Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Harry Raftopoulos is Vice President and Head of Late-Stage Oncology Clinical Development at Bayer Pharmaceuticals. He joined Bayer in 2017 initially leading the Early development of Bayer’s Immuno-Oncology portfolio and was subsequently promoted to his current role in 2019. Prior to Bayer, Dr. Raftopoulos led the study teams responsible for the execution and approval of the pivotal chemotherapy-pembrolizumab combination studies in lung cancer at Merck (MSD).
He received his medical degree (MBBCh) from the University of Witwatersrand Medical School in South Africa and completed fellowship and residency at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. As an attending physician at Columbia and later at Northwell, he focused on innovation for patients with lung cancers, leading studies both on research in new agents and on supportive care. During his industry career, he has continued his emphasis on science with patient centricity heading teams that led to approvals for pembrolizumab, larotrectinib and darolutamide. He is an author/ co-author on over 30 papers and review articles.

Michael is CEO of Arrakis Therapeutics. In addition, Mike currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Novartis Venture Fund, Obsidian Therapeutics, and Scholar Rock (NASDAQ: SRRK) and on the Scientific Advisory Board of FutuRx. Previously, Mike was Chief Executive Officer of Obsidian Therapeutics, a venture-funded company focused on applying synthetic biology to gene and cell therapies. Prior to Obsidian, Mike was Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Padlock Therapeutics, a venture-funded company focused on autoimmune disease, acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2016. From 2012-2013, Mike served as Senior Vice President, Early-Stage Pipeline, at Biogen Idec, with responsibility for managing the company’s development programs through clinical proof-of-concept. He joined Biogen Idec in March 2012 following its acquisition of Stromedix, a venture-funded company focused on fibrosis and organ failure, where he was Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Prior to founding Stromedix in 2006, Mike served as Executive Vice President, Research at Biogen Idec, with responsibility for the company’s discovery research activities in Cambridge and San Diego. From 1994 to 1999, Mike was at ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, where he was Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer. From 1986 to 1994, Mike was on the scientific staff of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where his research focused on mechanisms of signal transduction and gene regulation. Mike was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and a SB in Life Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Steve Hitchcock is Head of Research for Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd.  He joined Takeda in 2012 via Takeda’s acquisition of Envoy Therapeutics where he was Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery and also held the position of Adjunct Professor at The Scripps Research Institute. Prior to Takeda, Dr. Hitchcock had served in senior leadership positions in the research organizations at Eli Lilly and Amgen. He received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from The University of Nottingham (U.K) and completed a NATO postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University. Over a career spanning 23 years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology arena, Dr. Hitchcock has been fortunate to work with teams that have developed therapeutic drug candidates spanning a variety of disease indications. He places a strong emphasis on early establishment of pharmacodynamic-pharmacokinetic relationships and translational biomarkers, including the development of drug-target occupancy tracers, and is a recognized expert in the area of blood-brain barrier permeability and small molecule entry into the CNS. Dr. Hitchcock also has a keen interest in structure-based and computational property- and ligand-based drug design principles and applications of biophysics and fragment-based approaches to drug discovery. He is a co-author on over 70 patents, patent applications, papers and review articles.

John is Senior Director, Neuroscience External Innovation at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, London.  In this role John uses his drug discovery and scientific experience to identify and advance external opportunities in the areas of Alzheimer’s Disease and Mood Disorders.

Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, since November 2014, John was Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust.  Previous to that he worked at Eli Lilly and Company at their neuroscience research campus near London, UK.  At Lilly he led a team of labs dedicated to identifying new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

John’s scientific interests centre on synaptic mechanisms in circuit function, and how dysfunction causes psychiatric and neurological disease.  John obtained a BSc in Pharmacology and Biochemistry at the University of Southampton in 1990 and remained at Southampton for his graduate work, studying mechanisms of epilepsy with Prof Howard Wheal.

