Tamra Adams is the Chief Financial Officer at Venatorx Pharmaceuticals where she has responsibility for the company’s financial functions, including accounting, audit, treasury, and corporate finance. She is a seasoned finance and operations executive with over 25 years of experience leading financial planning, accounting operations and capital strategy. Ms. Adams previously served as CFO at Antios Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. Before joining Antios, she founded Accounting Concepts, Inc., a firm that provided CFO, accounting, and financial services to emerging growth companies in the biopharmaceutical and information technology industries, including Engage Therapeutics (acquired by UCB). Prior to that, Tamra was the senior financial executive at Silverstorm Technologies, Inc., (acquired by QLogic). Ms. Adams began her career at Ernst & Young followed by Goldman Sachs. Ms. Adams earned her BS in Accounting from State University of New York Albany. She was a licensed Certified Public Accountant in the State of New York.
Christina Amendola is a seasoned Human Resource professional with a strategic background in HR affairs within the pharmaceutical industry. As the Director of HR at Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, Christina focuses on driving comprehensive HR strategies that align business needs with employee needs. Her expertise encompasses talent management, performance management, total rewards and benefits, employee relations, and employee engagement.
Before joining Venatorx, Christina held various HR positions at Aceragen (formerly Idera Pharmaceuticals) and began her career as an executive recruiter in the life sciences. She holds a Master of Science in Human Resource Development from Villanova University and a Bachelor of Arts from College of the Holy Cross. In addition, she is a Society for Human Resource Management Certified Professional (SHRM-CP).
Ms. Ellis has more than 25 years of GCP/GMP quality assurance experience, having worked in and set up analytical chemistry and quality control laboratories. Ms. Ellis has experience creating quality control and quality assurance systems for small biotech companies and has extensive experience managing contract-manufacturing facilities for drug substance and drug product manufacture, including injectable and solid oral dosage forms.
Prior to joining Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, Ms. Ellis was Head of Quality Assurance at TRACON, and Vice President of Quality Assurance at Trius Therapeutics, Inc. (acquired by Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) where she led the GxP Quality activities for development and commercialization of SivextroTM. SivextroTM was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June 2014. Ms. Ellis started her career as an analytical chemist at Alliance Pharmaceuticals, and then moved to leading analytical and CMC project teams at Pfizer, Inc. In her career, she has led CMC and Quality groups in the development of compounds in a variety of therapeutic areas.
Ms. Ellis received a B.A. in Chemistry from the University of Delaware.
At Venatorx, Mr. Girard provides strategic, financial, and business development leadership to drive and maximize the value creation strategy for the clinical and preclinical antibacterial and antiviral programs.
Mr. Girard is a seasoned biopharmaceutical executive with multiple product approvals and launches over his 25 years of experience in strategic planning, corporate development, clinical development, and business development. He has extensive partnering experience having completed collaborations, licenses, acquisitions, and spinouts by and between leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Prior to joining Venatorx, he was the Chief Business Officer at GlycoMimetics where he was responsible for corporate strategy, partnering, and managing the company's corporate and institutional alliances supporting the development of uproleselan. Previously, he held the position of Vice President, Technical Assessment and Senior Director for Business Development at Shire Pharmaceuticals to build the product pipeline and support Shire’s strategic venture arm through investments. Of note, he played an instrumental role in the acquisition of Transkaryotic Therapies (now the foundation of Takeda’s Rare Disease Business Unit), Noven Pharmaceuticals, Ferrokin Biosciences, and numerous licensing deals (e.g., Sangamo Biosciences; Santaris). Armand received his undergraduate degree from Lehigh University and a M.B.A, from St Joseph’s Haub School of Business Executive Pharmaceutical Marketing Program.
Paul has spent nearly 20 years in the biopharmaceutical industry developing anti-infectives. Since 2019, he has worked at Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, developing cefepime-taniborbactam and ceftibuten-ledaborbactam. Before joining Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, Paul worked at Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Actelion Clinical Research and Wyeth/Pfizer, working on the development of antibacterials including omadacycline and tigecycline.
