Leadership

Kumar Srinivasan, Ph. D., M.B.A.

President & Chief Executive Officer

Kumar Srinivasan, Ph.D., MBA, in his most recent role served as executive vice president and chief business officer at Turning Point Therapeutics with responsibility for corporate strategy and business development, including collaborations and alliances where he successfully lead the sale of the company to Bristol Myers Squibb for $ 4.1 billion.

Dr. Srinivasan has over 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, most recently as vice president and global head of business development for the BioPharmaceutical business unit of AstraZeneca.

During his 9+-year tenure at AstraZeneca, Dr. Srinivasan was responsible for all in- and out-licensing, business development and alliance management activities within several therapeutic areas. During the pandemic Dr. Srinivasan lead the licensing and global supply agreements for the AstraZeneca’s vaccine and mAb cocktails and contributed significantly to the success of both these programs which made a tremendous impact on global health.

Earlier in his career Dr. Srinivasan held senior business development roles at Wyeth; Vivoryon (formerly known as Probiodrug), a publicly traded biotech based in Germany; and Torrey Pines Therapeutics.

He has a Ph.D from Case Western University in chemistry, did his postdoctoral work at Caltech and has an MBA with a concentration in finance and strategy from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Matthew Cooper, Ph.D.

Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Cooper has over 15 years of experience in oncology and is a founder of Wugen. He conducted his post-doctoral research in hematologic malignancies with Dr. John DiPersio at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Cooper has since held the position of Assistant Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Cooper’s work has focused on developing next generation CAR-T for the treatment of hematologic malignancies, overcoming the barriers that limit the safety and efficacy of adoptive cellular therapies.

Dr. Cooper received his Ph.D. in Cancer Genetics and his B.Sc., with Honors, in Molecular Microbiology from the University of Surrey, in the United Kingdom.

Cherry Thomas, M.D.

Chief Medical Officer

Cherry T. Thomas, M.D. has joined Wugen, Inc. as our Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Thomas is expert in the clinical development of cell therapies with two decades of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry experience, ranging from early to late-stage clinical development, including clinical operations, translational medicine, global regulatory strategy, drug safety, medical affairs and global commercial launch. Dr. Thomas has led drug development programs in hematologic and solid tumor malignancies.

Dr. Thomas was previously the Chief Medical Officer of Catamaran Bio, and Senior Vice President, Head of Clinical Development at Caribou Biosciences where she successfully obtained first IND status and clinical data sets for a CRISPR genome-edited allogeneic cell therapy. Prior to her tenure in cell therapy, Dr. Thomas was VP of oncology clinical development at Array Biopharma, and Pfizer Oncology. She held leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Novartis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Beigene, GSK and Amgen.

Dr. Thomas completed her residency in radiation oncology at the University of Michigan and her internal medicine internship at UCLA. After post-graduate training, she spent 5 years in academic clinical practice and held an NIH NCRR research grant to evaluate a novel use of radionuclides for prostate cancer. Dr. Thomas received her B.A. from UCLA, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, her M.A. in international economics from Johns Hopkins University, and her M.D. from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.

Ayman Kabakibi, Ph.D.

Chief Operating Officer & EVP, R&D

Dr. Kabakibi has over two decades of experience in drug discovery and early development in large pharma and biotech companies. He took several projects, across multiple therapeutic areas, from concept through to clinical development. Most recently, he co-founded Tollnine Inc., an immuno-oncology company developing novel antibody conjugates and served as its Vice President of Biology. Prior to that, he was the Executive Director of Biology at Solstice Biologics, an RNAi and immuno-oncology company exploring novel siRNA technologies for the development of human therapeutics. Before Solstice, Dr. Kabakibi was the Head of Biology and Pharmacology at Traversa Therapeutics. Prior to Traversa, he spent 5 years at Kalypsys Inc. as the Head of Pharmacology. He started his career at Pfizer working on inflammation and metabolic disease targets.

Dr. Kabakibi earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and performed his graduate research at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He earned a Master’s Degree (M.Sc.) in Medical Laboratory Sciences from Northeastern University.

Keith Vendola, M.D., M.B.A.

Chief Financial Officer

Keith Vendola, MD, MBA brings over two decades of experience in healthcare corporate finance, strategy, and operations. As a Silicon Valley-based executive and adviser and NYC-based investment banker, Dr. Vendola has been a company builder involved in more than 50 transactions and closed on over $2 billion in financings and strategic deals.

Most recently, as CFO at IO Biotech, Dr. Vendola’s responsibilities included financings, corporate development, investor relations, and corporate communications. He assembled an international operational team, spearheaded Wall Street interactions, closed on a $84 million crossover round and two Merck partnerships, and led the $115M IPO and Nasdaq listing.

