Team – Omass (original) (raw)

Our Management Team

Rosamond Deegan Chief Executive Officer Read More

Ros Deegan joined OMass Therapeutics as CEO in May 2019 from Bicycle Therapeutics where she served as President, Chief Business Officer and a Director of the US subsidiary of the Company. Ros established the company’s Boston-based subsidiary and over a three-year period led three major transactions and grew the US organisation to more than 20 employees. Prior to that Ros served as Senior Vice President, Business Development and Operations at Trevena, Inc, where she had previously held the role of Head of Finance and Operations. During Ros’ tenure at Bicycle and Trevena, the companies moved four programmes into the clinic, and raised over $300 million in private and public financings. In her earlier career, Ros was Director of Business Development at GSK in the US and, prior to that, she served as Director of Operations for GSK’s Centre of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (CEED) and as Marketing Manager for GSK’s UK launch of Bonviva for post-menopausal osteoporosis. Ros is a graduate of Cambridge University and received her MBA with distinction from INSEAD. Ros also currently serves on the Board of the UK BioIndustry Association and served on the 2024 UK Prime Minister’s Business Council.

Ali Jazayeri Chief Scientific Officer Read More

Ali Jazayeri joined OMass Therapeutics in October 2018. He was previously Chief Technology Officer of Heptares Therapeutics, a company he joined in 2007 as one of the first scientists and was involved in the transfer of the GPCR stabilisation technology from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology to Heptares. Following successful implementation and industrialisation of the original technology, he led the development of novel methodologies that significantly increased the efficiency and reach of the technology and resulted in the generation of novel IP. In addition, he was one of the key members of the executive sub-team that lead the acquisition of G7 therapeutics, spin out company from University of Zurich and went on to lead the further development and integration of their technology as part of the Heptares Zurich management team. Prior to Heptares, Ali worked as a post-doctoral scientist in Clare Hall Laboratories (a Cancer Research UK institute) and Kudos Pharmaceuticals (later acquired by AstraZeneca) where he carried out research on the role of cell cycle checkpoint kinases in DNA damage response pathways. He has a BSc in Genetics from University of Manchester and obtained his PhD in molecular biology with Prof Steve Jackson at the Gurdon Institute from University of Cambridge.

Melissa Faris Chief Business Officer Read More

Melissa has over 25 years of global experience in the biopharma industry as a drug developer, business development leader and non executive board member. Prior to joining OMass, Melissa held a number senior executive roles in Business Development at GSK both on the buy and sell side. Most recently, she was Vice President of Business Development leading a team accountable for end to end BD activities for immunology and infectious diseases for Research and Development. Melissa started her career in clinical drug development at GlaxoWellcome in the US where she spent 10 incredible years leading and contributing to development programs for Respiratory medicines from phase 1 through to registration and launch. In addition, she held a number of enterprise leadership roles internal and external to GSK, including, most recently, as a non executive Board member for Sitryx Therapeutics. Melissa completed a specialty residency in infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after receiving a doctorate of pharmacy from The Ohio State University and a bachelors of pharmacy from West Virginia University.

Hsin Loke Senior Vice President, Finance & Operations Read More

Hsin Loke joined OMass Therapeutics in July 2018 and is currently SVP, Finance & Operations. Previously she spent 16 years at GSK in a variety of leadership roles; most recently leading Finance, Strategy and Operations for the Company’s Rare Diseases Unit, which developed and commercialised a portfolio of innovative medicines, including gene therapies. Prior to this, Hsin also held roles within an internal consulting group, commercial finance and internal audit. Hsin qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PwC, and completed her BA (Hons) in Biological Sciences and D.Phil. in genetics and immunology at Oxford University. Hsin also currently serves on the Board of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult), an independent innovation and technology organisation specialising in the advancement of the cell and gene therapy industry.

Jonathan Hopper Vice President, Platforms and Founder Read More

Jonathan Hopper is Vice President, Platforms and founder of OMass Therapeutics. Jonathan completed his PhD in native mass spectrometry under the supervision of Prof. Neil Oldham and moved to the University of Oxford to develop native mass spectrometry approaches for studying membrane proteins with Professor Dame Carol Robinson. His research was focussed on developing technologies which enable or improve the structural/functional information obtained on challenging membrane protein assemblies and drug targets. He founded OMass and served as the first Chief Executive Officer, leading the company through its seed funding and series A financing rounds, allowing OMass to develop its own drug discovery programmes in-house.

