Panelists

Please check back as panelist information is continually being updated!

Bringing Innovation to Market 

Christian joined ATV in 2006 and focuses on healthcare investments, specifically in the biotechnology, life science and diagnostic sectors in the firm's Waltham, MA office. He is actively involved with Hydra Biosciences.

His background spans life sciences, biopharmaceuticals, venture capital, business development and consulting services. Prior to ATV, Christian was Senior Director of business development for Gemin X Biotechnologies where he was responsible for partnerships, licensing and M&A activities. During his tenure he completed twelve transactions including licensing of assets to expand the company pipeline, research partnerships and a company acquisition. Prior to joining Gemin X, Christian worked for International Real Returns as the member of the VC team focused on healthcare sector investments. He also worked for Booz Allen & Hamilton, advising biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients on a range of strategy projects addressing technology commercialization, global R&D, portfolio optimization and mergers and acquisitions.

Christian was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. He holds a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from Columbia and a B.Sc. from McGill University.

Daniel Curran joined Millennium Pharmaceuticals in 1999 as a Director of Business Development. Dan rejoined the corporate development group in 2006 as vice president and is responsible for strategic business transactions for Millennium. He has served as the primary negotiator of numerous transactions with major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies during his ten year tenure at Millennium, including the recent acquisition of Millennium by Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to Millennium, Dan’s previous professional experiences include a business development role in the Product Planning and Acquisition group at DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine and served as Chief Medical Resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Dan holds an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of Business, and a B.S. in Chemistry from King’s College. A native of Pennsylvania, Dan currently resides in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Mr. Dhanda joined T2 Biosystems in January, 2008. He brings over a dozen years of experience in the Life Science industry, both in biotechnology and medical devices. Prior to joining T2 Biosystems, Mr. Dhanda worked in marketing at Boston Scientific Urology, where he led the team responsible for the Access, Visualization and Laser Lithotripsy franchises, representing roughly $100 million in annual revenue. His responsibilities included upstream and downstream management of mature and breakthrough, platform technologies. Prior to Boston Scientific, Mr. Dhanda worked in Business Development at Interleukin Genetics, where he held roles of increasing responsibility. While there, he helped negotiate the firm’s acquisition by Alticor, Inc., as well as multiple other deals. Mr. Dhanda has also worked at Mosaic Technologies, a platform diagnostics company, as well as Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Medical Center.

Mr. Dhanda received his MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and his BA from Wesleyan University. He is a former committee member of the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, as well as a Senior Fellow of the Jamestown Project at Harvard Law School. Mr. Dhanda is the author of several publications, an inventor on numerous patents and applications, and has authored the first book to address the crossroads between industry and bioethics/public policy, entitled Guiding Icarus: Merging Bioethics with Corporate Interests.

Ms. Fendrock is co-founder of Hepregen Corporation and has been serving as President and CEO since 2007. Hepregen Corporation is developing bioengineered solutions for drug development. The company is focused on commercializing, HepatoPaCTM , a tissue engineered microliver platform. HepatoPaCTM has utility for assessing the toxicity and metabolism of drugs in development and as a liver model for drug discovery. Ms. Fendrock comes to Hepregen with more than twenty years of commercial experience in the life sciences industry. As Vice President at Genzyme Corporation, Ms. Fendrock was responsible for the commercial planning and market launch of biosurgical products to treat post operative adhesions. Prior to Genzyme, Ms. Fendrock held positions as Director of Business Development, Somatix, Inc., a start-up gene therapy company, and Project Manager, Genetics Institute (now Wyeth). Ms. Fendrock also has been a business consultant for the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the Biomedical Enterprise Program (a collaboration with The Sloan School at MIT) and Acusphere, Inc. Ms. Fendrock holds a B.A. degree with a major in molecular biology from Wellesley College, an S.M. degree from MIT in interdisciplinary science and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Jonathan Hodgson joined L.E.K. Consulting in 2005 and works exclusively in the Life Sciences practice. Jonathan has counseled companies across many life sciences sectors, including biotech, pharma, specialty pharma and medical devices. His project work has spanned asset valuation, therapeutic area prioritization, portfolio strategy and corporate strategy. Jonathan co-authored “Biopharma: Beyond the First Product”, published in In Vivo: The Business and Medicine Report, and has lectured on valuation approaches and techniques at the Mass Biotech Council. Prior to joining L.E.K. Consulting, Jonathan worked at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in roles including business and corporate development, corporate finance, commercial strategy, and corporate strategy. He also held consulting positions at The Planning Technologies Group, Braxton Associates and Deloitte Consulting. Jonathan received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and graduated from Dartmouth College with degrees in Economics and Geology.

Emerging Markets: The future of Pharma growth?

