Meet The Team

Biomedical research is newly enabled by advances in human genomic and proteomic technologies. We are committed to fully utilizing these technologies to construct a more efficient roadmap for drug discovery.

We are excited to be expanding our team to elucidate protein community dynamics and develop important new medicines for common diseases.

Zach Sweeney

CEO

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Scientific Advisory Board

Board Of Directors

Growing Community

Mohammed AlQuraishi

Mohammed AlQuraishi

SAB Member

Mohammed AlQuraishi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Systems Biology and a member of Columbia’s Program for Mathematical Genomics, where he works at the intersection of machine learning, biophysics, and systems biology. The AlQuraishi Lab focuses on two biological perspectives: the molecular and systems levels. On the molecular side, the lab develops machine learning models for predicting protein structure and function, protein-ligand interactions, and learned representations of proteins and proteomes. On the systems side, the lab applies these models in a proteome-wide fashion to investigate the organization, combinatorial logic, and computational paradigms of signal transduction networks, how these networks vary in human populations, and how they are dysregulated in human diseases, particularly cancer.

Dr. AlQuraishi holds undergraduate degrees in Biology, Computer Science, and Mathematics. He earned an M.S. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University. He subsequently joined the Systems Biology Department at Harvard Medical School as a Departmental Fellow and a Fellow in Systems Pharmacology, where he developed the first end-to-end differentiable model for learning protein structure from data. Prior to starting his academic career, Dr. AlQuraishi spent three years founding two startups in the mobile computing space.

Affiliations

  • Columbia University

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Eileen Ambing

Eileen Ambing

Scientist, Lead Discovery

Eileen brings twenty years of industry experience with extensive knowledge in the gene to structure pipeline (molecular biology, protein expression and purification, and crystallization). Eileen was previously employed with Maze Therapeutics where she was responsible for protein expression in multiple expression systems and purification of targets across the entire drug discovery portfolio (crystallization, cryo-EM, biophysical and biochemical assays, DEL screening). When not working in the lab, Eileen enjoys surfing, snowboarding, and occasionally cruising around on her motorcycle.

Affiliations

  • Columbia University

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Vik Bajaj

Vik Bajaj

Board of Directors, Director

Vik Bajaj is a managing director at Foresite Capital, evaluating and pursuing investments at the intersection of technology and life sciences. Prior to joining Foresite Capital and co-founding Foresite Labs, Vik was the chief scientific officer of GRAIL. He was also co-founder and former chief scientific officer of Verily and served as chair of its Scientific Advisory Board. Vik retains appointments as associate professor (consulting) at the Stanford School of Medicine, and as an affiliate scientist of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, for which he serves on the advisory board of the College of Chemistry. He is an advisor to the Department of Defenses Science Board’s Task Force on Biology.

Vik’s research interests lie at the interface of the physical sciences, engineering, and the life sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vik’s scientific and engineering awards include the Anatole Abragam Prize (2012), the R&D 100 Award for the most promising commercialized technologies (2011 and 2013), and the Department of Energy’s LBL Innovation Grant (2013).

Affiliations

  • Foresite Capital Management

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Kim Barnash

Kim Barnash

Senior Scientist, Lead Discovery

Kim is a biochemist with a background in organic synthesis. Prior to joining Interline, Kim spent nearly a decade studying chromatin regulation. She obtained her Ph.D. in the lab of Stephen Frye at UNC-Chapel Hill where she developed a combinatorial chemistry platform to discover chemical probes of methyl-lysine readers. Next, she interrogated the biochemical and biophysical regulation of chromatin remodeling complexes at Foghorn Therapeutics. Kim recently returned to California from Massachusetts in her campervan Homer, hiking and exploring the country along the way.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Christine Beahn

Christine Beahn

Chief of Staff

Before Interline, Christine was a Director of Business Development, Contracts and Alliances at Calico Life Sciences. Christine was previously on the Genentech Research Portfolio and Operations team and led the Research and Development Contracts group in the global procurement organization. Before Genentech, Christine was in the Technology Transfer Office at the University of Washington and was also one of the first employees of Clinical Advisors LLC (now Guidepoint Global). Christine resides in SF with her husband, two young French speaking children and senior dog, Oso (her most obedient child). Christine received a B.S. from Stanford University and a M.P.H. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Jose Bibat

Jose Bibat

Head of Information Technology

Jose brings over 20 years of Information Technology experience to Interline. Most recently, Jose’s vision, strategy, and leadership were utilized as the Head of IT at Ambys Medicines. He also assisted in the build-out of their GMP facility. When not in the office, Jose can be found on the golf course or spending time with his wife and three children. He is always happy to chat anytime about bay area sports teams.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Tess Branon

Tess Branon

Scientist, Proteomics

Chemist by training and biologist by trade, Tess is interested in understanding the mechanisms of biological interactions at the molecular, cellular, and organismal level. Daughter of Mexican and Korean immigrants, Tess is a North Carolina native who received her undergraduate degrees from Western Carolina University. She then went on to work with Professor Alice Ting at MIT and Stanford University for her PhD where she engineered new proximity labeling tools such as TurboID for proteomic mapping, and worked collaboratively with hundreds of scientists to apply her novel technologies in living cells and organisms. Tess then went on to work with Professor Gregory Barton at the University of California, Berkeley for her postdoctoral training as a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Robert Black Fellow where she studied host-microbiome interactions in the gut. Outside of the lab, Tess enjoys organizing for social justice reforms by day and dinner parties with friends by night.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Kristina Burow

Kristina Burow

Board of Directors, Board Observer

Kristina Burow is focused on the creation and development of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and health tech companies. Since joining ARCH in 2002, she has risen from Associate to Managing Director and has played a significant role in the growth of ARCH’s life sciences portfolio.

Kristina is a Director of Beam Therapeutics (BEAM), Vividion Therapeutics, Gossamer Bio (GOSS), Metacrine (MTCR), Scholar Rock (SRRK), Unity Biotechnology (UBX), Boundless Bio, Autobahn Therapeutics, ROME Therapeutics, Boragen and AgBiome. She previously was a co-founder and Director of Receptos (RCPT – acquired by Celgene) and was a Director of VIR Biotechnology (VIR), and Epirium Bio. Kristina has participated and led investments in a number of other ARCH portfolio companies including Erasca, Dewpoint Therapeutics, Mindstrong, Aledade, Kura Oncology (KURA), Kythera Biopharmaceuticals (KYTH – acquired by Allergan), and Ikaria (acquired by Mallinckrodt).

