David is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of SHEPHERD and the Executive Director of the SHEPHERD Foundation. He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Charles River Research Models in Drug Discovery Award Winner, and Spotlight Health Scholar at the Aspen Institute. David previously founded an NGO that worked with refugee children, worked as an undercover investigator against the sexual enslavement of children in Southeast Asia, and was in the training pipeline for Special Operations in the U.S. Military until he was diagnosed with Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma in 2015. David combined the fearlessness, determination, and desire to save the lives of others that had marked his previous endeavors to found SHEPHERD with one goal in mind — to save the life of every rare cancer patient. David holds a B.A. in Economics, Philosophy and French Literature from Transylvania University, a M.A.L.A. in Intellectual History from St. John’s College, a M.Div from Harvard University in Religion, Ethics & Politics, and is currently completing his Executive MBA through the Owner/President Management Program at Harvard Business School.
Pierluigi is co-founder and Chairman & CEO at Genenta Science, a clinical stage immune-gene therapy company, and a spinoff from Prof. Luigi Naldini and San Raffaele Milano, which has raised $20M in two rounds. Currently, the company has phase 1/2 trials ongoing in multiple myeloma and glioblastoma. Genenta has labs and an office in Milano and an office at Alexandria Center LaunchLabs, New York.
Pierluigi is a serial entrepreneur and investor in biotech, for example he invested in Ethical Oncology Science (EOS), a company acquired by Clovis Oncology (Nasdaq: CVLS) for $470M in 2013. He is a co-founder and Board Member at Altheia Science, an autoimmune diseases startup that raised $20M for its Series A round in 2018.
Regarding his personal experience, Pierluigi says, “I’m not a scientist, I’m an entrepreneur in biotech with a financial background. I really saw a cancer cell for the first time when my mom was diagnosed in 2007, a few months before my marriage. She is here with us today and she enjoys spending time her granddaughter, thanks to clinical research.”
He is a former VC, e.g. co-founder and CEO at Quantica SGR, Venture Consultant at Sofinnova Partners, co-founder and Investment Advisor at Axòn Capital, and co-founder and advisor at AurorA-TT. He is a board member of Italia Startup (Italian Association for startups) and Assobiotec (Italian Association of biotech companies). He is a member of Italian Angels for Biotech (business angel group) and Confindustria Life Sciences and Cluster Life Sciences – Lombardia.
Florence Séjourné is an entrepreneur with a passion for life sciences, eager to bring groundbreaking innovation to patients. She is the CEO of Da Volterra, a Paris-based biotech company that develops novel Microbiota Protective Therapies inspired by the vision of a renowned microbiologist, Prof. Antoine Andremont. Its most advanced product, DAV132, is a novel and unique oral phase 2-stage product designed to fight the damaging effects of antibiotics on the intestinal microbiota. It is expected to have important benefits in patients with cancer, the gut microbiome being a major modulator of immunosurveillance of cancer.
Florence graduated from Mines Paritech and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has 20 years of experience in successful entrepreneurial ventures. She co-founded GENFIT, a leading public biotech company innovating in metabolic and liver disease (NASH). She has demonstrated her capacity to set up and lead a highly professional organization from early research drug discovery to late-stage clinical development and market access, and has established numerous fruitful business development and fundraising deals. Many of Florence’s family members and friends have been diagnosed with cancer, and she is motivated to identify new ways to improve treatment and quality of life for those affected.
Mihir Shah is a visionary entrepreneur addressing global health disparities by translating scientific discoveries into affordable and scalable med-tech solutions that improve outcomes. For over 15 years, he’s led the commercialization of several medical innovations impacting many lives. He is the Founder and President of UE Lifesciences, a fast-growing multi-national startup making the hope of cancer early detection a reality with the award-winning innovations, iBreastExam and cervAIcal, benefitting over 400,000 women in 10 countries.
A two-time TED speaker, Mihir’s work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, and other notable publications. As an adjunct faculty member, Mihir teaches Entrepreneurship in Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University.
Ira Spector, PhD is the CEO and Co-Founder of SFA Therapeutics. Ira founded SFA in 2016 after seeing data from a new approach to treating immuno-inflammatory diseases discovered at Temple University in Philadelphia. Ira is a passionate drug developer who has worked on 34 approved drugs, including ToricelTM for kidney cancer (RCC) and MylotargTM for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). SFA is pioneering new treatments for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a hepatitis B-induced liver cancer that causes 880,000 deaths per year; a second drug to prevent relapse/recurrence in leukemia and lymphoma; and a third drug to reduce the incidence of cytokine storm, an often-fatal side effect of CAR-T therapy in treating cancer. Ira has co-founded three previous startups. His father-in-law and brother-in-law died from cancer, his parents had cancer, and both Ira and his wife have had tumors removed. Ira’s passion is personal: to improve the outcomes for patients with cancer.
