Greenfire Bio Announces Initiation of Phase 1 Clinical Trial of GRN-300, a SIK2 inhibitor, for Ovarian Cancer

Chris has 35 years of industry experience working in a variety of settings from large multi-national pharmaceutical companies to early-stage therapeutic start-ups.  His most recent experience includes CBO roles at Nocion and Respira Therapeutics.  Prior to Respira he had similar responsibilities at TARIS Biomedical where he negotiated several R&D collaborations as well as the sale of their lead asset to Allergan.  Chris spent 12 years at Inhale/Nektar in various business roles and lead the negotiations of multiple transactions including the acquisition of Shearwater Polymers.  Chris started his pharmaceutical career at Pfizer and spend 11 years in both technical and business roles.  He earned his M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and has a Doctor of Pharmacy and Bachelor of Science from the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy.

Ajit Gill is past CEO and President of Nektar Therapeutics, when the company grew from a private startup to a public company with 800 employees and a market cap of over $2 billion USD. Earlier, Mr. Gill was VP and General Manager of Kodak’s Interactive Systems, VP of Finance at TRW-Fujitsu and Director of business development at VisiCorp. He graduated from IIT Kanpur with a B. Tech degree in Electrical Engineering and earned an M.S from University of Nebraska and an MBA from University of Western Ontario, Canada. Mr. Gill is currently serving as an advisor for several health care companies in India.

Diane Marcou is an independent financial consultant who provides interim financial leadership to early stage companies. She has provided financial and strategic advisory services to a number of venture-backed technology and life sciences companies, including as CFO of Immunome, TARIS Biomedical, Cytrellis Biosystems, T2 Biosystems and Fractyl Laboratories. Prior to working as an independent financial consultant, Ms. Marcou was Chief Financial Officer and VP of Finance and Administration for Incentive Systems (dba Centive), a privately held venture-funded software company, and Chief Financial Officer at Workgroup Technology, a publicly traded software company with domestic and international operations. Ms. Marcou earned her CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers (formerly Coopers & Lybrand) and a B.S. in Business Administration from Boston College.

Dr. Purnanand Sarma serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Immunome. Sarma has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of pharmaceutical industry business across multiple R&D platforms, ranging from venture-backed biotechnology start-ups to large cap pharmaceutical companies. He was most recently the President & CEO of Taris Biomedical, which he built over the last nine years into a leader in therapeutic urology, focused on diseases such as bladder cancer and overactive bladder. In addition to raising more than $100M in equity capital, he also sold one of Taris’ products to Allergan (NYSE:AGN) in a deal worth up to $587M. Prior to Taris, Sarma was the VP and General Manager of World-wide Drug Delivery Technologies for Cephalon Corporation (NYSE:CEPH). Before joining Cephalon, he spent over 10 years in various capacities at Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR), including VP of Drug Development & Program Management and built the entire green field operation of Nektar Therapeutics (India), serving as its first Managing Director. He started his career at SmithKline Beecham in King of Prussia, PA, after earning his PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Minnesota and B. Pharm from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India. Sarma also serves as an independent Board member at Ohm Oncology and Vaxess Technologies Inc.

Sanjeev has over 25 years of experience in biomedical R&D, business development and alliance management, working in large biopharmaceutical and small biotech organizations.

Most recently as the SVP of human healthcare business and alliances at InveniAI® LLC, an industry leading biotech that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to transform drug discovery and development, Sanjeev led development of the internal pipeline as well as external partnerships.  Sanjeev started his pharmaceutical career in drug discovery at Merck and held several leadership roles in drug discovery and business development. Sanjeev headed the department of Protein Sciences and Structural Biology at Merck and was a key contributor to several drug candidates and has co-authored 75 publications. As an Executive Director of business development, Sanjeev led several in-licensing deals across multiple therapeutic areas, established external research collaborations, and managed alliances. Sanjeev holds a Ph.D. in Structural Biology from the Indian Institute of Science, India, and an MBA from Villanova University.

Dr. Nganele has over 30 years of global pharmaceutical and biotech experience in both large and small companies with broad experience through the life cycle of drug development and commercialization. He was on the marketing team that launched the first drug at Pfizer to achieve yearly sales of over $ 1 billion. After 10 years of commercialization experience, he moved to new product planning and drug development team leadership. At PDL Biopharma, he led the team that developed and obtained FDA approval of Cardene IV for emergency hypertension. He eventually moved to Europe where he helped pioneer the development of Biosimilars, at Sandoz Biopharmaceuticals, a division of Novartis, leading the teams that developed biosimilars for Enbrel and Humira. He moved on to oncology drug development at Morphosys in Germany where he oversaw development of antibodies and bispecifics in both solid and hematologic cancers. He is passionate about efficient drug development strategies to bring molecules faster to the market by employing such tools as Adaptive Trial Designs and developing an algorithm for optimal Site selection. He obtained his PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from New York Medical College and an MBA from Columbia Business School.