Management and Scientists

Our Team

Advancing today’s innovation into tomorrow’s transformative therapeutics.

Evrys Bio

ACTUALIZING INNOVATION. A TEAM WITH A PROVEN TRACK RECORD FOR SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION.

Team
Ensuring successful translation of our drug discovery programs to ultimately address patient needs in the clinic, Evrys Bio has a world-class team with proven track record for innovation and commercialization success. We will pursue a focused business plan while maximizing non-dilutive funding. In addition, multiple pharma partnering opportunities will be pursued in parallel with internal value creation.

Senior Management Team

Lillian W. Chiang, PhD, MBA

President & CEO

Prior to Evrys Bio, Lillian was VP of Translational Medicine at Kadmon Corporation. She was responsible for strategy and translation from early discovery through proof of concept in man. Throughout her career she has built from scratch, state-of-the-art technologies, drug discovery & development teams, and businesses at Stanford, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Purdue Pharma, Aestus Therapeutics, and Kadmon. At Aestus, she applied her own data mining algorithms to identify drug-repositioning assets to acquire and develop in a virtual pharma environment. Aestus’ first in-licensed product was successfully advanced from novel mechanism of action & therapeutic hypothesis to completion of phase 2A trial in 5 years and $5 M spend primarily funded by government grants. BS, MIT; PhD, Wisconsin; Post-Doc, Stanford; MBA, Wharton.

Thomas E. Shenk, PhD

Founder and Board Director

Tom is the James A. Elkins Professor of Life Sciences, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society. Intellectual property and concepts from Tom’s lab in the fields of molecular biology, gene therapy, vaccines, and virology, have fueled multiple start-ups with successful exits including DNX (IPO), ImClone Systems (IPO), Merlin (acquired by Somatix), Novalon (acquired by Kara Bio), Cadus (IPO) and PMV Pharma (IPO). Tom served in the past on the boards of multiple companies, including Merck & Co., Cell Genesis and CV Therapeutics. In addition to his current position as chair of the Evrys board, he serves on the boards of MeiraGTx and the Hepatitis B Foundation.

Stacy W. Remiszewski, PhD

Vice President - Research

Stacy is a medicinal chemist with over 30 issued patents spanning tenures at Schering-Plough, Novartis, and Hoffmann-La Roche. At Novartis, Stacy led a multi-disciplinary project team that delivered two compounds to Phase 1 clinical trials within five years. One of those compounds, panobinostat is a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor developed by Novartis that received marketing approval for treatment of multiple myeloma. Most recently, Stacy was Director of Chemistry, Section Head for Oncology Chemistry and member of the Discovery Chemistry Management Team at Hoffmann-La Roche. Throughout his career he has led in-licensing evaluation and preclinical research teams, consistently delivering strategic collaborations and clinical candidates, while embracing new technologies and developing unique methods to affect drug targets including disrupting protein-protein interactions.

Robert Besthof

Operations & Strategy (Consultant)

Robert Besthof is a 25+ years global pharmaceutical hands-on strategic and operational leader with a track record of building pipelines and globally launching products. He worked for Eli Lilly, Wyeth and Pfizer across multiple strategic and operational senior leader roles. His big pharma assignments included various in-country P&L assignments launching and growing products, strategic marketing and product development. In 2016, he established his consultancy focused on emerging biotechnology companies, assuming leadership positions and working with his clients to define and implement investable paths for preclinical and clinical programs. He has built and led teams that generated a combined 18 proof of concept and phase III programs across multiple therapeutic areas. His assignments have included Commercial Assessment, Business Development and Licensing, Head of Operations, and interim CEO of a public company. Robert received a B.A. in economics from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a Masters of International Management from the Thunderbird School of Management in Glendale. Robert speaks fluent German, Spanish and Dutch, and is conversant in other languages.

Jens Erik Knudsen, BS, MBA

Chief Financial Officer

Jens Erik Knudsen joined Evrys Bio in December 2023 to assume the new role of Chief Financial Officer, and became a member of our leadership team.