Prior to joining ARCH Kristina was an Associate with the Novartis BioVenture Fund in San Diego. Kristina holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in Chemistry from Columbia University and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.

Affiliations

  • Arch Venture Partner

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Jamie Byrnes

Jamie Byrnes

Scientist, Proteomics

Jamie is from rural Wisconsin, and his interest in biology first took root while exploring the outdoors. Jamie pursued this passion as a biochemistry undergraduate student at the University of St. Thomas, before joining Dr. Alisa Wolberg at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his doctoral studies. At North Carolina, he studied the fundamental protein-protein interaction networks underlying blood coagulation. Jamie then moved to the Bay Area for a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Jim Wells at the University of California, San Francisco. In the Wells Lab, Jamie used proteomics and antibody discovery technologies to understand cardiovascular and immuno-oncology protein targets. Over the course of his career, Jamie has become increasingly motivated to translate basic discoveries into therapies to help patients.

Outside of the lab, Jamie spends time with his wife, Amy, and their two dogs, Minnie and Lenard. He also can often be found running, backpacking, and experimenting.

Affiliations

  • Arch Venture Partner

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Mario Cardozo

Mario Cardozo

VP, Computational Chemistry

Prior to joining Interline, Mario most recently served as Director of Computational Chemistry at Nurix working on modulators of protein-protein interactions, including bifunctional degraders. Mario also has over 20 year of experience in small molecule drug discovery at Amgen, Tularik, and Boehringer Ingelheim. He has expertise applying a range of CADD methods to a diversity of drug targets, and experience in multiple therapeutics areas. Mario has also developed ligand affinity scoring functions, cheminformatics tools and several ADMET predictive models to support lead identificaiton and lead optimization. Mario was directly involved in the identification of 12 drug candidates and 3 that advanced into clinical studies. Mario received a Pharm.D. as well as an M.S. in physical organic chemistry from the National University of Cordoba and a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, both in Argentina. Mario completed his postdoctoral training in CADD as an NIH-Fogarty Fellow at The University of Illinois at Chicago.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Shannon Chi

Shannon Chi

Operations

Shannon brings manys years of scientific, legal and operational experience to the Operations role at Interline. She began her career in science at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, then transitioned to patent law at Townsend and Townsend and Crew, before joining the legal group at Genentech in 2007. At Genentech, Shannon has held various roles in patent counseling and IP operations. Shannon received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (GO BLUE!) and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Shannon currently lives near San Francisco with her husband, two teens, one pandemic rescue dog and nine chickens.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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 Hsiang-Ching Chung

Hsiang-Ching Chung

Scientist, Cancer Biology

Hisang-Ching “Sunny” is a cancer biologist interested in developing therapeutic strategies exploiting protein-protein interactions. She earned her Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in the lab of Dr. Thomas Westbrook, where she utilized functional genetic screens to delineate the role of ubiquitin E3 ligases in regulating therapeutic resistance. She continued her postdoctoral research at Baylor and used chemical-genetic targeted protein degradation approach in combination with functional genetic screens for new target identification and exploring the mechanism of actions. Outside of the lab, Sunny enjoys hiking, playing badminton, and trying out new restaurants.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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John Chodera

John Chodera

Founding Scientific Advisor

John Chodera is an experienced computational chemist, and an Associate Member at Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (MSKKC). His research combines the disciplines of statistical mechanics, biomolecular simulation, and biophysical measurements to develop quantitative models for predicting and understanding how small molecules selectively bind biomolecular targets, how binding modulates conformation and function, and how mutations can perturb drug binding affinities to cause drug resistance.

John has authored over 75 articles in peer-reviewed journals, which have collectively received over 12,500 literature citations. John has also received numerous awards including the BIH Einstein Visiting Fellowship, Silicon Therapeutics Open Science Fellowship, Louis V. Gerstner Young Investigator Award, QB3-Berkeley Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship, IBM Predoctoral Fellowship, the Frank M. Goyan Award for outstanding work in Physical Chemistry at UCSF, and a HHMI Predoctoral Fellowship.

John holds a B.S. in Biology from Caltech and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, San Francisco. He completed postdoctoral studies at Stanford University and at University of California, Berkeley as a QB3 Fellow.

Affiliations

  • Memorial Sloan Kettering

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Aisha Chow

Aisha Chow

Director, Cancer Biology

Aisha is a team leader with experience formulating R&D strategies and guiding programs from target validation through lead identification and preclinical development. She is a trained cell biologist with experience exploiting diverse cellular systems to advance drug discovery efforts across multiple therapeutic areas. Aisha obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University. Prior to joining Interline, Aisha was Director of Cell Biology at FibroGen, where she served as cross-functional team lead for several preclinical small molecule and biologics programs in the areas of oncology and immuno-oncology. In her spare time, Aisha enjoys casual cycling, competitive rowing, and gastronomical quests.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Ryan Corcoran

Ryan Corcoran

SAB Member

Dr. Ryan Corcoran is the Director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center Program and the Scientific Director of the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapy at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Corcoran received his A.B. from Princeton University, and his M.D./Ph.D. from Stanford University. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and his fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Dana Faber Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. Dr. Corcoran directs a research laboratory focused on personalized cancer medicine: the development of therapeutic strategies that target the specific mutations driving individual patients’ tumors. His work focuses on understanding the molecular determinants of response or resistance to anti-cancer therapies. Dr. Corcoran’s laboratory is also studying new ways to utilize liquid biopsy, and specifically analysis of circulating tumor DNA, in the clinic to optimize how we deliver cancer care to individual patients. Dr. Corcoran is a member of the National Cancer Institute GI Steering Committee, and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI).