Professor Steven Charlton Vice President, Pharmacology Read More

Steven Charlton joined OMass Therapeutics as Vice President, Pharmacology in February 2020. Prior to that he was co-founder and CSO at Excellerate Bioscience, a CRO providing specialist molecular pharmacology support to the pharmaceutical industry. Steven has over 20 years drug discovery experience, with previous roles at both SmithKline Beecham and Novartis. At Novartis he was Director of Molecular Pharmacology in Respiratory Diseases, leading an assay development and compound profiling team of over 30 scientists providing expert opinion and support for many GPCR and other membrane protein targets. He also served on development teams covering late clinical development through post-launch. In 2007 Steven was awarded Novartis Leading Scientist in recognition of his contribution to the field of quantitative pharmacology and to the Novartis pipeline. Steven is also Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Drug Discovery in the School of Life Sciences at Nottingham University, and a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society.

Jon Roffey Vice President, Head of Medicinal Chemistry Read More

Jon Roffey joined OMass Therapeutics in July 2022 as Vice President, Head of Medicinal Chemistry. Jon has over 20 years’ experience in drug discovery in a wide variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, CNS, and metabolic disorders across a range of therapeutic modalities. Jon joined OMass Therapeutics from Nanna therapeutics, where he was Head of Chemistry, leading a portfolio of mitochondrial targeted programs to treat rare diseases. Prior to that he was Director of Chemistry at Azeria Therapeutics, a company he helped spin-out from the University of Cambridge. Previously, at Cancer Research Technology, he was a Senior Group Leader and at Spirogen, he led and established the antibody drug conjugate programme, which led to the clinical development of vadastuximab talirine and rovalpituzumab tesirine. He started his Medicinal chemistry career at Vernalis, as a Senior Scientist working on a variety of GPCR targets. Jon has a PhD in Organic Chemistry obtained from the University of Loughborough.

Winfried Barchet Vice President, Immunology Read More

Winfried Barchet joined OMass Therapeutics in January 2023. He is an experienced immunologist with over 15 years of project and team leadership experience spanning discovery, translational research and drug discovery in both academia and industry. Prior to joining OMass, Winfried was the Executive Director of Innate Immunity at IFM therapeutics focusing on drugging targets in the inflammasome and the nucleic acid sensing pathways. Before IFM, he worked at Roche as a discovery area leader in innate immunity contributing to ongoing projects as well as initiating new ones. In addition to industry, Winfried has previously worked in academia initially as an independent group leader at the University of Bonn and later as a professor of translational immunology at the German Centre for Infection Research.

Steve Griffen Vice President, Clinical Development Read More

Steve Griffen joined OMass as Vice President, Clinical Development in June, 2024. Steve is an endocrinologist with more than 25 years experience in basic and clinical research and drug development. He has previously served as Vice President, Clinical Development at MBX biosciences following his role as the Medical Lead for Integrated Care for Sanofi developing devices and software to assist people managing their diabetes. Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President, Research for the non-profit organization JDRF, funding research efforts to improve the lives of people living with type 1 diabetes. Before joining JDRF, Steve served as the Type 1 Diabetes Full Development Team leader for dapagliflozin at Bristol-Myers Squibb, after having served as Exploratory Development Team leader for metabolic assets taking multiple assets into first-in-human studies. Steve was a faculty member at the University of California, Davis prior to moving to industry, where he conducted clinical research on metabolic syndrome and his lab focused on regulation of pancreatic beta cell gene expression by nutrients. His undergraduate training was at the University of California, Berkeley, he attended medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin, residency at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and endocrine fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.

Our Board Of Directors

Rosamond Deegan Chief Executive Officer Read More

Jim Geraghty Chairman Read More

Jim Geraghty is the chairman of OMass Therapeutics. Jim is an industry leader with over 35 years of strategic experience including more than 25 years as a senior executive at biotechnology companies developing and commercializing innovative therapies. He is currently chairman on the boards of Orchard Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ORTX) and Pieris Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: PIRS) and is a member of the boards of Voyager Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VYGR), Fulcrum Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FULC) and CANbridge Pharmaceuticals (HKEX:1228). Jim served earlier as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Third Rock Ventures, a leading biotech venture fund, and as Senior Vice President Strategy and Business Development at Sanofi. Previously, he served as senior vice president international development at Genzyme, president of Genzyme Europe, and founding president and CEO of Genzyme Transgenics. Mr. Geraghty started his career in healthcare strategy consulting at Bain. A graduate of the Yale Law School, he is also the author of the Nature-reviewed book Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology.

