Board of Directors
Robert K. Brooks, JD: Founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer
Robert Brooks brings 30 years of biotechnology and capital market experience. He serves as Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company. He serves on the Board of Directors of Medtherapy, Inc., a start-up global cell manufacturer. He also is managing director of US Global Capital, LLC, a private investment company. In 2015, he founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Aurora Biopharma, a biotechnology company with a mission to develop CAR T-cell therapy. In 2012, he founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Medvax Technologies, a clinical stage biotechnology company seeking to develop cancer vaccine. In 2010, he founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Metabogenix Technologies Inc. to research cancer metabolism. From 2000 to 2010, Mr. Brooks practiced corporate law. From 1987 till 1999, he was employed in the financial industry. He holds a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Miami, Florida, and undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree, Cum Laude, in biology.
Marc Lippman, MD: Director
Dr. Marc Lippman is a Professor of Oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Previously, he was the Kathleen and Stanley Glaser Professor of Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine and the Deputy Director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. He has been a founding Board of Director of Seattle Genetics since 2000. He was Head of the Medical Breast Cancer Section of the Medicine Branch of the National Cancer Institute. He has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and one of the standard texts on breast cancer. Dr. Lippman holds an M.D. from Yale, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, and a B.A. from Cornell University, where he graduated magna cum laude.
Bikash Verma, MD DMV: Director
Dr. Bikash Verma is the founder and CEO of Med Therapy, a Boston based manufacturer of cell & gene products. He has been Head of Medical Affairs at Celyad, and before that CMO at Aurora Biopharma. He was Medical Director at GSK and Novartis, during which he managed over twenty immunology-related trials encompassing over ten thousand subjects across more than a hundred clinical trial sites in US and abroad and leading to successful licensure of several products. Prior to joining the biotech industry, he worked at Harvard Medical School as Medical Director, faculty member and scientist; and in public health and clinical care as an Epidemiologist in the Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Centers of Disease Control (CDC) surveillance projects and at the International Health Organization as its Chief Medical Officer. Dr Verma holds an M.D., D.V.M., M.S. and M.VSc degrees and significant post-doctoral training in a number of areas.
Robert Clarke, PhD: Director
Dr. Robert Clarke is Chief Executive Officer of Kinaset Therapeutics, where he completed a private institutional Series A raise of $40 million dollars. He was previously Chief Executive Officer at Pulmatrix Inc. (NASDAQ:PULM), a clinical-stage respiratory drug delivery company, from 2012 to 2019 and successfully brought the company public in 2015. During his tenure as CEO, Pulmatrix raised more than $50 million in public equity, $80 million in venture capital funding and more than $10 million in non-dilutive funding to support the company’s development programs. He holds Board seats at several institutions including EnBiotix, Johns Hopkins University and Boston University College of Engineering. Robert holds a Ph.D. in physiology from Johns Hopkins University and completed his post-doctoral training in respiratory biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University.