Salvatore Mascia is the Founder & CEO of CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals. He was the former Strategic Project Manager at the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, where he led the integration of the first end-to-end continuous manufacturing process for pharmaceuticals. At the end of the project, he was presented with the “Leadership Award” that recognized his leadership role at the Center. Salvatore has gained experience in strategic management and fund raising in addition to leadership skills via various roles of responsibility within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Among those, he co-founded “Professionisti Italiani a Boston” in 2009, and served as President of the “Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club” in 2006/07. He also ran a pharmacy business for 2 years. Salvatore completed a post-doc at MIT in Chemical Engineering and holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK and a BS and MS in Pharmacy (summa cum laude) from University of Perugia, Italy.
Bayan Takizawa is a co-founder and the Chief Business Officer at CONTINUUS Pharmaceuticals. Before joining CONTINUUS, he was a consultant with The Chartis Group, an advisory firm that provides strategic and operational support for hospitals and healthcare systems. Prior to Chartis, Bayan was a senior analyst at Actin Biomed, a healthcare venture capital firm. In addition, Bayan has worked at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, where he studied the economic impact of a novel continuous chromatography technology. This work led to his Master’s Thesis, which was nominated for “Best Thesis Award” within the Leaders For Global Operations Program at MIT. Bayan has an MD from Yale, an MS in Engineering Systems and MBA from MIT, and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell. He has multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Jonathan Fleming has been creating, financing and managing innovative life science companies for 35 years in the USA, Europe, Asia and Israel. Currently he serves as the Executive Chairman of QurAlis Inc. and Enclear Therapies, two ALS precision medicine companies, as well as Aquaculture Research Corp. He is a board director of several other private biotechnology companies, including Q-State Biosciences, SQZ Biotech and Continuus Pharmaceuticals. Since 2002, Mr. Fleming has been a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management where he co teaches a graduate level course on strategy for life science companies. Prior to his current roles, Mr. Fleming was the Managing Partner of Oxford Bioscience Partners, an international venture capital firm specializing in life science investments, which raised over $1 billion in early stage capital resulting in 21 IPOs and over 40 M&A transactions. Mr. Fleming has helped co-found numerous companies including Synaptic Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Lundbeck), Memory Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Roche), and Hypnion Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Lilly). During his career Mr. Fleming has held leadership roles on the boards of numerous public companies. Since 2006 he has been on the executive board of NEHI, a health care policy think tank based in Cambridge MA. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Andrea Semprini Cesari is Vice President of IMA Active Division that led efforts in our Series A investment. Mr. Semprini has extensive international commercial management experience, having managed complex sales organizations located in almost all areas of the world. Andrea has participated in the acquisition of companies in India, Spain, Germany and Italy and achieved the harmonization and integration of the different commercial organizations. Andrea has a degree in Law from the University of Bologna, Italy.I.M.A. is based in Bologna, Italy, and has manufacturing facilities in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. I.M.A. is a leading manufacturer of pharmaceutical and food packaging and processing equipment. I.M.A. Active specializes in the design and manufacturing of lines for the processing and primary packaging of oral solid dosage products.
Bernhardt L. Trout is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. He is currently Director of the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing and the Co-Chair of the Singapore-MIT Alliance Program on Chemical and Pharmaceutical Engineering. He received his S.B. and S.M. degrees from MIT and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, he performed post-doctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute. Professor Trout’s research focuses on molecular engineering, specifically the development and application of both computational and experimental molecular-based methods to engineering pharmaceutical formulations and processes with unprecedented specificity. Since 1999, he has focused on molecular engineering for biopharmaceutical formulation, primarily liquid formulation, but also lyophilized formulation. A major aspect of his research focuses on developing both microscopic and macroscopic models to design stable formulations efficiently. In 2007, together with several colleagues from MIT, he set up the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, a $65 million partnership with the objective of transforming pharmaceutical manufacturing. In addition to Novartis, he has worked with many other pharmaceutical companies in research or consulting. He has published over 130 papers and currently has 8 patent applications submitted.
Mark R. Bamforth founded a new CDMO, Arranta Bio, in May 2019. Previously, Mark founded Brammer Bio in 2015, a best-in-class viral vector contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) supporting cell and gene therapies. Brammer’s team grew from 110 in 2016 with the addition of 100 from the acquisition of two Biogen commercial facilities, to over 600 at the time of its acquisition by Thermo Fisher Scientific in April 2019. In 2010, Mark founded a biologics CDMO, Gallus BioPharmaceuticals, and acquired a world-class facility and team of 160 from J&J with a commercial supply agreement. Gallus tripled through organic growth and merging with Laureate Biopharma. Gallus was sold to DPx Holdings B.V. in Sept. 2014. Mark previously spent 22 years in the UK and USA running a global manufacturing operation and a pharmaceutical CMO business for Genzyme and served as a corporate officer for 9 years. He began his career as a petroleum engineer exploring for North Sea oil with Britoil, then as a chemical engineer in the whisky industry with Whitbread. Mark serves on the boards of Avid Bioservices, MassBio, Wentworth Institute of Technology, and Entrepreneurial Scotland. He has a BS in Chemical Engineering from Strathclyde University and an MBA from Henley Management College.
Charles L. Cooney is the Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering and the founding Faculty Director of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania (1966) and his Master’s (1967) and Ph.D. (1970) degrees in Biochemical Engineering from MIT. After a short post-doctoral time at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research, he joined the MIT faculty in 1970 as an Assistant Professor and became a full Professor in 1982. Among his many honors, Professor Cooney has received the 1989 Gold Medal of the Institute of Biotechnological Studies (London); the Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; and the James Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award from the American Chemical Society’s Division of Microbial and Biochemical Technology. He was elected to the American Institute of Medical and Biochemical Engineers and in 2009 was elected to the first class of American Chemical Society Fellows. In July 2012 he was awarded Honoris Causa by Ramon Llull University in Barcelona.