Affiliations

  • Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center

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Debarati DasGupta

Debarati DasGupta

Scientist Computational Chemistry

Debarati DasGupta completed her bachelor’s in chemistry Honors (BS) from St. Xavier’s College Kolkata, India. She then cleared the highly competitive All India Joint Entrance exam to pursue her interests in Physical Chemistry at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD), the top ranked institute in India. Intrigued with protein structures and their complexity, she joined Prof B Jayaram at IITD for a PhD in Computational Biophysical Chemistry. She completed her PhD in 2018 summer and has hence relocated to the United States joining the University of Michigan as a postdoctoral researcher working in the field of structure based and ligand-based drug design, biomolecular simulations, and small molecule drug discovery pipelines. She is presently in her third year of postdoc at the University of Michigan, working with renowned Professor Heather Carlson. In her free time, she loves cooking authentic Indian food and has a love for fixing cars herself. Considers herself as a partial motorhead.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Michael Davis

Michael Davis

Senior Scientist, Immunology

Michael has 15+ years of experience in Immunology, with particular expertise in myeloid biology, innate immunology, pathophysiology, microscopy, and data analysis. Previously, Michael worked at Applied Molecular Transport, where he helped scientific matrix teams to execute complex experiments. He was also Pulmonary Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School, where he was the project leader for a team developing a ratiometric live-cell microscopy technique for the detection of lysosomal damage in cells. Michael is excited to tap modern scientific understandings and technical breakthroughs to develop novel ways to therapeutically modulate innate immune pathways and inflammation. Outside of work Michael loves spending time with his young family, cooking, and playing a bit of soccer.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Jake Drummond

Jake Drummond

Scientist, Lead Discovery

Jake brings over 25 years of industry experience in biochemical and biophysical assay development. Jake worked at Genentech for 18 years devloping SPR assays to investigate the potency and mechanism of action of several classes of proteins. He also worked as a Research Scientist at IDEAYA Biosciences, where he developed biochemical and biophysical (SPR) assays for immuno-oncology and synthetic lethality oncology programs.

Jake received his BS is Biological Sciences from UC Davis. Outside the lab, Jake enjoys hiking, reading, and testing his cooking on his family.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Louis Ellefson

Louis Ellefson

Senior Research Associate, Cell Biology

Louis is an immunologist interested in understanding the changes in immune response during chronic infections and diseases. After completing his undergraduate studies, he joined the Johns Hopkins Viral Hepatitis Center as a Research Technologist where he was involved with conducting a phase II HCV vaccine trial. After a couple years, his focus shifted to studying sex-based differences during chronic HIV and HCV infection with Dr. Eileen Scully. Prior to joining Interline, Louis came to the San Francisco Bay Area to work at Berkeley Lights, Inc as part of their Antibody Discovery group. He supported many internal and external antibody discovery projects by isolating and characterizing primary immune cells, optimizing culturing conditions and assay development for Berkeley Lights’ high throughput microfluidic screening systems. Louis is completing his MS in Biotechnology part-time, and is expected to graduate in May 2022. Outside of school and lab, he is an avid skier and enjoys hiking and camping in the warmer months.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Alberto Estevez

Alberto Estevez

Scientist, Cryo-EM, Lead Discovery

Alberto has 20+ years of experience working on protein expression and for the past 10 years CryoEM. Previously, he was a Senior Principal Scientific Researcher at Genentech and is fluent in all major software packages including Relion, CryoSparc, EMAN2, CisTEM, and Chimera. Alberto will play a key role in establishing CryoEM methodologies and applying them to programs across our portfolio and at all stages of drug discovery. When not working, Alberto likes hiking, gardening and cooking.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Nick Galli

Nick Galli

COO

Nick brings extensive experience in corporate development, strategy and operations to his role as Chief Operating Officer. Most recently Nick was CBO at CytomX Therapeutics, where he led the execution of its multi-target collaboration with Astellas. Prior to that, he was VP, Business Development and Alliance Management at Denali Therapeutics, where he closed more than twenty deals, including strategic partnerships with Sanofi, Takeda, Genentech and F-star. Before Denali, Nick was Senior Director, Transactions at the J&J Innovation Center, as well as a member of the business development and transactional law groups at Genentech. He began his career as a corporate attorney at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom and practiced in the technology transactions group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Nick received his A.B. from Princeton and his J.D. from Georgetown. Nick is an avid table tennis player and also enjoys hiking with his rescue dog Donut.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Norman Goodacre

Norman Goodacre

Principal Scientist, Bioinformatics

Norman Goodacre is life-long admirer of nature. This deep connection has guided his professional life, as Norman is a Bioinformatics Scientist with a diverse background in protein-protein interaction prediction, machine learning and single-cell RNA seq analysis. He has worked in academic, government, and start up settings, but prefers the lattermost because of the fast pace of innovation and creative freedom. Modeling the behavior of proteins and their interaction networks keeps Norman up at night.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Zuojun Guo

Zuojun Guo

Principal Scientist, Computational Chemistry

Zuojun (George) Guo, Ph.D is Senior Scientist of Computational Chemistry at Interline, and has more than 8 years of experience in computational guided drug design. Zuojun most recently served as a Senior Scientist at Plexxikon, where he was a key contributor to a robust structure-based drug design platform. At Plexxikon, Zuojun worked on over 20 research projects across various therapeutic areas, and delivered more than 6 development candidates with desired target property profiles. Prior to Plexxikon, Zuojun conducted postdoctoral training at Pfizer and Novartis in inflammation & oncology. He received his Ph.D. in Computational Biochemistry from Boston College and a MS of Polymer Physics from Fudan University, Shanghai.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Roberta Hannibal

Roberta Hannibal

Senior Scientist, Cell Biology

Roberta’s foremost research interest is how genetic code is translated into phenotypic variation. She has pursued this topic throughout her career using a variety of techniques in cell, developmental, and evolutionary biology, as well as genetics and genomics. Roberta is excited to apply foundational genetic insights to drug discovery at Interline.

Raised by a librarian and a geologist in Cleveland, OH, Roberta’s scientific career has a westward trajectory. After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, Roberta joined Nipam Patel’s lab at UC Berkeley to earn her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology. At Cal, Roberta studied evolutionary developmental biology using an amphipod crustacean as a model system. Following grad school, Roberta joined Julie Baker’s lab at Stanford. In the Baker lab, Roberta discovered a novel mechanism of mammalian gene regulation, in which placental trophoblast giant cells tailor gene copy number to modulate the expression of critical genes. Roberta then courageously surrendered to the call of discovery biology in biotech, and joined Second Genome, where she identified and characterized microbial proteins and peptides that interact with human immune cells to modulate human health.