Edward Hodgkin Non-executive Director Read More

Edward Hodgkin is a non-executive Director of OMass Therapeutics. He is a Partner at Syncona Investment Management Ltd. and was previously a Director of Syncona’s portfolio company, Autolus Therapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ: AUTL); having served as its first Chief Executive Officer. Prior to Syncona, Ed was Chief Executive Officer of Biotica Technology Ltd. (Cambridge, UK), President & Chief Business Officer of BrainCells Inc. (San Diego, CA) and Vice President, Business Development & Marketing at Tripos (St. Louis, MO). He is also a former chairman of the BioIndustry Association, the UK’s trade body for biotechnology companies. Ed holds an MA and DPhil in Chemistry from the University of Oxford.

Magdalena Jonikas Non-executive Director Read More

Magdalena is a non-executive Director of OMass Therapeutics. She is a partner of Syncona Investment Management Ltd and previously was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company where she specialised in pharmaceuticals Research & Development, portfolio management and Business Development and Licensing. Magdalena holds a PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford University and was a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard Medical School’s Computational Health Informatics Programme.

Chris Ashton Non-executive Director Read More

Chris is a non-executive Director of OMass Therapeutics. He has been an advisor to Oxford Science Enterprises since December 2019 and serves as Chairman of the Board of PepGen. He is a seasoned biotech entrepreneur with over 35 years’ experience in the biotechnology industry. Chris has considerable expertise in leading and growing early stage companies and enabling their transition to mid-stage clinical development organisations. He has extensive international transactional experience in both listed and private companies including fund raising, licensing and M&A activity. Chris was formerly a Partner at Syncona, a FTSE 250 company, where he was also founding CEO of Achilles Therapeutics. Prior to that he was CEO of Argenta Discovery (sold to Galapagos) and Pulmagen Therapeutics. Chris has a PhD from the University of Manchester (UMIST) and carried out post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Jonathan Montagu Non-executive Director Read More

Jonathan is a non-executive Director of OMass Therapeutics. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of HotSpot Therapeutics, a company targeting nature’s regulatory mechanisms to create high precision allosteric medicines for the treatment of serious autoimmune and metabolic diseases. Prior to co-founding HotSpot, Jonathan served as Chief Business Officer at Nimbus Therapeutics, where he helped establish the company’s drug discovery platform and pipeline. He also served as Vice President, Business Development at Concert Pharmaceuticals, and was instrumental in securing a $1B multi-product transaction for the company with GSK. Jonathan trained as a chemist at Oxford University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, The Scripps Research Institute, and Cancer Research UK.

Nathalie Franchimont Non-executive Director Read More

Nathalie Franchimont is a non-executive Director of OMass Therapeutics and currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer of Nimbus Therapeutics. She was previously the Senior Vice President, Head of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Immunology Development Unit and member of the R&D Leadership Team at Biogen. Her extensive career in biotechnology companies has spanned drug development from discovery research and target validation through early and late clinical development including multiple filings globally, medical affairs with launch and reimbursement in international markets. Nathalie is a rheumatologist and trained as an M.D., Ph.D. at the University of Liège, Belgium. She has held research fellowship roles at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine/Saint Francis Hospital (Bone Biology), Yale University School of Medicine (Rheumatology) and University of Liège where she worked as Chief of Clinic and Research Associate (FNRS) in Rheumatology.

Scott Biller Non-executive Director Read More

Scott Biller is currently an executive venture partner at GV and also serves as an independent board member and advisor for several biotechs. Scott retired as CSO of Agios Pharmaceuticals at the end of 2019, a position he held for over 9 years. As CSO, Dr. Biller led the efforts to discover three approved medicines: TIBSOVO and IDHIFA, for acute myeloid leukemia harboring IDH1 and IDH2 mutations, respectively, and PYRUKYND for pyruvate kinase deficiency. Prior to Agios, Dr. Biller held various R&D leadership roles at Novartis and BMS. At BMS, his research focused in the metabolic diseases area, where teams under his leadership discovered multiple investigational medicines and three marketed drugs: the DPP4 inhibitor ONGLYZA® for Type 2 diabetes, the SGLT2 inhibitor FARXIGA® for Type 2 diabetes and the MTP inhibitor JUXTAPID® for familial hypercholesterolemia. Dr. Biller was awarded a B.S. in chemistry from MIT, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Caltech and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University.

Diana Bernstein Non-executive Director Read More

Diana Bernstein is a Vice President at Northpond Ventures on the firm’s biotechnologies team. Previously, Diana was a Senior Associate at MRL Ventures Fund, the corporate venture fund of Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK), investing in early-stage human therapeutics companies. Prior to that, she was an Associate at Flagship Pioneering, leading projects to conceive and build platform-based therapeutics companies. Diana also spent time at Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals (now Leadiant Biosciences) and PricewaterhouseCoopers. She received her Ph.D. in pharmacology from University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in finance and B.S. in cell biology and molecular genetics from University of Maryland, College Park.

