOUDI holds a PhD in biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, and a master’s degree in strategic marketing.

Following his PhD, he successively held the position of Associate Professor at the Institute of Animal Biology at the University of Lausanne and then a research position at the Pasteur Institute in Lille before starting his career in the pharmaceutical industry in 1995. He first held several positions at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer (now Sanofi) where he took increasing responsibilities, leading him to lead the development department of gene therapy vectors as well as the leadership of several discovery projects.

In 2001, Abderrahim MAHFOUDI gave a new start to his career by holding business development positions in several biotechnology, technology transfer and CRO companies. In 2010, he joined the Oncology division of Sanofi, where he led the Oncology Business Opportunities group with missions combining portfolio management, business development and management of strategic alliances. Subsequently he held the position of Director of Operations for the Translational Science Unit at Sanofi, where he was responsible for managing the project portfolio and external research, among other responsibilities.

Since June 2017, Mr. Abderrahim MAHFOUDI has been the Director of the External Innovation Department of Pierre Fabre Pharmaceuticals’ Oncology Innovation Unit. He oversees the identification and evaluation of in-licensing opportunities as well as research and development partnerships. He is also involved in out-licensing of assets from the portfolio of the oncology innovation unit.

Sonal PATEL, Ph.D. is Vice President, Oncology Scientific Innovation at Janssen Research & Development, LLC. She represents the Oncology Therapeutic Area in Johnson & Johnson Innovation, London. In this role Sonal uses her drug discovery and scientific experience to identify and lead external opportunities in the Oncology therapeutic area.

Before joining the Johnson and Johnson family, Sonal was Senior Director of External Innovation at the Roche Innovation in Basel, Switzerland. She also was Head of Disease Biology in the Bioelectronic Medicines R&D unit of Glaxo SmithKline in Stevenage, UK.  In both roles Sonal Led scientific diligence of new opportunities across therapeutic modalities including devices and led partnerships to develop a portfolio of external collaborations for pharma.

Sonal has had an extensive prior career in biotech in the UK as Head of Molecular Pharmacology at Prosidion-OSI, working on diabetes and obesity drug targets, Oncology leader for a start-up, Piramed Ltd on small molecule discovery for PI3K family and at Oxford Glycosciences, a proteomics platform company, leading target Identification and validation for oncology discovery projects.

Sonal completed postdoctoral training at the Lombardi Cancer Centre, Dept. of Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University working on the downstream mediators of raf-1 kinase signaling in cancer. She received her PhD from the University of Bradford, Institute of Cancer Therapeutics on the Immuo-modulatory mechanism of the anticancer agent 5,6-DMXAA and it analogues

Denis PATRICK received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and has worked in large Pharma oncology organizations for 27 years, including Merck, DuPont Pharma, GSK and Pfizer. Dr. Patrick is currently Executive Director and Head of External R&D Innovation (ERDI) for the Oncology Research Unit (ORU) at Pfizer. The goal of ERDI is to search and evaluate external opportunities that are focused on areas that complement Pfizer ORU research interests including antibody drug conjugation technologies, oncogenic drivers, tumor metabolism, epigenetics, immuno-oncology, and precision medicine strategies. Recent executed agreements include Macrogenics, Seattle Genetics, Stem CentRx, Epic Sciences, BIND Therapeutics, CytomX, Philogen, and iTeos. Prior to joining Pfizer, Dr. Patrick worked at GlaxoSmithKline, initially as director of Oncology Biology followed by Director of Oncology Scientific Licensing. While at GSK, Dr. Patrick was instrumental in evaluating and executing agreements with Japan Tobacco Company for the MEK inhibitor, trametinib, recently approved for treatment of metastatic melanoma, Amplimmune’s AMP224, and research agreements with Supergen, Vernalis, Proteologics, Oxford Biotherapeutics, and Seattle Genetics. During his time as Director of Oncology Biology, Dr. Patrick lead preclinical research groups delivering numerous clinical candidates, the most advanced of which is GSK’s B-Raf inhibitor, Tafinlar (dabrafenib), also recently approved for metastatic melanoma.

Mark Pearson is currently leading the Department of New Therapeutic Concept Discovery as part of Boehringer-Ingelheim Oncology research in Vienna. The department is responsible for the discovery of new cancer targets and their implementation within the early Oncology portfolio. Previously he was associate principle scientist at AstraZeneca (England) and he worked at Novartis as Laboratory Head (Switzerland). He obtained his PhD at the Paterson Institute of Cancer Research from the University of Manchester.

Steven Shak, M.D., is Chief Scientific Officer of Genomic Health, Inc, 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 Genomic Health 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.