When not at the bench or spending time with her family, Roberta enjoys running and growing succulents.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Wade Harper

Wade Harper

Founding Scientific Advisor

Wade Harper is a seasoned cellular biologist whose research is focused on the analysis of ubiquitin-driven signaling systems and the integration of quantitative proteomics and cell biology to understand the mechanism for the signaling systems.

Wade is the Bert and Natalie Vallee Professor of Molecular Pathology and Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, and co-Director of the Dana Farber-Harvard Cancer Center Cancer Cell Biology Program. His lab has used proteomic approaches to define the interaction networks of various protein families (deubiquitinating enzymes, F-box proteins) and signaling networks (autophagy, ERAD, CRLs, Parkin), as well as to define the ubiquitin-modified proteome.

Wade has received many awards, including the American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award, the Michael DeBakey Award for Excellence in Research in both 1994 and 2000, and the Javits award from the National Institute of Health. Wade received his doctorate in chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology prior to completing postdoctoral studies in biological chemistry at Harvard Medical School.

Affiliations

  • Harvard Medical School
  • Dana Farber Cancer Center

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Stacy Holland

Stacy Holland

Head of Finance

Stacy Holland is currently the financial and accounting advisor for Interline Therapeutics. She most recently served as Chief Financial Officer for a multi-national subsidiary of Dover Corporation with responsibility for financial matters, regulatory compliance and information technology services. She previously held auditing, accounting and management positions at Deloitte LLC, Rockwell Automation and Briggs and Stratton.

Stacy is a Certified Public Accountant and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In her free time, Stacy can be found working on her golf game or refining her tennis serve.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Lyn Jones

Lyn Jones

SAB Member

Lyn Jones is the Director of the Center for Protein Degradation at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research interests include the creation and application of chemistry-based technologies to advance therapeutic target identification and accelerate drug discovery. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Society of Biology, and the Linnean Society, and serves on the editorial board of the journal RSC Medicinal Chemistry.

Lyn completed PhD studies in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nottingham, before starting his postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, California in the area of chemical biology. He joined Pfizer (Sandwich, UK) as a medicinal chemistry team leader, eventually becoming Director of Chemical Biology and Lead Discovery Technologies. He transferred to Pfizer Cambridge, MA to become Head of Rare Disease Chemistry and Head of Chemical Biology. Lyn then joined Jnana Therapeutics as Vice President of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, before moving to his current role at DFCI.

Affiliations

  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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Jay Kasberger

Jay Kasberger

Associate Director, Software Engineering

Jay is a software and bioinformatics engineer with twenty years of experience working in the life sciences and medical technology. He has led development of software for drug discovery at Amgen and Celgene, pioneered innovations for lab informatics at the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub and was Director of Research Informatics at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center. At Interline, Jay builds systems to support our computational biology and machine learning needs. He lives in the Bay Area, the perfect place to enjoy his hobbies of open-water swimming and wearable electronics design.

Affiliations

  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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John Klimek

John Klimek

Scientist Proteomics

John Klimek has more than 15 years of experience in proteomics core facilities at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Much of John’s research has centered around the creation and use of standardized test mixtures to design and improve software used in protein identification and quantification. He has also been involved with dozens of proteomics research projects using TMT labeling, which has resulted in several publications.

John’s free time is often spent with his wife and 3 kids, exploring nature and various museums and historical sites.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Don Kirkpatrick

Don Kirkpatrick

Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer.

For over 20 years, Don has employed mass spectrometry proteomics to study ‘the most important protein in human cells’ – ubiquitin. As a National Hispanic Scholar, he earned a B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma and received a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arizona. First as a Ph.D. student, and then as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Don published seminal work on polyubiquitin chains and the ubiquitination of proteins including EGFR and cyclin B. He continued this work during his 13 years as a group leader at Genentech, overseeing development of MS proteomics technologies and their application to drug discovery. Don has published more than 80 peer reviewed papers and served on the editorial boards for Molecular & Cellular Proteomics and the Journal of Proteome Research. In addition to ubiquitin, Don is passionate about Dodger baseball, Sooner football and spending time in the mountains with his four children.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Nevan Krogan

Nevan Krogan

Founding Scientific Advisor

Nevan Krogan is a leading molecular and systems biologist whose current research is focused on the generation and analysis of large-scale genetic and protein-protein interaction datasets in a variety of organisms, ranging from bacteria to mammalian cells, with the ultimate goal of developing new therapeutics. To this end, he has developed strategies to generate quantitative genetic interaction maps and affinity tag/purification/mass spectrometry technologies used to create protein-protein interaction maps.

Nevan is a Professor and the Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), as well as a Senior Investigator at the J. David Gladstone Institutes. He has authored over 300 papers in the field of molecular biology and has given over 350 lectures and seminars around the world. Nevan obtained his undergraduate degree in chemistry in 1997, his M.Sc. in biology in 1999 from the University of Regina and received his Ph.D. in medical genetics at the University of Toronto in 2006.

Affiliations

  • USCF
  • Gladstone Institutes

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Itai Leven

Itai Leven

Senior Scientist, Computational Chemistry

Itai is a computational chemist specializing in the development of computational tools for large-scale molecular simulations. He earned his PhD in computational chemistry at Tel-Aviv university where he developed intermolecular potentials for conducting large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of nanomaterials. Itai later pursued a post-doc position at the Weizmann institute where he developed a two-state facilitated diffusion model for transcription factor search on DNA. He then joined Teresa Head-Gordon’s lab in UC Berkeley where he developed novel computational tools for predicting the electrostatic properties of molecules with applications to protein-ligand docking and reactive molecular dynamics. In his free time Itai enjoys outdoor activities with his family.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Jason Liang

Jason Liang

Senior Scientist, Proteomics

Jason is a trained biochemist and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry at UC San Diego in the lab of Huilin Zhou at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. There he developed methods utilizing mass spectrometry to study protein sumoylation and its functions in genome maintenance. He then went on to join Genentech in the labs of Donald Kirkpatrick and Shiva Malek as a Postdoctoral fellow, where he employed advanced technologies in quantitative proteomics to study RAF complexes in cancer cells. Jason has a keen interest in using biochemistry and proteomics to understand the mechanisms and regulation of signaling pathways, and is excited at the opportunity to develop and apply these cutting edge technologies to drug discovery. When he is not in the lab, Jason enjoys exploring the outdoors – hiking, snowboarding, and finding new places to share a good meal with his family and friends.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Stephanie Liu

Stephanie Liu

Director, Corporate Development & Strategy

Stephanie is passionate about all things healthcare and likes finding the possible in impossible challenges. She has over 10+ years experience working in strategy, operations and corporate development in pharmaceutical and health technologies across a variety of therapeutic areas. Most recently, Stephanie led the first class IIa smoking cessation vaporizer / drug combination product from idea to pre-commercialization.