In 1994 he joined Dr Robert Malenka’s laboratory at University of California San Francisco working on mechanisms of long-term synaptic plasticity in hippocampus and somatosensory cortex, also in close collaboration with Dr Roger Nicoll.  After completion of this post doc position, John joined Prof Graham Collingridge’s laboratory at the University of Bristol back in the UK in 1996, where he completed a one year post doc before establishing his own lab there. He rose up through the ranks to full Professor before leaving in 2004 to set up a lab at the Intramural Program at NINDS/NIH in Bethesda, MD, USA studying mechanisms and roles of synaptic plasticity in developing cortical circuits.

Tetsuyuki Maruyama is Executive Director at Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing data relevant to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.  Prior to that he served as Chief Scientific Officer at The Dementia Discovery Fund, a specialist venture capital fund. Tetsu’s background is in neuroscience, having received his PhD from Stanford University and conducted post-doctoral research at Yale University. After a number of years in academics, with faculty positions at the University of Minnesota in the US and Cardiff University in the UK, Tetsu moved to industry, first at Merck Sharpe and Dohme’s Neuroscience Research Centre in the UK and then at GSK, where he was the Director of the GSK Centre for Cognitive and Neurodegenerative Disorders in Singapore. In 2010 he moved to Takeda Pharmaceutical Company in Japan, first as Head of CNS Research and then as Head of Global Drug Discovery, a position he held until his appointment to DDF.

Prof. Harats is CEO and Director at VBL Therapeutics. Prof. Harats has more than 20 years of experience in research in the field of medicine and biotechnology, as well as a strong background in management of early- to mid-stage biotechnology companies.  He is also a professional and experienced consultant specializing in Biotechnology/Pharmaceutical healthcare companies. A professor of medicine in the department of internal medicine and the department of human molecular genetics and biochemistry at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Prof. Harats is the President of the Bert Strassburger Lipid Center, chair the division of R&D and the Chairman of the IRB committee of the Sheba Medical Center, supervising about 2000 clinical trials annually.
Prof. Harats received his M.D. from the Hadassah Medical School, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Following an internship at Sheba Medical Center and a residency in Medicine at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, he conducted a fellowship in pulmonary medicine and research in Molecular Genetics at The University of California in San Francisco (UCSF). He was then a Visiting Scientist at Syntex Discovery Research for three years. Prof. Harats published more than 180 peer-reviewed research papers and chapters in books, his publications rewarded him with numerous prizes and grants.

Marie Lindner, MD worked in executive roles in pharmaceutical, biotech, venture capital, start-up and medtech companies with experience across therapeutic areas and modalities and between business and clinical development over 30 years.  She was most recently recruited to start a team at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, focused on finding new trends in science and medicine.  Dr. Lindner now retired, maintains several consultancies/boards.

Before Novartis, Marie led gasteroenterology licensing at Shire, after five years as a Venture Partner at BioAdvance, a startup biotech VC group, serving on 8 startup boards.  Previously she worked in business/clinical development at five other medium/large biotech/pharma companies, and co-founded two startups.

Dr. Lindner was board certified in internal medicine and clinical nutrition, did a general surgery residency and fellowship in atherosclerosis/lipid metabolism. She was a faculty member at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Bernhard Kirschbaum, PhD, studied and spent his early career as a researcher in biochemistry and physiological chemistry at the University of Konstanz, Germany, receiving his PhD in 1989. He moved on to work at the Rockefeller University in New York and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Subsequently, he joined the pharmaceutical industry where he covered a broad range of technological and disease areas. Before joining various biotech companies as chairman and board member, respectively, he was head of Global Research and Early Development at Merck Serono.  In this role he was a member of the Pharmaceutical Executive Committee. Prior to joining Merck KGaA in 2005 he was Vice President Discovery Research, Global Head of Therapeutic Domains “Thrombosis & Angiogenesis” for Sanofi-Aventis. He also worked for Aventis, Hoechst Marion Roussel in various senior positions.