Laia Crespo Non-executive Director Read More

Laia joined Sanofi Ventures in 2018 as a Partner. She focuses on biotech investments and company creation. Prior to Sanofi, she served as Investment Director for Ysios Capital, where she led investments and served on the board of multiple early-stage biotech companies. Earlier in her career, Laia was part of the European New Business Development team of Janssen-Cilag, a pharmaceutical company part of the Johnson & Johnson group, where she assessed commercial and scientific licensing opportunities. Previously she worked as a researcher in the UK in companies such as Spirogen (now AstraZeneca), Medivir and UCB-Celltech. Laia’s active investments include Eligo Bioscience, Muna Therapeutics, NodThera, OMass Therapeutics, QurAlis, T-Therapeutics and Therini Bio. Previous investments and board roles include Lava Therapeutics (LVTX). Laia graduated in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona, where she also completed a Master in Science and a Ph.D. with honors. Laia holds an M.B.A. from Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, where she focused on biotechnology, healthcare and finance.

Our Founders

Professor Dame Carol Robinson Founder and Chair of Scientific Advisory Board Read More

Carol is founder of OMass Therapeutics and is a is a non-executive Director and an advisor to the Company. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to science and industry. She is recognised for using mass spectrometry to further research into the 3D structure of proteins and their complexes. Carol’s graduate education was completed whilst working full-time in industry. In 2001 she became the first female Professor in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and in 2009 went to the University of Oxford to become the Chair of Dr. Lee’s Professor of Chemistry; a title she still holds. She also holds eight honorary doctorates/degrees, was elected as a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2017 and she is the current President of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Idlir Liko Senior Director of Technology and Founder Read More

Idlir Liko is the Technology Director and founder of OMass Therapeutics. He received a Master’s Degree from ETH Zurich in 2012 and DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2015, supervised by Prof. Dame Carol Robinson where he focused on the effect ligands and PTMs have on structure and stability of membrane proteins. His work was been featured in many high-impact publications. He has a wealth of experience in structural MS working in close collaboration with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. In 2016, he co-founded the company and has played a key role in transferring our technology from academia to industry.

Jonathan Hopper Vice President, Platforms and Founder Read More

Hsin Yung (Jason) Yen Founder Read More

Hsin-Yung (Jason) Yen is one of the founders of OMass Therapeutics and an advisor to the Company. After obtaining his PhD degree in glycobiology with Prof Chi-Huey Wong he became a post-doctoral scientist in Professor Dame Carol Robinson’s research group at the University of Oxford. Following his success in GPCR analysis with state-of-the-art mass spectrometry, he recorded the first mass spectrum of a folded GPCR with drug binding maintained. He invented a mass spectrometry platform that reports on compound efficacy on G proteins-/arrestins – coupling with receptors. Currently, he is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, where he continues his research on technology development for intractable biology

Our Scientific Advisors

Professor Dame Carol Robinson Founder and Chair of Scientific Advisory Board Read More

John Yates Scientific Advisor Read More

John R. Yates is the Ernest W. Hahn Professor in the Departments of Molecular Medicine and Neurobiology at Scripps Research. His research interests include development of integrated methods for tandem mass spectrometry analysis of protein mixtures, bioinformatics using mass spectrometry data, and biological studies involving proteomics. He is the lead inventor of the SEQUEST software for correlating tandem mass spectrometry data to sequences in the database and developer of the shotgun proteomics technique for the analysis of protein mixtures. His laboratory has developed proteomic techniques to analyze protein complexes, posttranslational modifications, organelles and quantitative analysis of protein expression for the study of biology. He has received awards including the ASMS Biemann Medal, HUPO Achievement Award, Christian Anfinsen Award (Protein Society), Analytical Chemistry award (ACS), Ralph N. Adams Award, Thomson Medal (IMSF), John B. Fenn Award (ASMS), HUPO Discovery Award. He is currently the EIC at the Journal of Proteome Research.