Jonathan Fleming is the Managing General Partner of Oxford Bioscience Partners, an international venture capital firm specializing in life science technology based investments, with offices in Boston and Connecticut. Mr. Fleming has been in the investment business for over twenty years, starting and financing growth companies in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Prior to joining OBP in 1996, he was a Founding General Partner of MVP Ventures in Boston, MA. He began his investment career with TVM Techno Venture Management in Munich, Germany. Mr. Fleming has also co-founded Medica Venture Partners, a venture capital investment firm specializing in early stage healthcare and biotechnology companies in Israel. Mr. Fleming holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Fleming is on the board of Asterand plc (LSE: ATD) and is a director of several private companies including Leerink Swann, a Boston based investment bank specializing in healthcare companies. Mr. Fleming is a Trustee of the Museum of Science in Boston, a Member of the Board of the New England Healthcare Institute and a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Business.

James Geraghty is Senior Vice President and an Officer of Genzyme Corporation. He was President of Genzyme Europe from 1998-2002, and in 2004 became General Manager of Genzyme’s cardiovascular business. He serves as a Director of GTC Biotherapeutics (formerly Genzyme Transgenics Corporation), where he was Chairman from 1998 to 2001, and President and C.E.O. from its founding in 1993, and as a member of the boards of Myosix SA, and Genetix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mr. Geraghty also oversees Genzyme’s Humanitarian Assistance for Neglected Diseases program, under which Genzyme helps develop innovative therapeutic programs on a non-commercial basis. He has structured Genzyme’s partnerships with The Broad Institute and MMV, with DNDi, with Brazil’s Oswald Cruz Institute, and with India’s ICGEB. He served as Co-Chair of the executive committee for BIO 2007 and as an Advisory Board member of the Partnering for Global Health Forum.

A graduate of the Yale Law School, he has published articles in the Yale Law Journal and other legal publications. He holds a masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.

Ben Rymzo is a Principal at The Frankel Group, a boutique management consulting firm serving the life science industry. Ben first joined the firm in 1999, and rejoined the firm in 2007. He has advised pharmaceutical and biotech companies on commercialization and market entry strategy, R&D investment prioritization, corporate strategy, BD strategy, forecasting, competitive product positioning, and regional and country-specific growth strategy in US, EU, and emerging markets. His work has spanned large and small molecule therapeutics and vaccines, and has included most major therapeutic areas for clients ranging from large pharma and biotech companies to smaller development-stage companies and their investors. Previously, Ben worked in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice at Deloitte Consulting. Ben received a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from NYU Stern.

Professor Stern is a Visiting Professor at the MIT Sloan School and the Joseph and Carole Levy Professor of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Stern is the co-organizer of the NBER Innovation Policy and the Economy Working Group and a Senior Fellow of the Searle Center on Law, Regulation and Economic Growth. He is an Associate Editor of Management Science, the Journal of Industrial Economics, the International Journal of Industrial Organization, serves on the Board of Management of the International Schumpeter Society, and has served on the editorial boards of the Antitrust Law Journal and the Journal of Business and Economics Statistics. In 2005, Stern was awarded the first Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship.

Professor Stern graduated with a BA degree in Economics from New York University, and received his PhD in Economics from Stanford University in 1996. From 1995-2001, Stern was Assistant Professor of Management at the Sloan School at MIT, and, from 2001-2003, Stern was a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution.

For over 12 years, Steve has focused on developing product marketing and strategy development for the Life Science industry. His project work includes new product launch strategies, value assessment, market access, sales forecasting, post-launch competitive positioning and pricing. He has worked with well established pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as development stage companies. His project experience spans North America, the EU, Latin America, and Asia. Steve has worked and lived in the US, Germany, Italy and India.

Beyond Electronic Medical Records: Building collaborative networks that improve care and reduce costs

In 1997, Jonathan Bush co-founded athenahealth as a women's health practice management company. Today, through its national network, athenaNet®, athenahealth has emerged as one of the largest and fastest growing providers of on-demand billing, practice management and electronic health record services to medical groups in the United States, but the vision is the same: bring process integrity to the delivery of health care. Before athenahealth, Bush was an EMT for the City of New Orleans, a combat medic in the U.S Army, and a managed care strategy consultant for Booz-Allen & Hamilton.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Wesleyan University and a master's degree with distinction in business administration from the Harvard Business School. He is currently a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, trustee of the Farm School, and father of five children.

Glen Comiso is the Director of Life Sciences and Health at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC). Glen is responsible for overseeing the Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative (www.masslsc.org) comprised of leaders from the Massachusetts “Life Sciences Super Cluster” with the mission to develop and push forward strategic action to solidify and grow the Commonwealth’s leadership position. Additionally, Mr. Comiso has been involved in launching the Massachusetts e-Health Institute, a division of the MTC with the mission to promote the adoption and networking of Electronic Health Record systems in the Commonwealth.