Ajaz Hussain’s professional goal is to contribute towards improve predictability of medicinal product development, manufacturing and associated regulatory processes. As the Deputy Director Office of Pharmaceutical Science he led some of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s major initiatives to develop regulatory policies that already have, and will continue to have, a significant impact on product development and approval in many geographies. His corporate experience includes leadership of the development and/or regulatory submissions of first-in-class Biosimilar, Follow-on Protein and Complex Generic products at Sandoz. At Philip Morris International, he took on the challenge of higher levels of uncertainty (regulatory and business) and product complexity to build strategies and systems to successfully move forward development programs on plant-based vaccines, products for tobacco harm reduction, and ensure credibility of scientific evidence to seek regulatory discussions and submissions. His experience at Wockhardt has helped him to understand the opportunities and talent companies in India have, the challenges they face, and how they can bring forward effective solutions to maintain and enhance competitiveness and credibility. He also has an extensive teaching experience, he served as a tenured Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of Cincinnati, where he established a research program on Computer Aided Formulation Design. Based on his broad experience in academia, US FDA, and industry he founded his consulting practice Insight Advice & Solutions LLC.
Dr. Hussain received PhD in Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics from the University of Cincinnati (1986). He has published over 100 scientific articles and is a frequent invited speaker at scientific conferences. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, the Swiss Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences and recipient of several awards at FDA including the FDA’s Scientific Achievement Award and a the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Cincinnati.
Tim Jamison was born in San Jose, CA and grew up in neighboring Los Gatos, CA. He received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley. A six-month research assistantship at ICI Americas in Richmond, CA under the mentorship of Dr. William G. Haag was his first experience in chemistry research. Upon returning to Berkeley, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Henry Rapoport and conducted undergraduate research in his group for nearly three years, the majority of which was under the tutelage of William D. Lubell (now at the University of Montreal). A Fulbright Scholarship supported ten months of research in Prof. Steven A. Benner’s laboratories at the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland, and thereafter he undertook his PhD studies at Harvard University with Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber. He then moved to the laboratory of Prof. Eric N. Jacobsen at Harvard University, where he was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell postdoctoral fellow. In July 1999, he began his independent career at MIT, where his research program focuses on the development of new methods of organic synthesis and their implementation in the total synthesis of natural products.
Tom van Laar received his B.S. In Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Northwestern University (Kellogg). He began a long career in manufacturing with Sybron Corporation and GE Plastics before beginning to work in pharmaceuticals with Searle for 19 years (Searle was bought by Monsanto and later became Pharmacia). Tom joined Novartis in 2002 as head of US manufacturing for the Pharma division and was promoted in late 2004 to Head of Global Technical Operations based in Basel, Switzerland. Technical Operations had 24 manufacturing sites around the world supporting a $32 bio Pharma business. In addition to his overall operational responsibilities, Tom led the first ever Lean manufacturing and Process Oriented organization transformation in Novartis. In 2007, Tom also initiated the first ever transformation to truly continuous manufacturing for the Pharma industry in partnership with MIT. Tom retired from Novartis in early 2013 to return with his wife to the US. After a 6 month break, he is beginning to consult in the areas of pharmaceutical manufacturing and organizational transformation.
Allan S. Myerson is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to his position at MIT he was the Philip Danforth Amour Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago where he served as Provost and Senior Vice President (January 2003 – June 2008) and Dean of Engineering and Science (January 2000 – January 2003). Professor Myerson also served on the faculty at Polytechnic University (NY), Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Dayton. Professor Myerson was educated at Columbia University (BS) the University of Virginia (MS and Ph.D.). The Myerson research group focuses on separation processes in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry with an emphasis on crystallization from solution. Professor Myerson is a co-PI in the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing at MIT. He has published 5 books including the Handbook of Industrial Crystallization, 190 papers, and is the inventor on 35 U.S. patents. Professor Myerson has consulted for over 100 companies worldwide and was honored in 2008 with the American Chemical Society Award in Separations Science and Technology.
Moheb Nasr is the Principal of his own consulting company, Nasr Pharma Regulatory Consulting (NPRC). NPRC was established in February 2018 and provides strategic regulatory consulting with focus on organizational development, manufacturing innovation and CMC regulatory strategy. Dr Nasr continues to play a leading role in global regulatory harmonization and introduction of modern pharmaceutical manufacturing platforms, including Continuous Manufacturing. Dr. Nasr represents PhRMA at ICH serving as ICH Q12 EWG Topic Lead. Dr. Nasr retired from GSK in August 2017. AT GSK, Dr Nasr was responsible for the development and the execution of GSK global CMC regulatory strategy. In recognition of his scientific contributions and visionary leadership, Dr Nasr is an elected GSK Senior Research Fellow. Prior to joining GSK, Dr. Nasr spent over 22 years at US FDA. At FDA, Dr. Nasr served as a bench chemist, regulatory scientist, director of FDA’s analytical laboratories, and FDA/CDER CMC regulatory office head. Dr Nasr established and led FDA’s Office of New Drug Quality Assessment (ONDQA). Dr. Nasr represented FDA and PhRMA at ICH and was instrumental in the development of the Quality by Design (QbD) concept and several regulatory ICH guidelines. Dr. Nasr obtained his Pharmacy degree at the University of Cairo, Egypt, and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Dr. Nasr is an elected Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) and the recipient of AAPS Regulatory Science Achievement Award, and University of Wisconsin Pharmaceutical Analysis Excellence Award. In addition, Dr. Nasr is a recipient of numerous US Government awards.
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