Stephanie received her BS in Biochemistry from UCLA and her MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a 3.5 tennis player, 7.0 tennis fan and former lead singer of a jazz band, indie funk band and too many cover bands. In her free time, Stephanie is rarely seen without Indie, her German Shepherd pup.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Marni Luchsinger

Marni Luchsinger

Head, Human Resources

Marni brings 20+ years of human resources experience. Prior to joining Interline, Marni worked at Assertio Therapeutics where she was a leading contributor to building the commercial organization. She played a key role as the HR Integration Lead in five product acquisitions, one which was the company’s largest ($1.2 billion) acquisition. Marni has provided strategic support to all levels of the organization on matters such as: organizational development, organization design, sales incentive compensation and implementation, and development of a high-performance culture. Marni has also worked as a HRBP at Dey Pharmaceuticals and Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals.

Marni received her B.A. in Psychology from CSU, Sacramento. In her free time, she enjoys entertaining for friends and family and walking her dogs Henry and Tyson.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Emma Lundberg

Emma Lundberg

SAB Member

Emma Lundberg is currently a Professor in Cell Biology Proteomics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and Director of the Cell Atlas, of the Human Protein Atlas program. She will be joining Stanford University’s Bioengineering Department as an Associate Professor of Bioengineering in January of 2022.

Emma brings more than a decade of experience at the interface of affinity reagents, bioimaging, proteomics, and artificial intelligence. Her research aims to define the spatiotemporal organization of the human proteome at a subcellular level, with the goal to understand how variations and deviations in protein expression patterns can contribute to cellular function and disease. She also has an interest in the use of gaming for science and health applications.

An advocate of citizen science, Emma founded game development company Mindforce Game Lab in 2017 to advance the use of gaming for science and health applications including personalized medicine and mental health. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biotechnology from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Affiliations

  • KTH Royal Institute of Technology

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Daniela Mavrici

Daniela Mavrici

Senior Scientist, Lead Discovery

Daniela is a protein chemist with a background in structural biology. She has more than 15 years of experience on working with proteins at the bench in different settings. Among other positions, Daniela spent four years at Plexxikon where she worked in the protein chemistry department and contributed to its platform by providing purified drug targets for assays and structural biology. Daniela received her PhD from University of Calabria, Italy meanwhile she conducted her research in Tom Alber’s laboratory at University of California, Berkeley.

When not working, Daniela enjoys spending time outdoors with her family, gardening and cooking.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Matthew Meyerson

Matthew Meyerson

SAB Member

Matthew Meyerson is Director of the Center for Cancer Genomics and a member of the Department of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI); Professor of Genetics and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an American Cancer Society Research Professor; and an Institute Member in the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His laboratory is focused on cancer genomics, the cancer microbiome, and genome-inspired cancer drug discovery. The Meyerson laboratory has discovered many of the major causative somatic mutations in human lung cancer, including epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR mutations). Dr. Meyerson received an A.B. cum laude in chemistry and physics from Harvard College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University. He was a resident in pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a post-doctoral fellow with Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute. Dr. Meyerson joined the faculty of DFCI and Harvard Medical School in 1998 and has mentored a generation of leading researchers in cancer genomics. He has received numerous honors including the Paul Marks Prize in Cancer Research, the Caine Holter Hope Now award from Uniting Against Lung Cancer, the AACR Team Science Award, the Ilchun Memorial Prize, and the Alfred G. Knudson Award in Cancer Genetics. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians, and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Meyerson is an author of over 300 original scientific publications and an inventor on 19 patents for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. He was a founder of Foundation Medicine.

Affiliations

  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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Jared Mohr

Jared Mohr

Scientist, Proteomics

Jared grew up in upstate New York, where he attended Cornell University to study Chemistry and Chemical Biology. At Cornell, he worked in the lab of Dr. Michelle Heck to understand the proteomic signatures of infection and transmission of citrus greening disease. From there, Jared went to the University of Washington to pursue a PhD in Genome Sciences working in the lab of James Bruce, where he received an NSF GRFP fellowship to support his graduate studies. In the Bruce lab, Jared worked on developing novel cross-linking reagents and search tools, as well as supporting software development for operating novel mass analyzers. When not working on science, Jared enjoys cooking and sampling beers with interesting names.

Affiliations

  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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Zhongyu Mou

Zhongyu Mou

Senior Scientist, Cheminformatics

Zhongyu is a cheminformatician at Interline. Zhongyu received his PhD in Computational Chemistry at Georgetown University and has over 10 years of experience in quantum mechanics, biophysics and machine learning. Prior to Interline, Zhongyu worked at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), focusing on the prediction of drug-induced cardiotoxicity. At FDA, Zhongyu curated data from FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), drug labels and literature and built QSAR models on 12 cardiotoxicity endpoints. Before FDA, Zhongyu worked on the functional annotation of microbiomes in the human gut at NIH and also on building machine learning models to predict enzyme-substrate specificity at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Outside of work, Zhongyu enjoys SCUBA diving, skiing and street dancing.