Jens has over 25 years of experience building and leading international finance and operations teams at different stages of company development, primarily in the life sciences sector. He has completed multiple forms of financing including IPO, PIPES, Rights Issue, Bank Financing, and Debt Financing raising over $100 million. Working for European, Chinese and U.S. companies Jens has had roles of increasing responsibilities in controlling and finance for private and public companies.

Jens holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business from the Copenhagen Business School, and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Philadelphia University.

Dana M Fowlkes, MD PhD

Chief Business Officer

Dana is a graduate of Cornell University Graduate School of the Medical Sciences and Cornell University Medical College. Previously he was a Venture Partner at Hatteras Venture Partners as well as Executive VP and CSO at Karo Bio AB. Dana co-founded Cadus Pharmaceutical Corp and Novalon Pharmaceutical Corp. where he negotiated the company’s $107 million merger with Karo Bio AB. Dana’s scientific and medical interests have focus on phage display and drug screening technologies. His goal for Evrys Bio is to establish partnerships to advance the company’s drugs into clinical trials for indications such as Hepatitis B, influenza-like illnesses and areas needing broad spectrum antiviral activity.

Matthew Todd, PhD

Head of Enzymology and Biophysics

Matthew is Founder of BioPhysical-Solutions. He is also Professor of Translational Medical Research at the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute of Hepatitis B Research. Prior to joining Blumberg faculty, Dr. Todd served as Research Fellow and Director of Lead Generation Biology at J&J (Janssen Pharmaceuticals), an assay group supporting HTS, Hit-to-Lead, Lead Optimization, and drug Mechanism of Action studies. Matthew works closely with the Evrys Bio research team to validate the mechanism of action for Evrys Bio small molecule sirtuin modulators.

F. Aaron Dubberley, Esq.

Head of Intellectual Properties

Aaron is a patent attorney with 25 years of IP experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He brings a broad range of experience as in-house counsel for numerous pharma and biotech companies large and small (e.g. Aventis, Hoffmann-La Roche, Organon, Aestus Therapeutics, WellGen), and as law firm experience (patent agent at McAulay Nissen Goldberg Kiel & Hand). At Organon, Aaron managed the entire U.S. patent portfolio prior to the acquisition by Schering-Plough. Aaron has a JD from Rutgers and an MS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Davis. Previously, he also served for five years as Assistant Director for Intellectual Property for Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, the technology-licensing arm of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

John L. Kulp III, PhD

Director of Business Development

John is Founder and CEO of Conifer Point. Conifer Point has two branches (i) computational services and technical expertise to support small and medium size businesses in their drug discovery projects and (ii) technology development to transform drug discovery by democratizing a physics-based computational platform (more than $4m in NIH grants). In August of 2020, Conifer Point sold proprietary computational software to Lodo Therapeutics which was then acquired by Zymergen Inc. (NASDAQ: ZY). At biotechnology incubators, the small businesses synergize with orthogonal areas of expertise. In early 2022, John began work as Director of Business Development at Evrys Bio. John founded a satellite campus for the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine and has taught biochemistry and pharmacology for the medical school.

Scientists

Kathryn Sullivan

Senior Research Associate

Olivia Cipollini

Research Associate

Alison Welsh

Senior Research Associate

Caitlin DeAngelo

Research Project Manager

Business Management

Karen Monzon, MBA

Controller

Karen has over 20 years in accounting and operations including a background in internal audit with Chase Manhattan Bank and Fidelity Investments. She left audit to join a startup venture within Fidelity Investments to provide payroll, benefits and human resource outsourcing solutions to existing Fidelity 401(k) clients. In this role, she led a team of business analysts to define and implement the accounting and financial operational procedures necessary to support the new business venture. Prior to joining Evrys Bio, she was an accountant with Vitae Pharmaceuticals. Karen has an MBA from Boston University and a BS in Finance from Fairfield University.