Brian Cali, PhD

Brian has over 25 years of pharma biotech experience. He co-founded Ironwood Pharmaceuticals in 1998 where he held leadership roles across R&D and corporate development and helped drive the company’s transformation from an early discovery stage startup to a commercial stage company with a market leading gastrointestinal (GI) disease product (Linzess®) and a diverse pre-commercial pipeline. Brian also led the investor engagement and financing efforts that enabled the creation of Cyclerion, an Ironwood spinout, in 2019. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Jnana Therapeutics, a role he has held since 2018. He holds a BS from Cornell University, a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute.

Daniel L. Flynn, PhD

Dan has over 40 years of experience in the discovery and development of high-impact medicines. He recently retired from Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, a company he founded in 2003. At Deciphera, Dan held positions of Chief Executive Officer, Executive Vice President, and Chief Scientific Officer where he oversaw the progression of several molecules through clinical trials, including Qinlock® for the treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Before founding Deciphera, Dan Flynn held senior roles with various companies including Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Amgen Inc. and the Monsanto Company, G.D. Searle Unit. Dan Flynn is currently Adjunct Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Kansas-Lawrence. He has served as the National Chair for the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, is an American Chemical Society Fellow, and founder of the Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Foundation. He is a member of the Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Boards of several biotech companies. Dan received both his B.S. in pharmacy and Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Kansas and completed postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at Indiana University.

Categories

Rob C. Hart, JD

Rob is a partner at Telegraph Hill partners. He has worked in the area of securities law, corporate finance, venture capital and mergers & acquisitions since 1998.

Prior to joining THP, he worked in Citigroup Global Markets’ San Francisco office focused on healthcare investment banking and acquisition finance.  Previously, Rob worked at the Securities & Exchange Commission in Los Angeles and the New York-based law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Rob serves on several Boards on behalf of THP.  Rob received a BS in Geological Sciences and a BA in Economics from UCSB. He received a JD/MBA from Northwestern University School of Law and Kellogg School of Management.

Categories

Deval A. Lashkari, PhD

Deval has more than 20 years of experience helping to build and grow successful companies. He is currently a partner at Telegraph Hill Partner and serves on several boards. Prior to THP he was a founding Research Director at Synteni, which was acquired by Incyte Genomics.

Deval received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD from Stanford University and currently serves on the Stanford Medical School Alumni Board of Governors.

Categories

Dan Zabrowski, PhD

Dan is currently a part-time Venture Partner at Decheng Capital and has been with the firm since July 2016. He serves on several Boards on behalf of Decheng Capital and as an Independent Director.

Prior to joining Decheng, Dr. Zabrowski worked over 20 years for Roche in a number of key global leadership positions, including Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, Global Head of Development Operations, Global Head of Roche Pharma Partnering, President of Ventana Medical Systems and President of the Roche Sequencing Unit. During his tenure in Business Development and Diagnostics, Dr. Zabrowski and his teams delivered 300+ acquisition and partnership deals. In addition, he was Board member of Chugai Pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Roche, Dr. Zabrowski worked at Syntex, Fujisawa (now Astellas) and G.D. Searle in their pharmaceutical R&D organizations and served as Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Pharmacy, University of Illinois — Chicago. Dr. Zabrowski received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Indiana University, Bloomington and his BA degree in Chemistry from Saint Louis University.

Categories

Jigar Patel, PhD

Jigar Patel is founder and CEO of Nimble Therapeutics.  With more than 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology space, Jigar leads Nimble’s veteran team and champions the company’s game-changing technology for accelerating the discovery and development of peptide therapeutics.

Jigar started his drug development career at the Walter Reed Institute of Research supporting a Vaccine and Drug trial for Malaria in Western Kenya. Before founding Nimble, Jigar led an early discovery research team at Roche with collaborations globally with diagnostic and therapeutics divisions across many disease areas. Jigar is an author and inventor on numerous peer reviewed publications and patents in the areas of drug discovery, oncology, immunology and infectious disease. Jigar was trained at Dr. MGR Medical University and at the University of Notre Dame.