Previous to joining the MTC, Mr. Comiso was the Deputy Director for Economic Initiatives at the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). In this capacity, Mr. Comiso developed and executed Mayor Menino’s LifeTech Boston initiative focused on the economic growth of Boston’s biotech sector. Additionally, Mr. Comiso helped develop and run several of the City’s key economic programs including their young professional, retail, manufacturing and creative industry initiatives.

Mr. Comiso received his Masters of Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and his Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Clifford Goldsmith, MD, a Microsoft Solution Strategist for the US, provides strategic expertise to Health Plans. Dr. Goldsmith brings a unique experience to Microsoft as a physician who also has over twenty-five years of know-how envisioning, designing, developing, and selling high-performance technology solutions for the healthcare industry. Dr. Goldsmith has worked for Microsoft Corporation for over ten years, serving in several roles including a Managing Consultant in MCS and the US Director for the Provider Industry. He focused on numerous areas of healthcare information technology including clinical collaboration, pharmaceutical clinical trials, medical devices and embedded systems, agents for home care, as well as Microsoft’s Physician Digital Dashboard and Clinical Portals. Dr. Goldsmith helped Microsoft executives set strategic direction for the healthcare investments.

Dr. Goldsmith was also Chief Medical Officer of Aptima Corporation, where he led a team in transitioning well-tested concepts on human-centered engineering from aviation and the military into healthcare. He was the co-founder of LINK Medical Computing, which produces a commercial product for integrating medical devices with Hospital Information Systems. Before LINK, he worked for Harvard University’s Department of Medicine and the Center for Clinical Computing, developing and managing various aspects of the HIS for both Beth Israel and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals. During this appointment, he pioneered full, remote access electrocardiograph (ECG) integration HIS and implemented it at the Beth Israel Hospital. He was a founding member of Microsoft Healthcare Users Group (MSHUG) and joined the HL7 (Health Level 7) Committee in its early years. Dr. Goldsmith received a B.S. and a M.D. from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He has practiced clinical medicine and also worked for the National Center for Occupational Healthcare, Division of Epidemiology, Johannesburg, South Africa, where he designed, developed and supported software for clinical research, including pulmonary function and surgical pathology databases.

Daniel Palestrant is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge-based Sermo, Inc. As CEO, Daniel is responsible for the overall vision of the Sermo community and business. His main tasks focus on ensuring that Sermo is a valuable resource to physicians while building a profitable and socially responsible enterprise. Daniel's first experiences with Healthcare Informatics came when he conceived, designed, proposed and managed deployment of CIBUR (CIGNA Internet Based Universal Resource), one of the first commercial Web-based healthcare resources for physicians and allied health professionals. No stranger to the entrepreneurial side of medicine, Daniel founded his first company, Azygos, Inc., in 1998. During that time, he successfully raised $2.2MM in funding and deployed the company's first clinical application on schedule and on budget, before selling the company to BioNetrix in May of 2001. After selling Azygos, Daniel joined BioNetrix (Now BNX Systems) as Director of Health Care. During his time at BNX Systems, Daniel helped numerous healthcare-focused businesses increase network security, improve patient privacy safeguards and comply with HIPAA. Daniel has done clinical and laboratory research in transplant immunology. He has a B.S. in biology from Johns Hopkins University, completed medical school at Duke University, and trained in General Surgery at Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital, in Boston before leaving to launch Sermo.

Dr. Jha is an Associate Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Staff Physician at VA Boston Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is currently serving as a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Health of the Veterans Health Administration, focusing on areas of clinical quality and patient safety. Dr. Jha’s main professional interests are in quality of care, racial disparities in care, and the impact of information technology in these areas. He has worked in areas evaluating the quality of hospital care, especially hospitals that care for large minority populations; the impact of health information technology and public reporting on quality of care; and, delineating the relationship between hospital quality and efficiency. Much of his current work focuses on the current state of health information technology use in the U.S. and the impact it has on the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare.

Healthcare Reform in Limbo: Is there still an imperative for change?

Dr. Gottlieb, M.D., M.B.A., serves as President and CEO of Partners HealthCare, assuming the position on January 4, 2010. Dr. Gottlieb comes to this role with a deep and rich history with Partners. He served as President of Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Hospitals since March of 2002. He is also a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Prior to coming to Boston, Dr. Gottlieb spent 15 years in positions of increasing leadership in health care in Philadelphia. In addition to his noteworthy academic, clinical and management record, Dr. Gottlieb has published extensively in geriatric psychiatry and health care policy. He is a past President of the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry. Now, as a recognized community leader in Boston, Dr. Gottlieb also focuses his attention on workforce development and disparities in health care. He was appointed as Chairman of the Private Industry Council, the City’s workforce development board, which partners with education, labor, higher education, the community and government, to provide oversight and leadership to public and private workforce development programs.

