The FivePrime management and scientific team possess significant biotherapeutic discovery and development expertise. They are committed to the rapid identification, clinical development and commercialization of breakthrough biotherapeutics.
|
|
|
Lewis T. "Rusty" Williams,
M.D., Ph.D.
Executive Chairman and Founder
Rusty Williams is the founder of FivePrime, serves as its Executive Chairman and leads its research and development efforts. 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 is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Williams previously served on the Duke University Board of Trustees. He presently serves on the Boards of Juvaris BioTherapeutics, Beckman Coulter, Inc. and The Berklee College of Music. Dr. Williams received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University and trained in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
|
|
|
Julia P. Gregory
President and Chief Executive officer
Ms. Gregory brings extensive
biotechnology experience in financing, strategic alliances and transactions,
operations and executive management. She was formerly executive vice president
and chief financial officer of Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where she was
responsible for the company’s financing strategies, mergers and acquisitions,
business operations and all financial management and accounting functions. She
raised approximately $1 billion in public and private equity transactions,
product development financing and strategic business development transactions,
including Lexicon’s $220 million initial public offering, a private equity
agreement for $550 million in financing and a $60 million product financing
collaboration. Prior to joining Lexicon, Ms. Gregory served as the head of
investment banking for Punk, Ziegel & Company, a specialty investment
banking firm focusing on technology and healthcare and served as the head of the
firm's life sciences practice. Prior to Punk, Ziegel & Company, she was an
investment banker with Dillon, Read & Co., Inc., where she represented life
sciences companies beginning in 1986. Ms. Gregory is a member of the board of
directors of The Global TB Alliance for Drug Development and the Lauder
Foundation's Institute for the Study of Aging, Inc. She received her B.A. in
international affairs from George
Washington University and her M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
|
|
 |
W. Michael Kavanaugh, M.D.
Senior Vice President, Research and Development
Mike Kavanaugh 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.
|
|
 |
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 PhD in molecular biology from the University of Dundee, Scotland.
|
|
|
Marc Belsky
Vice President, Finance
Marc Belsky brings extensive experience in finance, accounting, treasury and taxation. He joins 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 will lead the company’s finance and accounting group.
|
|
 |
Lauretta Cesario
Vice President, Human Resources
Lauretta Cesario brings significant experience in human resources, recently as vice president human resources with 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 will head FivePrime’s human resources group and provide strategic organizational initiatives within its innovative discovery and development environment.
|
|
 |
Amy L. Tsui Collins, Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A.
Vice President, Legal Affairs
Amy Collins' background in research, licensing and patent law enables her to take a comprehensive approach in building and protecting FivePrime's intellectual property. Prior to joining FivePrime, Ms. Collins worked as an independent consultant to a number of startup companies on patent and patent strategy matters. Formerly, she was the founder and chief executive officer of BioLicense.com, a company focused on providing online information pertaining to technologies available for licensing. She previously worked for Geron Corporation as vice president, intellectual property, and for Chiron Corporation where she served as a vice president, head of business development, in the Chiron Technologies unit, and as corporate patent counsel in the legal group. Earlier in her career she worked as a patent attorney in the law firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett and Dunner. Ms. Collins received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, her J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN, and her M.B.A. from Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, CA.
|
|
 |
Jeffrey T. Finer, M.D., Ph.D.
Vice President, Discovery
Jeff Finer applies his broad expertise in drug discovery, clinical medicine, biological sciences, chemistry, and engineering to leading FivePrime’s efforts in discovery research. Prior to joining FivePrime, Dr. Finer served as Director, Drug Discovery Technologies at Cytokinetics from 1998-2007 where he led a multidisciplinary team responsible for lead discovery and the development of new platform technologies to help speed drug discovery. His team at Cytokinetics discovered lead molecules for several novel protein targets across a variety of therapeutic indications including oncology, cardiovascular diseases, muscle disorders, infectious diseases, and ophthalmology. These efforts led to the development of 5 first-in-class drugs that are currently in clinical development. Dr. Finer received B.S. degrees in Chemistry and Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine. He trained in Internal Medicine at Stanford and in Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School.
|
|
|
Harold Keer, M.D., Ph.D.
Vice President, Clinical Development
Harold Keer brings 15 years of experience with clinical trials in the academic and biotech setting to his role of leading FivePrime’s clinical development group. Prior to joining FivePrime, Dr. Keer was Vice President Clinical Development at Exelixis, where from 2002-2008 he took over 10 oncology products into clinical trials in phases 1-3, and was instrumental in building their clinical development organization. He worked in clinical development at Titan Pharmaceuticals prior to joining Exelixis. He completed subspecialty training in Medical Oncology at Stanford University Hospital and Medical School and currently serves there as a Voluntary Clinical Educator/Adjunct Clinical Faculty. Dr. Keer received his B.A., M.D. and PhD. at Northwestern University and trained in Internal Medicine as a fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.
|
|
|
Aron Knickerbocker
Vice President, Business Development
Aron Knickerbocker brings substantial experience in business development, licensing and corporate development. Mr. Knickerbocker joins FivePrime from Genentech, Inc. where he most recently served as senior director, business development, leading Genentech’s oncology business development team and responsible for evaluating and negotiating strategic alliances. He has worked previously with Alza Corporation, where he managed licensing transactions as their 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 B.A. degree in biology from Washington University in St. Louis, and his M.B.A. degree from the University of Michigan. Mr. Knickerbocker will lead FivePrime’s business development and licensing activities to accelerate advancement of its drug pipeline and continue to mine the company’s robust discovery platform for innovative biologics.
|
|
 |
Bart Wise, Ph.D., J.D.
Vice President, Intellectual Property
Bart Wise possesses substantial expertise in various aspects of intellectual property law practice through his years of experience working as in-house counsel for biotech and pharma companies and as outside counsel in a law firm. Prior to joining FivePrime, Mr. Wise served as senior intellectual property counsel at Geron Corporation, where he handled patent matters related to cell therapies. Prior to Geron Corporation, he served as a patent attorney at Roche Molecular Systems, where he handled patent matters relating to nucleic acid diagnostic testing. He also worked as an attorney at the law firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett and Dunner, where he was engaged in patent litigation, interferences, patent drafting and patent prosecution matters. Mr. Wise received his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Kansas, his Ph.D. in the Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
|
|
 |
Brian Wong, M.D., Ph.D.
Vice President, Immunology & Discovery Research
Brian Wong leads immunology, antibody therapeutics, and discovery research at Five Prime Therapeutics. Prior to joining FivePrime, 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.
|
|
 |
|
Origins