Prior to joining the industry, Paul was a Clinical Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, focusing on infection control, antimicrobial management, and patient care. Paul received his B.S. from the University of Notre Dame, his M.D. from Northwestern University, and completed his Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases training at the University of Pennsylvania.
Michael Miller serves as Senior Vice President of Global Regulatory Affairs and is responsible for the company’s regulatory strategy and operations. Mike has conducted infectious disease and immunology research for more than 30 years. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship studying the HIV integrase enzyme at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Mike began his pharmaceutical industry career at Merck. During 18 years working in antiviral drug discovery at Merck, Mike and his team advanced more than two dozen anti-HIV and anti-HCV compounds into clinical development, ultimately leading to marketing approvals for four drugs including the first-in-class HIV integrase inhibitor ISENTRESS®. He then moved to Oncology Regulatory Affairs at Merck to support early and late clinical development of immuno-oncology products. Mike served as Executive Director and led marketing application submissions to expand the oncology indications for Merck’s PD-1 inhibitor, KEYTRUDA®. He later served as Vice President and Head of Global Regulatory Affairs at Idera Pharmaceuticals, and most recently was Senior Vice President and Head of Regulatory Affairs at AlloVir, Inc. Mike is a co-author on more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He holds a BA in Microbiology from the University of Kansas and a PhD in Immunology from Harvard University.
Ms. Nelson is Senior Vice President of Strategy Planning and Operations where she is responsible for management of alliances and delivery of R&D programs aligned with corporate strategy. Ms. Nelson has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry spanning discovery, pre-clinical, early- and late-stage development across various therapeutic areas including anti-infectives, cardiovascular, respiratory/inflammation, and neuroscience. Previously, Ms. Nelson held various Project Management roles at AstraZeneca where she managed and led cross-functional teams in support of clinical development and NDA/MAA submissions, change management, data standardization, and data transparency policy initiatives. Prior to AstraZeneca, Ms. Nelson worked as a Project Manager and a medicinal chemist at DuPont Pharma. Ms. Nelson has a B.S. in Chemistry from Ursinus College and holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.
Dr. Pevear is Founder and Senior Vice President of Biology and Grants Development at Venatorx Pharmaceuticals. He has over 25 years of experience in anti-infectives drug discovery and development, covering both anti-bacterials and anti-virals.
Prior to founding Venatorx, Dr. Pevear was the Director of Biology at Protez Pharmaceuticals (a subsidiary of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation) where he co-led the team who advanced a first-in-class beta-lactamase inhibitor into preclinical development. Prior to Protez, Dr. Pevear spent two years with Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA, where he directed the billion dollar collaboration with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals on ground-breaking “RNA interference” technology. He has also worked with Progenics Pharmaceuticals (Tarrytown, NY) where he directed research efforts in both Human immunodeficiency virus and Hepatitis C virus. In 1994 Dr. Pevear was a scientific team founding member of ViroPharma Inc. (Exton, PA). As the Director of Biology at ViroPharma, Dr. Pevear led a team of over 30 scientists working on a variety of anti-infective targets. He also served on the team that advanced a first-in-class inhibitor for the common cold viruses through NDA filing. This compound was discovered by Dr. Pevear’s laboratory during his time with Sterling Winthrop Research Institute (1988–1994).
Dr. Pevear has been involved in the advancement of more than a dozen compounds from the lab bench into clinical development. He has published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has written more than a half dozen reviews. Dr. Pevear has served as the Principal Investigator and/or written 6 SBIR-Advanced Technology awards and contributed to several others. He also served as an NIH Center for Scientific Review Special Emphasis Panel Member for AIDS SBIR applications in 2005.
Dr. Pevear received his Ph.D. in Viral Immunology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1984, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in the lab of Dr. Howard Lipton (Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, IL) from 1985–1988.
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