Chas Bountra Scientific Advisor Read More

Professor Bountra is Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Professor of Translational Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is Director of the Centre for Medicines Discovery in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine and Associate Member of the Department of Pharmacology. As Director of SGC-Oxford (2008 – mid 2020), Professor Bountra established a leading research group in human protein structural biology and epigenetics chemical biology. Prior to coming back to Oxford in 2008, Chas was Vice President and Head of Biology at GlaxoSmithKline. He was involved in the identification of >40 clinical candidates for many gastro-intestinal, inflammatory and neuro-psychiatric diseases. More than 20 of these molecules progressed into patient studies and >5 of these delivered successful “Proof of Concept” data and hence progressed into late stage development. He was involved in the launch and development of the first treatment for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (Alosetron) and was the first to show that neurokinin NK1 antagonists are anti-emetic in preclinical and clinical studies.

Adrian Clark Scientific Advisor Read More

Professor Clark is Honorary Professor of Endocrinology at Barts & the London School of Medicine & Dentistry and Chairman of the Board of Bioscientifica. His research has centred around the molecular genetic basis of hormone resistance syndromes and the action of ACTH. After graduating in Medicine from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, Adrian undertook specialist training in internal medicine and endocrinology. He then spent a period of five years training in molecular biology and receptor biology at the NIH in Bethesda, USA. He returned to Barts & the London in 1991, becoming Professor of Molecular Endocrinology in 1996 and Professor of Medicine in 2001. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999 and was Deputy Director of the William Harvey Research Institute from 2004 – 2012. He became Dean of Research and Enterprise at St George’s University of London in 2012, and Emeritus Professor of Endocrinology at St George’s from 2015. Professor Clark was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Endocrinology and the Journal of Molecular Endocrinology until 2015, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Endocrine Connections.

James Naismith Scientific Advisor Read More

Professor Naismith is an expert in structural biology, blending structural analysis, mechanistic study and developing new approaches biochemistry to answer chemical problems in biology. Professor Naismith is Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, which is dedicated to bringing about transformative changes in life science through interdisciplinary research and technology development and is located just south of Oxford. Professor Naismith has been awarded Colworth Medal, Corday Morgan Medal, Dextra Medal and Jeremy Knowles Medal. He was elected to fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2005, the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012, the Royal Society 2014 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2016, and was elected a member of EMBO in 2010. In 2019 he was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Tilden Prizes.

Mark Namchuk Scientific Advisor Read More

Mark Namchuk PhD is a professor of the practice of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology and the executive director of therapeutics translation at Harvard Medical School. In this later role, he works with HMS scientists to identify and harness basic insights and move them towards therapies, while training the next generation of therapeutics investigators. He has overall responsibility for the HMS therapeutics initiative which includes an on-campus biotech incubator (the Blavatnik Harvard LifeLab Longwood), a scientific core dedicated to supporting therapeutics discovery in faculty labs and educational programs in therapeutics. His current research interests focus on drug discovery, in particular antivirals for the treatment of COVID-19. Mark joined HMS in 2020 after a 24-year research and development career in biotech, in the arenas of drug discovery, translational science and pharmaceutical development. In 2015, he joined Alkermes as senior vice president of research and nonclinical and pharmaceutical development. Previously, Mark held a number of research positions over a 17 year career at Vertex including senior vice president of Research. Mark has directed drug discovery efforts in numerous therapeutic areas, including infectious disease, oncology, neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders, immune-mediated inflammatory disease and orphan diseases, including cystic fibrosis. These responsibilities encompassed scientific oversight of discovery science, DMPK, preclinical and clinical biomarker development, nonclinical safety and pharmaceutical development. Mark obtained a BSc in Chemistry for the University of Alberta, a PhD in Bio-organic chemistry from University of British Columbia and was an HFSP post-doctoral fellow at UCSF.

Sarah Teichmann Scientific Advisor Read More

Dr. Teichmann has over 25 years of experience and is the incumbent Chair in Stem Cell Medicine at the University of Cambridge and Vice President of Translational Research at GSK. Previously, she was the Head of the Cellular Genetics programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and a group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where she developed and applied cell atlas technologies to decipher human tissue architecture, with a particular focus on how cellular diversity is generated in the immune system and through development. During this time, she also collaborated with OMass’ co-founder, Professor Dame Carol Robinson, on unraveling the in vivo and in vitro assembly of soluble protein complexes. Dr. Teichmann holds a PhD from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Trinity College, Cambridge, UK and was a Beit Memorial Fellow at University College London. A fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Royal Society, Sarah’s work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the EMBO Gold Medal, Genetics Society Mary Lyons Award, Biochemical Society GlaxoSmithKline Award, the FEBS|EMBO Women in Science Award, Lister Prize amongst others. She is also a co-founder and co-leader of the International Human Cell Atlas consortium and co-directs the CIFAR MacMillan Multiscale Human research programme.