Affiliations

  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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Bob Moreau

Bob Moreau

Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry

Bob is Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry and brings over 12 years of drug discovery experience to Interline. Bob was previously Senior Principal Scientist at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), where he led several structurally-enabled oncology, virology and bacteriology programs to various milestones. Bob began his medicinal chemistry career by contributing to phenotypic drug discovery programs focused on neglected tropical diseases at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF). Bob earned his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Princeton University and B.A. in chemistry from College of the Holy Cross. Outside of work, Bob enjoys cooking and exploring the many Bay Area hiking trails with his family.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Gard Nelson

Gard Nelson

Principal Scientist, Computational Chemistry

Gard is a computational chemist whose research interests center on free energy calculations of critical molecular processes. His previous role as a principal scientist at ImmunityBio primarily involved calculating binding free energies between drug candidates and cancer or infectious disease targets. These candidates ranged from small molecules to modified protein-protein interfaces. Free energy calculations provide the basis for optimizing the drug-protein interaction, whether it is a small molecule or biologic drug candidate. He also used molecular dynamics simulations to map protein conformational changes in the presence or absence of mutations. Gard did his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University. He completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago where he studied the interactions and free energies governing proton transport inside cytochrome c oxidase. In his free time, Gard enjoys taking his wife and kids on adventures in the mountains or ocean.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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David Nusinow

David Nusinow

Principal Scientist, Bioinformatics

David obtained his B.S. in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at UCLA and before going on for his Ph.D. at Tufts in the lab of Victor Hatini. There, David established expertise in genetics and imaging based assays while exploring the molecular mechanisms of Drosophila wing development. With a growing interest in computational biology, David went on to postdoc with Shamil Sunyaev at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he worked as part of the SysCODE Consortium and began to explore the field of proteomics. To further expand his expertise in this area, David served as a Research Fellow in Steven Gygi’s lab at Harvard Med School where he worked on numerous projects in the areas of protein interactions, post-translational modifications, chemical biology and advanced data acquisition. David’s signature work during this period involved systematic proteomic characterization of the cancer cell line encyclopedia (CCLE). Prior to joining Interline, David worked at Pfizer as a Senior Computational Biologist. He resides in the Boston suburbs with his wife and two children.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Waleed Osman

Waleed Osman

Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

Waleed Osman is a seasoned software engineer and bioinformatics data engineer with a special concentration in Next Generation Sequencing and Proteomics. He has over 7 years of experience in various high profile bioinformatic and precision medicine projects. After graduating from Georgetown University, he spent several years with the National Cancer Institute developing enterprise applications for one of the largest precision medicine studies in NIH’s history. Next, he engineered and managed the genomic data and software infrastructure serving hundreds of patients at a teaching hospital in the heart of NYC. He has extensive experience with various software languages and cloud infrastructure platforms as well as the analysis and integration of multi-omic datasets. He aspires to significantly contribute to the field of precision medicine by helping to facilitate the research that will be needed to bring computational solutions from bench to bedside.

Outside of work, Waleed enjoys reading, training in martial arts and keeping up with world news and events.

 

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Jay Parrish

Jay Parrish

Board of Directors, Director

Jay Parrish, Ph.D. is a Venture Partner at ARCH Venture Partners, Chairman of Pretzel Therapeutics, and co-founder and board member of Rome Therapeutics. Previously, he was co-founder and Chief Business Officer of Vir Biotechnology, a company focused on infectious disease. As Vir’s first employee, he helped lead the company through its IPO and first drug approval.

Dr. Parrish is an accomplished scientist who began his career at Gilead Sciences, Inc. in the Medicinal Chemistry group where his research focused on the discovery of small molecule anti-virals for the treatment of HIV, hepatitis C, and respiratory syncytial viruses. In this role, he was involved with several successful discovery campaigns, including being a co-inventor of ledipasvir (Harvoni®), approved as a cure for hepatitis C genotypes 1, 4–6, and remdesivir (Veklury®), approved for COVID-19. Dr. Parrish has authored over 25 peer-reviewed scientific publications and holds over 30 issued patents.

Dr. Parrish holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Emory University and a Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of South Florida. He completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute and received an M.B.A. from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Affiliations

  • Arch Venture Partner

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Ramin Rad

Ramin Rad

Senior Scientist, Bioinformatics

Ramin brings over a decade of experience in proteomics with a focus on software engineering for improved sensitivity, acceleration, workflow automation, and data visualization. Before joining Interline, Ramin was a member of Steven Gygi’s Lab at Harvard Medical School where he contributed to several key projects, including large-scale protein-protein interaction mapping, TMT quantitation methods development, tuning localization of post-translational modifications, intelligent instrument control software, and improved monoisotopic peak detection. He was awarded a B.S. in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at UCLA, during which time he contributed to a software platform for alternative splicing annotation as a student researcher in Christopher Lee’s lab in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Thereafter, Ramin briefly spent time as a game programmer working on a title by Pandemic Studios for PC and 7th generation consoles. Over the years, Ramin has consulted to provide computational proteomics support across numerous institutions such as Massachusetts General Hospital, and Princeton University. In his downtime, he enjoys cooking with his wife and daughter, and searches for the perfect cup of coffee at local roasters.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Naomi Rajapaksa

Naomi Rajapaksa

Principal Scientist Medicinal Chemistry

Naomi is a medicinal chemist at Interline with over seven years of experience in structure- and property-based drug design. She started her industrial career at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in the area of antiviral drug discovery. Prior to Interline, she was a Senior Scientist and team leader at Genentech, where she contributed to the medicinal chemistry efforts on projects in immunology and oncology. Naomi received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard University under the guidance of Eric Jacobsen, studying asymmetric catalysis and synthesis, and a B.S. in chemistry from Stanford University. In her spare time, Naomi enjoys traveling and trying new cuisines.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Meera Rao

Meera Rao

Senior Scientist, Medicinal Chemistry

Meera is a medicinal chemist at Interline. She obtained her Ph.D. from Stanford University, where she developed chiral ruthenium catalysts for cycloisomerization reactions. Meera then completed postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley, where she studied polymer additive effects on enzymatic cellulose degradation. Prior to joining Interline, Meera developed new linker-drugs for antibody-drug conjugates at Stemcentrx and the discovered small molecule inhibitors of protein secretion at Kezar Life Sciences.

