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H. Robert Horvitz, Ph.D.
Dr. Horvitz received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. He is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Neurobiologist (Neurology) and Geneticist (Medicine) at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a member of the M.I.T. McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the M.I.T. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is cofounder of NemaPharm, Inc., Idun Pharmaceuticals and Epizyme.
Dr. Horvitz received S.B. degrees in mathematics and economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Harvard University. Dr. Horvitz is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital and is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Society for Science and the Public. He was President of the Genetics Society of America. Dr. Horvitz is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Horvitz received the U.S. National Academies of Science Award in Molecular Biology; the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health; the Ciba-Drew Award for Biomedical Science; the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize; the Gairdner Foundation International Award; the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology; the Genetics Society of America Medal; the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience; the Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences; the Peter Gruber Foundation Foundation Genetics Prize; the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor; the Alfred G. Knudson Award of the National Cancer Institute; and the U.K. Genetics Society Mendel Medal. Dr. Horvitz is also Chair of the Medical and Scientific Advisory board for MPM Capital.
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Bennett Shapiro, M.D.
Dr. Shapiro is a Senior Partner and Chairman of the Board of PureTech Ventures. Formerly he was Executive Vice President in charge of Worldwide Basic, Preclinical, Licensing and External Research for Merck, where he was responsible for programs that resulted in FDA registration of approximately 25 drugs and vaccines. He has been a Board member of a number of life science companies, including VBL, Celera, Momenta, Elixir, Satori, and Ikaria, as well as serving on the Board of Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative.
Dr. Shapiro received his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College. He joined Merck Research Laboratories in 1990 as Executive Vice President, Basic Research. Drugs that received FDA approval under his leadership include Vioxx, Arcoxia, and Emend, and stretch as far back as the A2 antagonist Cozaar, the hepatitis A vaccine VACQTA, and many others. From 1999-2003, Dr. Shapiro oversaw all in-licensing activities for Merck. Previously, he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. He is the author of over 120 papers on the molecular regulation of cellular behavior and the biochemical events that integrate the cascade of cellular activities at fertilization.
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Raju Kucherlapati, Ph.D.
Dr. Kucherlapati the Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics and a Professor of Medicine and at Harvard Medical School and was the first Scientific Director of the Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He was a founder and formerly a Board member of Abgenix, Cell Genesys, and Millennium Pharmaceuticals and is currently a Board member of AVEO Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Kucherlapati received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He trained at Yale University and held faculty positions at Princeton University, University of Illinois College of Medicine, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His laboratory at Harvard Medical School is involved in cloning and characterization of human disease genes with a focus on human syndromes with a significant cardiovascular involvement, use of genetic/genomic approaches to understand the biology of cancer and the generation and characterization of genetically modified mouse models for cancer and other human disorders. He served on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and was Editor in Chief of the journal Genomics.
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Rakesh Jain, Ph.D.
Dr. Jain is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was awarded the Academic Scientist of the Year Award from the Pharmaceutical Achievements Awards and the Distinguished Service Award from Nature Biotechnology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Prior to joining Harvard in 1991, Dr. Jain served as Assistant Professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University (1976-78), and as Assistant (1978-79), Associate (1979-83) and Full Professor (1983-91) of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. Jain is regarded as a pioneer in the fields of tumor biology, drug delivery, in vivo imaging and bioengineering. He is known for revealing the physiological barriers to delivery and efficacy of anticancer drugs, for proposing strategies to overcome these barriers and for translating these strategies from bench to bedside. His work has fundamentally changed the thinking of scientists and clinicians about how molecularly targeted therapeutics, especially antiangiogenic agents, actually work in animal models and cancer patients, and how to combine them optimally with cytotoxic therapies to improve survival rates in cancer patients.
Dr. Jain's findings are summarized in more than 535 publications, including three in Scientific American. He serves on advisory panels to government, industry and academia, and editorial boards of ten journals, including Nature Reviews Cancer and Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology. He has received more than 50 major awards and lectureships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983-84), the Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (1990-91), the National Cancer Institute's Research Career Development Award (1980-85) and Outstanding Investigator Grant (1993-2000), and the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Innovator Award (2000-05).
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Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Gambhir is the Virginia and K.D. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and Chair of Radiology at Stanford University. He also directs the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford and the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection. He has founded several biotechnology startups and is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the US National Academies.