Jen Horonjeff, PhD is a patient advocate and founder & CEO of Savvy Cooperative. Savvy is a patient co-op that provides an online marketplace for savvy patients to share their insights with healthcare innovators in order to co-create better patient-centered solutions. Savvy grew out of a need that Jen saw as both a patient with multiple chronic illnesses and as an researcher and industry consultant. She noticed that professionals talk about patients–not with actual patients. Patient insights are invaluable, because many patients, like herself, have multiple conditions and co-morbidities they are trying to manage, and their priorities may be different than their care teams’. Jen got her PhD in Environmental Medicine at NYU, is a patient-centered outcomes researcher at Columbia University Medical Center, a Consumer Representative for the FDA, a speaker on the importance of patient engagement, and a longtime non-profit volunteer. In 2015, Jen and her husband rode a tandem bicycle from NYC to Florida to raise awareness and funds for one of the patient charities she supports.
Samuel Wagner is a founder of Batu Biologics and has served as its President and Chief Executive Officer since January of 2014. Mr. Wagner studied engineering at an honors level at the University of California at San Diego, but pursued an entrepreneurial path. Following a successful series of investments in various ventures, Mr. Wagner took a strong interest in biotechnology, where he is self-taught. He has since connected with leading biotechnology minds in San Diego and spearheaded their collaboration while garnering significant private investment. Mr. Wagner hopes to improve the lives of patients with devastating diseases by organizing and leading teams of highly qualified individuals to develop innovative therapeutics. He further seeks to utilize the success of Batu Biologics and future endeavors to drive his thirst for scientific entrepreneurship, and to give back to the communities that inspire him.
Massimo is CEO and Co-founder at Cellply. After 10 years of research experience on microelectronics and microsystems for life science applications, in 2013 he co-founded Cellply with the aim to improve cancer patient survival by developing innovative in-vitro diagnostics solutions. Massimo is a Fulbright scholar. In 2009, he obtained a grant from the Fulbright Commission for a period of study and work in Silicon Valley, where he worked at Nodality Inc., one of the most promising startup companies in the field of personalized medicine. Previously, he served as the CTO at Mindseeds Laboratories, a startup accelerator, and as a consultant at STMicroelectronics. In 2011, he co- founded the Italian Institute for Entrepreneurship, a non-profit organization promoting initiatives for the growth of an entrepreneurship-based ecosystem in Italy. Massimo holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bologna and a Technology Entrepreneurship Certificate from the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, CA. He is inventor of 6 patents and patent families and author of 30 publications appeared on international scientific journals and conference proceedings.
Walid Al-Akkad is an entrepreneur scientist with a background in genetics and tissue engineering and a co-founder of two biotechnology companies. He is the CEO of Orgadel Ltd, whose innovations include topically applied insulin and vaccines. He is also the head of bioengineering and program lead for 3D platforms for oncology and immunotherapy at Engitix Ltd, a company specializing in tissue engineering for disease modelling and regenerative medicine.
Walid kick-started his career at Manchester University, where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree with honours in Genetics. He came into his own as an innovator when he moved to London, where during his Master’s degree in nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London (UCL), he pioneered a now patented technique for rapid and effective decellularisation of human tissue. Having developed a taste for translational medicine, he decided to continue further in his academic career and is currently finalizing his Ph.D. in Regenerative Medicine at UCL.
Gitte is a scientist/CEO with a mission to cure cancer. Gitte started Genomic Expression together with her brother, Morten, after her parents were diagnosed with cancer. The company got off the ground as the diagnostic partner of a $32M “Genome Denmark” project, and she then raised money to establish an independent lab in Boston. Gitte’s dream team to cure cancer has tons of start-up experience ranging from genomics to commercial launch of drugs. The unpleasant truth is that only one out of four cancer treatments prolong life. To help rectify this, Genomic Expression finds the best drug for the patient and the best patient for the drug by sequencing RNA, which is like the software of the cell, instead of focusing on DNA, which is like the hard disk. RNA analysis can show if a tumor will respond to new immune therapies, which are the only kind of therapies that offer a potential cure. Genomic Expression reinvented the business model to generate revenue while clinically validating its OneRNA™ platform, and has established four funded clinical programs aiming to introduce OneRNA™ into the standard of care. The concept is“test before you treat,” which will disrupt the current standard of care paradigm that treats 75% of patients without providing them with any benefits. Gitte has a degree in chemical engineering and previously worked for Novo Nordisk, which she left to start her own consulting company which advised the Danish government and a number of biotech companies. In this position, she has structured several deals with an aggregate value of +$1B. Gitte has raised +$6.5M in grants for Genomic Expression, closed +$1M in collaboration deals, and put the company into the top 10 of the XTC competition in 2016, at which Gitte was invited to pitch Richard Branson at Necker Island. She has also risen to the top of a number of other pitch competitions, including MedTech Top 50 Innovator 2017, #2in the Women’s Founders Pitch 2016, Top 5 diagnostic companies at the Molecular Tri-Conference 2016, and the Red Herring Top 100 2016.