In her spare time, Meera enjoys both baking and eating desserts.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Hart Rardin

Hart Rardin

Principal Scientist, Cell Biology

Hart is an immunologist interested in the causes of aberrant inflammation that lead to inflammatory diseases. She has over ten years of experience at Genentech as a scientific researcher focused on small molecule therapeutics where she was involved in inhaled JAK1 small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of asthma. She then continued her work on inhaled therapeutics as a Senior Scientist at Theravance prior to joining Interline. Hart completed her undergraduate studies at North Carolina State University and obtained her PhD in immunology in the lab of Dr. Robert Rickert at the Burnham Institute associated with UCSD. Outside of work, Hart enjoys spending time with her family in the great outdoors.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Scott Rosenberg

Scott Rosenberg

Scientist, Discovery Pharmacology

Scott earned his Ph.D. in molecular and structural biology from UC San Diego in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Corbett. He subsequently did a Postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech in the department of Discovery Oncology under Dr. Shiva Malek. During his time at Genentech, he studied mechanisms of targeted protein degradation using structural biology and biophysics. Scott is motivated by the opportunity to translate advancements in science and technology into therapeutic interventions for patients. His favorite pastime is eating a Hawaiian breakfast after a nice morning of surfing.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Srirupa Roy

Srirupa Roy

Senior Scientist, Cell Biology

Srirupa is a cell biologist passionate about exploring diverse cell biology platforms to enable drug discovery. She received her Ph.D. in toxicology from UC Denver, and completed her postdoctoral research in Jay Debnath’s lab in UCSF, where she investigated the role of autophagy in cancer metabolism. Before joining Interline she was a researcher at Genentech, where she designed cell therapy strategies for preclinical models of solid tumors. Previously, Srirupta was also a research scientist in the immunooncology antibody discovery group of Bayer Healthcare.

Outside of work, Srirupa enjoys reading, cooking and spending time outdoors with family.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Bianca Ruiz

Bianca Ruiz

Scientist, Multi-Omics

Bianca is a scientist with nine years of experience in biological research. She first began her journey in research working in the environmental microbiology lab of Dr. Hope Johnson at Cal State University, Fullerton while in pursuit of her undergraduate degree. In graduate school, Bianca worked in the labs of Stan Fields and Judit Villén in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. Her work focused on the development of proteomics technologies for reading out the functional consequences of amino acid substitutions in proteins at scale. While she started as an experimental scientist working at the bench, during graduate school, she shifted her focus to developing computational skills in omics data analysis and visualization. She graduated with her PhD in Genome Sciences in 2021. When she is not doing proteomics, Bianca enjoys dancing, running, and spending time with her partner Ian and their dog Clifford.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Anj Saha

Anj Saha

VP, Discovery Pharmacology

Anj joined Interline Therapeutics in January 2021. Prior to that he was an EIR at 5AM Ventures, where he was involved with several early seed companies. Previously, he was at Nurix Therapeutics, where he built and headed the Lead Discovery department. There his team helped discover and progress first in class small molecules against novel E3 ligases and degraders in the fields of oncology and immuno-oncology that are currently in clinical and pre-clinical development. Prior to Nurix, Anj was Director of Biology at Proteostasis Therapeutics and started his industry career at GlaxoSmithKline as an Investigator within Cancer Research.

Anj completed his undergraduate studies in India at IIT-Delhi and received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry working on chromatin biology with Prof. Bradley Cairns at University of Utah. He completed postdoctoral training as a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Fellow working on ubiquitin ligases with Prof. Raymond Deshaies at Caltech.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Brenda Schulman

Brenda Schulman

Founding Scientific Advisor

Brenda Schulman is a leading biochemist and structural biologist. She has substantially contributed to the characterization of ubiquitin-like proteins (UBLs). Her main interest is how ubiquitin-like proteins and ubiquitin are able to specifically modify certain substrates, and how they alter the functions of their targets to regulate biological processes.

Brenda is an elected member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and EMBO. She has been awarded several prizes including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine.

Brenda received her bachelor’s degree in biology from Johns Hopkins University in 1989 and her Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and later at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Brenda joined the faculty at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 2001 and held the Joseph Simone Endowed Chair of Basic Research as of 2014. She also became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2005. Brenda moved to the Max Planck Institute in 2017 and is currently the Director at the Institute of Biochemistry.

Affiliations

  • Max Plank Institute

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Kyle Simonetta

Kyle Simonetta

Senior Director, Lead Discovery

Kyle is a biochemist and structural biologist, with a passion for identifying and progressing small molecules that modulate protein-protein interactions, especially those that form cooperative ternary complexes. At Interline, Kyle leads a team of talented scientists in the biophysical and structural characterization of protein-protein interactions and the discovery of small molecule effectors of those interactions. Kyle received a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in the laboratory of John Kuriyan, studying the structural mechanisms of DNA replication and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in the ubiquitin field in Micha Rape’s lab. Most recently, he worked in the field of targeted degradation as the first employee at Nurix Therapeutics, developing molecular glues and heterobifunctional molecules that recruit targets to ubiquitin ligases for ubiquitylation and degradation. He is a 17 year Bay Area transplant from New England (Go Sox!) and enjoys hiking and going on trips with his family.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Jessica Spradlin

Jessica Spradlin

Scientist, Proteomics

Jessica grew up in the Bay Area before attending Tufts University for undergraduate studies in chemistry. She earned her Ph.D. in chemistry at UC Berkeley, working in the lab of Dan Nomura. During her time at Berkeley, Jessica used chemoproteomic methods to study the natural product nimbolide and developed the natural product into an E3-ligase recruiter for targeted protein degradation. At Berkeley, Jessica was awarded the F31 Individual Predoctoral fellowship by the NIH to support her work and also received the “team spirit” award on the aptly named Off-Targets softball team. After graduate school Jessica became interested in using proteomic methods to study protein interactions and went to Genentech as a postdoctoral researcher. She joined Interline as a scientist in June of 2021, leveraging proteomic technologies to improve understanding of dynamic protein communities. Outside of the lab, Jessica enjoys hiking with her dog Moose and keeping busy with DIY projects.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Zach Sweeney

Zach Sweeney

Founder, Board of Directors, CEO

Zach Sweeney is the CEO at Interline Therapeutics, an Affiliate at ARCH Venture Partners and a Venture Partner at Foresite Labs. He has broad experience growing and leading successful multifunctional drug discovery groups, including small molecule, biotherapeutic, and AAV discovery platforms.

Zach was previously the Chief Scientific Officer at Denali Therapeutics, where he guided the growth of the discovery portfolio and research group. Prior to joining Denali, Zach was a leader in the drug discovery groups at Revolution Medicines, Novartis, Genentech, and Roche. Molecules that Zach and his teams have developed at these companies have been the subject of several major licensing deals that cumulatively generated more than $1B in upfront payments.