Dr. Kuchnir currently serves as an instructor within the Division of Dermatology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as well as founded a private practice. He is the acting president of the Massachusetts Academy of Dermatology and has sat on the editorial board of the Journal of American Academy of Dermatology. Dr. Kuchnir has a Ph.D in physical chemistry from Harvard University where he was a won numerous academic and teaching awards.

Brad Prosek currently serves as Senior Director, Corporate Development for Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In this role, Brad focuses on transactions supporting Cubist’s drug pipeline build-out. Previously at Cubist, Brad started and led the Market Access group, which focused on developing non-hospital markets for the company’s flagship product CUBICIN (daptomycin for injection). He joined Cubist in 2005 from Biogen Idec, Inc, bringing ten years of global healthcare strategy, operating, and consulting experience. Brad holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.S.F.S from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Dr. Rosenthal is Associate Professor of Health Economics and Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Rosenthal received her Ph.D. in health policy at Harvard University in 1998. Her research examines the design and impact of market-oriented health policy mechanisms, with a particular focus on the use of financial incentives to alter consumer and provider behavior. She is currently working on a body of research that examines alternative models for reforming physician and hospital payment. Dr. Rosenthal’s work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs, and numerous other peer-reviewed journals. Based on her work, Dr. Rosenthal has been called to testify before the U.S. Congress and the California and Massachusetts legislatures. In 2006, Dr. Rosenthal was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Industry Studies Fellowship in recognition of her field-based research on physician incentives. Dr. Rosenthal is an appointed member of the Massachusetts Public Health Council, which promulgates regulations and advises the Commissioner of Public Health on policy matters.

Brian Carey’s law practice focuses on advising life sciences companies, health care providers and private equity investors on federal legislative and regulatory issues. His work with biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies includes advice and counsel on legislative aspects of the Medicare prescription drug coverage, Medicare coverage and reimbursement, and food and drug issues. He also represents health care provider clients before the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on National Coverage Decisions, reimbursement under the Hospital Outpatient and Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems and in Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee proceedings. Mr. Carey’s extensive background in health care policy matters includes serving as a legislative aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. In that capacity he worked on health care, food and drug and biotechnology legislation, including the Prescription Drug User Fee Act of 1992 and Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. Prior to Foley Hoag, Mr. Carey was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell and a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Edward F. Harrington of the United States District Court of Massachusetts.

Keynotes

Peter Wirth, Esquire, is Executive Vice President of Genzyme and Secretary to its Board of Directors. Mr. Wirth joined Genzyme in 1996 after serving as the company’s outside legal counsel since 1982. He has senior management responsibility for the corporate development and legal departments. Prior to joining Genzyme, Mr. Wirth was a partner at Palmer & Dodge, a Boston law firm where he was head of the firm’s technology group. Mr. Wirth received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Robert S. Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor (there are 14 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member). Dr. Langer has written approximately 1,050 articles. He also has approximately 750 issued and pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history.

He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 -- 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.

Dr. Langer has received over 170 major awards including the 2006 United States National Medal of Science; the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers and the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize. He is the also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award; 72 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research, induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2006), the Max Planck Research Award (2008) and the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (2008). In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.

Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Dr. Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world. Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area. Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Dr. Langer as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Dr. Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America (America’s Best). Parade Magazine (2004) selected Dr. Langer as one of 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.” Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from Harvard University, the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Yale University, the ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the University of Liverpool (England), the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, the Pennsylvania State University, Northwestern University, Uppsala University (Sweden) and the University of California – San Francisco Medal. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.

Mr. Emmens is Chairman, President and CEO of Vertex. He has over 33 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including roles at Shire Pharmaceuticals Group plc and businesses operated by Merck KGaA and Merck & Co. He became Vertex’s Chairman, President and CEO in 2009 and has been a member of the company’s Board of Directors since 2004.

Mr. Emmens is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Shire and was its Chief Executive Officer from March 2003 through June 2008. Before joining Shire in 2003, Mr. Emmens served as president of Merck KGaA’s global prescription pharmaceuticals business in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1999, he joined Merck KGaA and established EMD Pharmaceuticals, its United States prescription pharmaceutical business. Mr. Emmens held the position of President and Chief Executive Officer at EMD Pharmaceuticals from 1999 to 2001. Earlier, Mr. Emmens held various positions, including Chief Executive Officer, at Astra Merck, Inc. as well as several positions at Merck & Co., Inc. Mr. Emmens received a B.S. degree in business management from Fairleigh Dickinson University.