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Lewis T. "Rusty" Williams, M.D., Ph.D.
Founder, President and CEO
Dr. Williams founded FivePrime in 2002 and currently serves as its President and CEO. Prior to founding FivePrime, Dr. Williams was Chief Scientific Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of Chiron Corporation and President of Chiron Technologies. Prior to joining Chiron, Dr. Williams was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, San Francisco. Earlier in his career he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and was a staff cardiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Williams is a co-founder of COR Therapeutics, Inc., and served as a member of its Board of Directors. He served on the Boards of Duke University and Beckman Coulter Corporation and is currently on the Board of the Berklee College of Music.
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Julie Hambleton, M.D.
Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
Julie Hambleton joined the company in December 2012. Dr. Hambleton brings over 25 years of clinical, academic and drug development experience to FivePrime. Prior to joining FivePrime, Dr. Hambleton served as VP, Clinical Development, at Clovis Oncology, Inc. where she oversaw the clinical development of CO-1686, a mutant selective EGFR inhibitor targeting non-small cell lung cancer, and rucaparib, a PARP inhibitor initially targeting ovarian and breast cancers. From 2003 to 2010, Dr. Hambleton served at Genentech, Inc. in positions of increasing responsibility, most recently as Group Medical Director, Global Clinical Development, leading a cross-functional group conducting seven phase 3 trials of Genentech’s Avastin® (bevacizumab) antibody in different indications. Prior to joining industry, Dr. Hambleton served for 10 years in academic positions in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), most recently as Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine. Prior to her academic positions, she completed seven years of post-graduate training at UCSF. Dr. Hambleton received a B.S. degree from Duke University, and an M.D. degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She is Board-certified in Hematology and Internal Medicine.
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W. Michael Kavanaugh, M.D.
Senior Vice President, Research & Chief Scientific Officer
Mike Kavanaugh joined the company in February 2009 and brings over two decades of experience in biologics - from discovery through pivotal trials - to his position as head of R&D at FivePrime. Most recently, Dr. Kavanaugh was Head of Biological Therapeutics, Emeryville Oncology, for the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research. He joined NIBR following 12 years at Chiron Corporation, where he advanced to VP and Head of Antibody and Protein Therapeutics Research. He is Board-Certified in Cardiovascular Disease and Internal Medicine and is Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Kavanaugh received his B.S. in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics from Yale University, his M.D. degree from Vanderbilt University, and trained in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease and Molecular and Cellular Biology at UCSF and the Cardiovascular Research Institute.
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Aron Knickerbocker
Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer
Aron Knickerbocker joined the company as Vice President, Business Development in September 2009 and was promoted to the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer in April 2012. Mr. Knickerbocker leads FivePrime’s business development activities to advance and broaden FivePrime’s pipeline of therapeutic candidates, and to establish strategic alliances focused on target and drug discovery. Mr. Knickerbocker has worked in the biopharmaceutical industry for nearly 20 years, including the last 13 years in business development roles. Prior to joining FivePrime, Mr. Knickerbocker was at Genentech, Inc. where he most recently was Senior Director, Business Development, leading Genentech’s oncology business development team that was responsible for evaluating and negotiating multiple strategic alliances. Prior to Genentech, Mr. Knickerbocker was at ALZA Corporation, where he negotiated and closed in-licensing and co-promotion transactions as Director of Commercial Development, and held sales, market research, marketing, and corporate development positions at Amgen, Inc. He began his career in the biopharmaceutical industry in research as a scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Aron received his A.B. degree in biology from Washington University in St. Louis, and his M.B.A. degree from the University of Michigan.
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Francis Sarena
Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary
Francis Sarena joined the company as Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary in December 2010. He brings extensive experience in corporate, governance, licensing and collaboration matters, compliance, M&A and securities law matters. Prior to joining FivePrime, Mr. Sarena served as VP, GC and Secretary of Facet Biotech Corporation, a development-stage biotechnology company. While at Facet, he played an instrumental role in the defense of multiple unsolicited takeover attempts by Biogen Idec and thereafter in the negotiated sale to Abbott Laboratories at a 206% premium to market. Prior to Facet, Mr. Sarena held positions of increasing responsibility with PDL BioPharma, Inc., most recently as VP, GC and Secretary. He helped guide PDL through the sale of its commercial operations to Otsuka and EKR and its manufacturing plant to Genmab and the spin-off of PDL’s biotechnology operations to Facet. Mr. Sarena started his legal career as an associate at Bingham McCutchen LLP where he represented public and private life science and high tech clients in M&A transactions, corporate and securities law matters and equity financing transactions. Mr. Sarena received his J.D. from University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, and his B.S. in Finance from San Francisco State University.
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Kevin P. Baker, Ph.D.
Vice President, Preclinical Development
Kevin Baker leads preclinical development at FivePrime. He has over 24 years of research experience, with 16 of that in the biotechnology industry. Prior to joining FivePrime in 2006, he was an Associate Director of Protein Therapeutics at Human Genome Sciences, where he led preclinical development teams developing therapeutic antibody programs in autoimmune disease and research teams focused on receptor-ligand interactions in the immune system. He began his career in the biotechnology industry as a scientist at Genentech Inc., where among other activities he led a research group involved in the identification and cloning of genes encoding secreted proteins. Mr. Baker’s education includes postdoctoral training in molecular cell biology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Dundee, Scotland.
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Marc Belsky
Vice President, Finance
Marc Belsky joined FivePrime in October 2009 and brings extensive experience in finance, accounting, treasury and taxation. He joined FivePrime after serving as Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer for Cell Genesys, Inc. Previously, he was the Chief Financial Officer at Active Aero Group and DataWave Systems, Inc. and held senior finance and banking positions at Michigan National Corporation. Mr. Belsky started his career as an auditor with Coopers & Lybrand, is a certified public accountant, a certified treasury professional, and received an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in accounting from Wayne State University. At FivePrime, he leads the company’s Finance, Accounting, Facilities, and Information Technology departments.
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Lauretta Cesario
Vice President, Human Resources
Lauretta Cesario joined FivePrime in August 2009 and brings significant experience in human resources, most recently as Vice President Human Resources at Affymetrix, Inc. where she transformed the HR function into a functionally differentiated team supported by advanced technologies. Prior to Affymetrix, she was formerly with Scios, Inc., Silicon Graphics, Inc., National Semiconductor Corporation and Syntex Corporation. Ms. Cesario received her B.S. in psychology from Loyola University. She heads FivePrime’s human resources group and develops strategic organizational initiatives within its innovative discovery and development environment.
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Brian Wong, M.D., Ph.D.
Vice President, Biology
Brian Wong leads oncology, immunology, antibody therapeutics, and discovery research at Five Prime Therapeutics. Prior to joining FivePrime in January 2009, Dr. Wong was Director of Research in the inflammation disease biology area at Roche, where he was responsible for the small and large molecule rheumatology discovery portfolio. In this role he led immunology, biochemistry, and biomarker discovery teams that supported programs ranging from target discovery to early and late development. He began his career in the biotechnology industry at Rigel Pharmaceuticals in South San Francisco, where his work led to the development of multiple drug candidates which have since entered or are in clinical trials for allergy, asthma, transplantation, and rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Wong received his PhD at The Rockefeller University and his MD from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
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