Zach attended Stanford University, where he received a B.S. degree in Chemistry. He subsequently earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Zach’s research interests include the application of genomic and biomarker information in drug discovery, computational approaches to improve small molecule and biotherapeutic design, and the chemical biology of drug candidates. He is listed as an inventor on approximately 60 published patent applications and has co-authored more than 40 scientific publications.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics
  • Foresite Labs
  • Arch Venture Partners

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Jim Tananbaum

Jim Tananbaum

Board of Directors, Chairman

Jim Tananbaum is the founder and CEO of Foresite Capital, a US-focused healthcare investment firm with $3 billion under management.

Jim has been a lead financier and thought partner for some of the most impactful and fastest growth companies of their generation including: 10x Genomics, Amerigroup (NASDAQ: ANTM), and Jazz Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: JAZZ). Jim co-founded and initially ran GelTex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GENZ) and Theravance (NASD: TBPH and INVA). Jim’s investment experience includes being a co-founder of Prospect Ventures and earlier in his career, a partner of Sierra Ventures, where he established its healthcare services investment practice. Jim has been named to Forbes’ Midas List of Top Tech Investors between 2015 to 2018 and in 2021.

Jim received his M.D. and M.B.A. from Harvard, and a Master’s degree from MIT. He graduated with degrees in Applied Math and Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from Yale College.

Affiliations

  • Foresite Capital Management

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Yuchin Teng

Yuchin Teng

Scientist, Cell Biology

Yuchin is an experienced cell biologist who began her career in academic labs then transitioned to industry where she focused on driving progress through the design, conduct, and comprehensive analysis of well-controlled target validation and mechanistic studies. Prior to joining Interline, Yuchin was a Scientist at insitro, where she developed a complex 3D cellular model of NASH for probing insitro’s discoveries.
When Yuchin isn’t working she enjoys gardening, doing arts and crafts, and teasing her children.

 

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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David Tully

David Tully

VP, Medicinal Chemistry

David Tully brings over 20 years of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery experience to Interline. David was previously Director of Chemistry at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) where he led discovery chemistry research teams across multiple disease areas working on molecular glues and targeted protein degradation. He also led the antiviral medicinal chemistry efforts in the NIBR Infectious Diseases Area. David began his career in drug discovery at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, where he led the medicinal chemistry efforts on a number of projects in neuroscience, metabolic, respiratory, and infectious diseases that delivered several clinical stage compounds into the Novartis pipeline. When he is not working to discover new drugs, David enjoys mountain biking, hiking, and skiing. David earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Mike Varney

Mike Varney

Director and Founding Scientific Advisor

Mike Varney is the former Executive Vice President and Head of Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED), where he was responsible for all aspects of drug discovery and development for the US based R&D organization in Roche and served as a member of the Roche Corporate Executive Committee.

Mike began his career in 1987 as one one of the first employees at Agouron. When Pfizer acquired Agouron in 2000, Mike was selected to lead Drug Discovery for Pfizer’s San Diego organization. In 2005, Mike was recruited to Genentech to take the company beyond biologics and create a small molecule drug discovery capability.

Mike holds a B.S. in Chemistry from UCLA, a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Caltech and was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Columbia.

Affiliations

  • Previously Genentech/Roche and Pfizer

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Erik Verschueren

Erik Verschueren

Senior Bioinformatics Fellow

Erik joined Interline as a consulting Senior Bioinformatics Fellow in August 2021. His experience spans the fields of proteomics, structural and computational biology, and includes leadership of technical and scientific teams around the world. Erik received his Ph.D. from the CRG in Barcelona in the lab of Luis Serrano, where his research involved computational modeling of peptide-protein interactions. Erik subsequently joined Nevan Krogan’s lab at UCSF, where his work was central to establishing the bioinformatics pipeline for systematically characterizing protein interaction networks. Scientifically, Erik contributed significantly to several host-virus interactome projects and publications for pathogens, including Kaposi’s sarcoma herpes virus (KSHV), hepatitis C, influenza, West Nile and HIV.

Erik also has worked as a Bioinformatics Scientist at Genentech, where he contributed to a wide range of proteomics projects, including characterization of autophagy, cell death, and protein interactions. Most notable amongst these was a landmark contribution in Cell describing the screening of ~600K potential interactions between secreted proteins and immunoglobulin (Ig) superfamily proteins. He then joined Galapagos as an Associate Director of Bioinformatics.

Erik resides in Belgium with his wife Anne and their two children.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Ankita Walvekar

Ankita Walvekar

Research Associate, Proteomicsc

Ankita is a biomedical engineer and researcher. She completed her master’s from San Jose State University in Biomedical Engineering. During her time at San Jose State University, she had the opportunity to work on multiple projects such as research on chronic fatigue syndrome (ME-CFS) with Dr. Anand Ramasubramanian, which was in collaboration with Stanford Genomic Center where she analyzed plasma for thrombotic activity. When she is not working in the lab she enjoys being outdoors and I like exploring new places.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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Yao Wong

Yao Wong

Senior Director, Translational Biology

Yao has over a decade of experience deploying innovative approaches to develop small molecule modulators against novel targets in neurodegenerative, metabolic, cancer, and other age-related diseases. Prior to joining Interline, he was a Project Team Leader at Calico Life Sciences, where he was accountable for leading programs from lead generation into early clinical development. Yao earned a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry/Biophysics from Northwestern University. He completed postdoctoral training at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, UC San Diego.

When Yao isn’t obsessing over science, he spends his time alternately hunting for the best food around the world with his family and running to work off the calories.

Affiliations

  • Interline Therapeutics

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David Ye

David Ye

Geneticist, Cell Biologist

David is a geneticist and cell biologist, with a keen interest in understanding the form and function of subcellular structures and their implications in diseases. As a Senior Scientist at Interline, David will use functional genomics to identify and interrogate key disease modulators. David did his Ph.D. work in David Ginty’s lab at Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School, where he discovered a novel signaling pathway that governs the communications between adipose tissues and the sympathetic nervous system, and its implications in diabetes and obesity. Subsequently, David performed postdoctoral research in Michael Rape’s lab at UC Berkeley where he developed cell-based CRISPR screening platforms to discover key, novel degradation enzymes for neurodegenerative diseases.

Outside of the lab, David is inspired by literature, design and architecture.

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