Leadership Team
The Company Founders and Management bring the key requirements to develop and bring ExaCELLs to patients and to the market: (i) scientific expertise in immunology, cell reprogramming, and gene editing (ii) drug development experience (iii) start-up business experiences.
Gregory Fiore MD
Co-Founder, President and CEO
- Dr. Fiore is a co-founder and is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Exacis. He is a pharmaceutical/biotechnology executive and entrepreneur and is a co-founder and former CEO of Sollis Therapeutics, where during his tenure as CEO he raised ~$50M in funding from State grants as well as strategic venture investors. He oversaw the regulatory strategy development and initiation of pivotal clinical trials for the Company’s lead compound.
- Before this he provided C-level medical support as consultant and acting Chief Medical Officer for several early stage biotechnology companies through a consultancy he founded in 2014. Prior to that he was the first CMO of The Medicines Company (MDCO) and held a variety of leadership roles at MDCO, Merck and Abbott Laboratories after spending time as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company.
- Dr. Fiore completed Internal Medicine internship and residency as well as received clinical Pulmonary / Critical Care training at Harvard Medical School following his graduation as class valedictorian with his MD degree from New York Medical College.
- Dr. Fiore serves on several Medical and Business Advisory Committees / Boards. He is on the Executive Board of the Institute of Neuromodulation (ION), the Scientific Advisory Board for Advera Health Analytics, the Business Advisory Board for the Advanced Group of Companies, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Clinical Leader. He serves as an advisor to Fiore Healthcare Advisors and SSI Strategy as well as several biotechnology companies and previously served on the Board of Dubset Media Holdings and the Executive Committee for the Safety of Oral Anticoagulants (SOAR) Registry.
Gregory Fiore MD
Co-Founder, President and CEO
Matt Angel PhD
Co-Founder & Chair of Exacis SAB
- Dr. Angel is a pioneer in the field of mRNA therapeutics, and a prolific inventor, holding more than 80 patents covering mRNA, nucleic-acid delivery, gene-editing, and cell-reprogramming technologies.
- Dr. Angel serves as President and is a co-founder of Factor Bioscience, a cell engineering technology development company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to co-founding Factor Bioscience, he was a member of MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Biodefense Systems Group, where he developed technologies for the detection and mitigation of biological weapons threats.
- Dr. Angel received his B.S. in engineering from Princeton University, and his PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied the innate immune system and its response to exogenous mRNA.
- In addition to serving as its CSO, he serves on the Board of Directors of Exacis.
Matt Angel PhD
Co-Founder and Chair of SAB
Dirk Huebner, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Dirk Huebner is the Exacis CMO, almost 30 years of academic and industry based clinical drug development experience within the fields of oncology and immune-oncology. Over these years Dr. Huebner led multiple clinical programs in hematologic as well as solid tumor malignancies from phase 1 to phase 3 development stages. Prior to joining Exacis Dr. Huebner served as the CMO of Mersana with oversight of development of the ADC pipeline. Prior to joining Mersana, Dr. Huebner served as Vice President and Head of Development for Boston Biomedical where he built a robust clinical development team and oversaw the development of several early-stage compounds as well as of the napabucasin phase 3 program.
Prior to that, he spent six years at Millennium / Takeda Oncology as Executive Medical Director where he served as the global clinical lead for ADCETRIS® (brentuximab vedotin), an ADC that is indicated for the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma and certain CD30 positive T-cell lymphomas. In that role, he led the regulatory approval of ADCETRIS in Europe and the design and implementation of the subsequent registration-enabling studies for the compound. Prior to Takeda, he held global roles of increasing responsibility in global clinical drug development at Genzyme, Roche, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dr. Huebner received his Medical Doctor degree from Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany and pursued a medical residency at the Department of Urology, University Hospital Eppendorf, Hamburg.
Dirk Huebner MD
Chief Medical Officer
James Pan PhD
Head, Discovery and Development
- Dr. Pan has over 20 years of experience in both small molecule and biologics drug discovery and development, research operation and management. He has successfully built and led discovery research teams and helped advance multiple research programs into the clinic. Prior to joining Exacis, he was Vice President at The Centre for the Commercialization of Antibodies and Biologics in Toronto, Canada where he oversaw the entire preclinical pipeline and partnership programs.
- He served as Scientific Leader at The Toronto Recombinant Antibody Centre and as Staff Scientist and Head of Drug Discovery and Therapeutics at Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research, University Health Network in Canada.
- Prior to this, he held various scientific and management positions at Affinium Pharmaceuticals and Genentech, Inc. Dr. Pan also co-founded several startup companies including ModMab Therapeutics, a recent spinout from University of Toronto.
- He has extensive knowledge in cancer biology, immunology, cytokine and receptor signaling, pharmacology and animal models of disease as well as expertise in antibody and protein engineering. Dr. Pan obtained his PhD from University of Toronto and pursued post-doctoral training at both University of Toronto and University of Michigan.
James Pan PhD
Co-Founder
Dimitrios Goundis PhD
Chief Business Officer
- Dimitrios Goundis has over 30 years of experience in the life science sector. Prior to joining Exacis, he was CEO of MaxiVAX, a private Swiss Immuno-oncology company. Between 2009 and 2015, he worked for The Medicines Company (NASDAQ: MDCO) both in the US and Europe, in various senior roles, including Business Development and Global Head of R & D.
- From 2000-2008, he was with Speedel in Switzerland, a company acquired by Novartis, as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Managing Director of Speedel Experimenta, the discovery unit targeting cardiovascular therapies. Prior to this he held senior project management and research scientist roles at The Medicines Company and F. Hoffman-La Roche in Basel, including immunology, oncology and the central nervous system.
- Dimitrios was awarded his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of London, and a certificate in investment management from the London Business School.
Dimitrios Goundis PhD
Chief Business Officer
Bryan Jones PhD
Head, Technical Operations
- Bryan Jones, Ph.D. has more than 30 years of experience with Biotech and Specialty Pharmaceutical companies with roles in both Product and Business Development.
- Prior to joining Exacis, he was COO and Co-Founder of Sollis Therapeutics where he led the technology transfer from Medtronic, the manufacturing of a drug/device combination, and the execution of Phase 3 Sciatica program.
- Prior to that, he was Vice President of Operations at Sorrento Therapeutics where he led the Resiniferatoxin program, including manufacturing, toxicology, and clinical planning as well as being involved in both monoclonal antibody production, ADC research, and cell therapy development.
- He has held roles of increasing responsibility including Chief Operating Officer of two startup companies: Sherrington and Mt. Cook. He has worked in Business
- Development at Amylin, and Kemia. Earlier in his career, he worked in research at Bristol-Myers Squibb and on products such as Cialis ® with ICOS.
- Dr. Jones received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Washington and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Biochemistry for Iowa State University.
Bryan Jones PhD
Head, Technical Operations
The Future of Cell Therapies
Exacis is developing advanced cellular therapeutics with the aim to deliver potent, targeted, effective cell therapies to harness the human immune system and cure cancer. This is the future.