Dr. Gambhir received a M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and moved to Stanford in 2003. Dr. Gambhir has a translational science laboratory focused on multimodality imaging and is a member of the Bio-X program at Stanford University. His laboratory has developed methods to image gene expression and cell therapies in living subjects including humans. These imaging strategies have been translated into clinical trials for human gene/cell therapies. He has developed several small animal imaging strategies for studying basic cell/molecular biological events including imaging protein-protein interactions, intramolecular folding, and cell trafficking. Dr. Gambhir has extensive experience with clinical FDG PET, and developed many of the original management algorithms for cancer patients that led to FDG reimbursement by Medicare. He has received several awards including the Taplin Award (2002), Holst Medal (2003), the Academy of Molecular Imaging Basic Scientist Award (2004), the Society of Molecular Imaging Achievement Award (2004), the Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (2004), the Hounsfield Medal for Imperial College London (2006), the Aebersold Award from Society of Nuclear Medicine (2006), and the Tesla Medal from the British Radiological Society (2008). He is one of 35 members of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Scientific Advisory Board and co-hosted the Nobel Symposium on Molecular Imaging in Stockholm in 2007.
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Daphne Zohar
Ms. Zohar is the founder and managing partner of PureTech Ventures, a Boston-based venture creation firm. She has been recognized by Fierce Biotech as one of the "Top 10 Women in Biotech" and by the Boston Globe as one of the "Top 15 Innovators." She sits on the Boards of Directors of 9 companies and was the founding CEO of three of those companies. Ms. Zohar also serves on the Technology Development Fund Advisory Board at Children's Hospital Boston and is an editorial advisor to Xconomy, a national technology news blog.
A successful entrepreneur, Ms. Zohar created PureTech Ventures and assembled a leading team from the highest echelon of pharma, biotech and academia to help implement her vision for the firm, which is to translate breakthrough research from top tier academic institutions into therapies that will impact human health and well-being. She is widely respected in the world of entrepreneurs, including being recognized by BioWorld as one of 28 leaders predicted to be the "movers and shakers" of the biotechnology industry over the next twenty years. She sits on the Boards of Directors of Enlight Biosciences, PureTech Ventures, Follica Inc., KNODE Inc., Vedanta Bioscience, Mandara Sciences, Karuna Pharmaceuticals, Tal Medical, and Satori Pharmaceuticals.
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David Steinberg
Mr. Steinberg is a Partner at PureTech Ventures. He is a board member of Enlight Biosciences and served as founding CEO. In addition, he is the founding CEO of Endra, Inc. and Knode, Inc., and was a member of the founding team for Entrega, Follica, Satori Pharmaceuticals, and Ensof Biosystems. Prior to joining PureTech, he was a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and Vertex Partners, and previously was a research associate with Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals. He earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in strategy and finance with high honors and a B.A. in Biology with distinction from Cornell University.
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Jonathan Behr, Ph.D.
Jon focuses on new business creation, operations, and business development activities at Enlight. Previously he was a Principal with PureTech Ventures where he was a member of the founding teams of Enlight, Endra, Vedanta, Mandara, and Tal Medical. Jon earned his Ph.D. in Biological Engineering at M.I.T., as a Howard Hughes pre-doctoral fellow, and his B.S. in Biological Engineering from Rice University with Honors, summa cum laude, where he was Phi Beta Kappa co-valedictorian. He was awarded the inaugural Rice Bioengineering Outstanding Undergraduate Alumnus award for his post-baccalaureate achievements.
About Enlight
Enlight Biosciences was founded in 2008 by PureTech Ventures. In discussions between PureTech and Enlight's earliest pharma members, it became clear that there was a critical unmet need in translating and funding the next generation of platform technology tools for drug discovery and development.
Enlight's pharma members realize that creating the next generation of life saving medicines requires innovative technologies. Transformational platform technologies enable drug developers to better understand fundamental disease biology, predict safety and efficacy, and discover novel drugs, while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the R&D process.
Enlight provides a unique mechanism through which pharma partners can collaboratively support rapid and tailored development of high impact platform technologies that directly address their most pressing needs. Bringing together academic luminaries, innovators and entrepreneurs, Enlight founds and manages new technology companies that deliver near-term impact with transformational potential.