Dr. Vendola previously served as CFO and Chief Strategy Officer at Rezolute. Responsibilities included strategy, financings, corporate development, and investment banking relationships. He aligned messaging, presented across the Street, closed on over $90 million, and led the Company’s Nasdaq listing.

Dr. Vendola previously served as Chief of Staff to the CEO and VP of Competitive Strategy and IR at Coherus BioSciences while the market cap exceeded $1 billion. Responsibilities included building relationships on Wall Street, framing corporate strategy, and executing multiple financings, which together raised $300 million.

Earlier, Dr. Vendola served as a management consultant at Booz & Co. and investment banker within the healthcare groups of Banc of America Securities (now BofA Securities) and Chase (now JPMorgan).

Keith received his MBA in finance from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, MD from Dartmouth Medical School, and BA in psychology from Holy Cross, where he graduated with honors. He completed a research fellowship at the NIH, where he authored multiple papers.

Mark Lewis, Ph.D.

VP, Finance & Business Operations

Dr. Lewis has over 10 years of biotechnology and oncology research experience. Before joining Wugen, Dr. Lewis was appointed Venture Capital Fellow at BioGenerator (2018-2019), an evergreen investor that creates, develops and funds innovative companies and entrepreneurs in the St. Louis region. Prior to completing his doctoral work, Dr. Lewis held several positions at Monsanto Company (2006-2013), leading efforts to validate and implement novel sequencing technologies and on-board data management systems.

Dr. Lewis received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and M.Sc. in Biology from the Washington University in St. Louis and his B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the Eastern Connecticut State University.

Laura Simpson, Ph.D.

VP, Regulatory Affairs

Dr. Simpson has 18 years of regulatory experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. She was most recently Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs at Regeneron, where she had roles of increasing responsibility, leading the global marketing applications for approval of Regeneron’s anti-PD-1 antibody LIBTAYO® in advanced non-melanoma skin cancers. Prior to Regeneron, Laura spent several years at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the Office of Clinical Research in New York City.

Dr. Simpson has a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Tulane University in New Orleans and completed her postdoctoral work at the Institute for Cancer Genetics at Columbia University in New York City.

Rob Dallimore

VP, Quality

Rob has over 30 years of experience developing and licensing new drugs and vaccines, with 25 years in Quality roles. Prior to joining Wugen, Rob was Senior Vice President, Quality at Innovative Cellular Therapeutics developing a novel CAR-T candidate in solid tumor. At MacroGenics, Rob was Vice President of Quality, supporting the clinical development and licensure of margetuximab (Margenza®) and in partnership with Incyte, retifanlimab (Zynyz®). Rob also held Quality Leadership roles at Teva Pharmaceuticals supporting development of biosimilars, innovative antibodies and recombinant proteins, Intercell developing vaccine candidates, and MedImmune (including FluMist® licensure).

Ghee Kim

VP, CMC Operations

Ghee has more than 20 years of technical and operational leadership experience in the biotech industry. He was most recently the Vice President of Operations and General Manager of Cellipont Bioservices San Diego site. Prior to Cellipont, he led the formation of the contract manufacturing division at Dendreon, a commercial Cell Therapy company. Ghee also has deep experience with taking investigational products from early to late phase at companies including Sangart, Emergent and Neurana.

Ghee’s expertise shines in areas such as technical transfer, process development, process validation, facilities and engineering, operational strategy, supply chain and overall lifecycle management.

Jim Faulkner, Ph.D.

Acting CTO

Jim Faulkner is a highly experienced, innovative biopharmaceutical development leader with specialist skills in gene and cell therapy. He has had significant involvement in over 25 different therapeutics that have successfully been taken into the clinic including multiple gene therapy and CAR-T assets.

Jim currently operates an independent consultancy company advising clients on diverse aspects of gene and cell therapy development. He is also a Non-Executive Director on a number of Boards including the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult.

Jim is a former Venture Partner at Apple Tree Partners (ATP). Whilst at ATP he also served as Chief Technical Officer at Ascidian Therapeutics, a gene therapy company developing novel Exon Editing technology.

Prior to ATP, Jim was Head of Product Delivery at Autolus Ltd, a clinical-stage CAR-T company spun out of University College London (UCL). He was a member of the core senior team at Autolus that went from start-up to successful IPO in 3 years.

Jim holds a degree in Biotechnology from the University of Leeds and completed a PhD in Molecular Biology whilst at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research. After starting his career at British Biotech, Jim joined GlaxoSmithKline where he held a series of increasingly senior roles in biopharmaceutical development.

Next in our story

Board of Directors