Realizing the promise of
dual-payload antibody-drug conjugates
to transform cancer patient outcomes

Adam Simpson is a Venture Partner at Frazier Life Sciences, where he is focused on company creation opportunities.  Adam has broad emerging company and operational experience with a particular focus on team building, advancing novel technologies through clinical proof of concept and leading significant fundraising, partnering and acquisition transactions.

Adam most recently served as co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board at Icosavax (Nasdaq: ICVX), a biopharmaceutical company leveraging its virus-like particle platform to develop vaccines for respiratory diseases.  In this capacity, he built a team that brought multiple product candidates into the clinic, including advancing Icosavax’s RSV/hMPV combination vaccine through Phase 3 readiness, and led the company through its IPO and subsequent acquisition by AstraZeneca.  Prior to Icosavax, Adam served as the Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board at PvP Biologics, a biopharmaceutical company developing an oral enzyme to treat celiac disease.  Adam led the company from founding, building a team to advance its preclinical candidate into the clinic to demonstrate proof of mechanism, through its acquisition by Takeda.  Previously, Adam served as co-founder and Chief Business Officer of Meritage Pharma from inception until its staged-sale to Shire, leading to the first FDA-approved oral product to treat eosinophilic esophagitis (EohiliaÔ).

Adam has been a co-founder, executive and/or board member of eight additional life sciences companies (across therapeutics, genomics & diagnostics) that have either been acquired or gone public. Adam began his career as an attorney at Latham & Watkins LLP, focusing on life sciences transactions.

Adam holds a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.

Daniel Estes, Ph.D. is a general partner on the Frazier Life Sciences team and has been involved with investing in and building many of Frazier’s biopharmaceutical portfolio companies over the past 13 years. Dan has been a co-founder and board member of Lengo Therapeutics (acquired by Blueprint Medicines), Arcutis, Sudo Bio, Inipharm and Radionetics Oncology. He has also led Frazier’s investments in Tarsus Pharmaceuticals, Sierra Oncology (acquired by GSK), Semnur Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Scilex) and Hummingbird Bioscience. Prior to Frazier, Dan was a management consultant in McKinsey & Company’s healthcare practice. He holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

In her role with the Healthcare investment team at EDBI, Jolene leads strategic investments into biotechnology and other healthcare companies developing cutting-edge next-generation therapeutic modalities and precision medicines, such as ElevateBio, Nuevocor, Nuvation Bio, Engine Bio, Hummingbird Bioscience, and MiRXES.

Prior to joining EDBI, Jolene was a postdoctoral fellow at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), where she led efforts to generate a comprehensive stem cell repository to study Huntington Disease using cutting-edge gene editing and cell culture techniques. Before that, she pursued a PhD in Molecular Biology at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge, where she discovered novel targets that play critical roles in stem cell biology.

Ken Harrison is a Senior Partner with the Venture Investments team at Novo Holdings US and is based in San Francisco.  Ken currently serves on the boards of several private and publicly traded biotech companies.  Prior to joining Novo Holdings, Ken worked in strategic planning at Genentech, management consulting at L.E.K. Consulting and was a seed-stage investor with Mission Bay Capital, where he also helped launch and build life sciences companies in the SF Bay Area.  Ken trained as an A.P. Giannini Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow at the J. David Gladstone Institutes / UCSF and earned a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Yale University.

Vincent joined Omega Funds in 2014. Previously, Vincent worked with Sectoral Asset Management, a healthcare institutional investor, as a Partner for private investments, prior to it he worked at Pictet Bank as a research analyst for biotechnology equities and as a co-manager of the Pictet Biotech Fund. He was before a research fellow at the University of Geneva, studying neuroscience, and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. He completed a CFA training (CFA Institute), a certificate in International Finance and Global Markets at the Georgetown University School of Business and holds an MS in Computational Sciences, an MS in Molecular Biology, and a PhD in Molecular Biology, all from the University of Geneva.

Current board of Directors positions comprise, Sophia Genetics (Switzerland, Nasdaq-listed), Bioinvent (Sweden, Nasdaq OMX-listed), ForX (Switzerland, private), Anaconda Biomed (Observer, Spain, Private).

Prior Board positions comprise, Immunic (Germany, Nasdaq-listed), Endosense (Switzerland, acquired), Andrew Alliance (Switzerland, acquired), Kuros (Switzerland, public), RainDance technologies (US, acquired), Etherna Immuno-Oncology (Belgium, private), LifeSpan (US, acquired) and Aerium Therapeutics (Switzerland, Private).

Dr. Thomas J. Lynch Jr. is a world-renowned scientist, highly respected oncologist, and successful NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center leader.

As the President and Director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and holder of the Raisbeck Endowed Chair, Dr. Lynch brings more than three decades of experience at highly regarded U.S. cancer centers. He has expertise in solid tumor research, precision medicine and discoveries in fundamental biology. Before joining Fred Hutch, Dr. Lynch held leadership roles as CSO at Bristol-Myers Squibb, CEO of Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, director of Yale Cancer Center, physician-in-chief at Yale’s Smilow Cancer Hospital, as well as chief of hematology-oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Lynch is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. Dr. Lynch also serves on the boards of Foghorn Therapeutics, Callio Therapeutics, and Hummingbird Bioscience.

Ksenija Pavletic is General Partner and Chief Commercial Officer (“CCO”) at Jeito Capital with over 25 years’ experience in pharma & biotech. She is an expert in both investment strategies and healthcare companies scaleups with a successful track record in fund raising, M&A, company & teams build ups, commercial organization build ups, product launches, market access. As part of the Jeito founding team, Ksenija contributed to Jeito’s development as Chief Commercial Officer before being promoted Partner Investor in November 2023. Prior to joining Jeito, she was CEO of Swiss-based, reproductive health pharma company PregLem SA where she led the company’s rapid expansion including its successful exit for CHF445 million three years after the inception. Prior to PregLem, Ksenija worked for eleven years with Serono (then Merck Serono) in various regional and global business, sales and marketing positions. Ksenija holds a M.Sc. in Biotechnology from University of Zagreb and an MBA from American Graduate School of Business. Ksenija is also a member of W.I.T.H. (Women Innovating Together in Healthcare).

Piers is the President and co-founder of Callio Therapeutics. Prior to co-founding the company, he co-founded Hummingbird Bioscience. Piers previously spent 15 years in the biopharmaceutical industry in R&D consulting, commercial strategy and academia. Between 2013 and 2015, Piers was Head of Strategic Planning, South East Asia at Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) and between 2011 and 2013 was a Manager in the Strategy Consulting practice at Monitor Group. Between 2008 and 2010, Piers was first a Research Fellow and then acting Research Group Head at the Centre for Integrative Systems Biology, Imperial College London. Piers holds an MSci in Mathematics, an MSc in Bioinformatics and a PhD in Systems Biology from Imperial College London, and an MBA from INSEAD.

Zachary (“Zach”) Hornby is Chief Executive Officer of Callio Therapeutics. He has served in executive and director roles for multiple public and private biotechnology companies, and was most recently CEO, President, and a Director at Boundless Bio (Nasdaq: BOLD), a next-generation precision oncology company that raised $350M in private and public capital and brought three novel, internally discovered molecules into clinical development, one achieving FTD status. Prior to Boundless Bio, Zach was Chief Operating Officer at Ignyta, where he oversaw development of the company’s portfolio of four clinical stage therapeutics and was the team leader for the company’s lead program, RozlytrekTM (entrectinib), which was the first drug in pharmaceutical history to garner BTD (FDA), PRIME (EMA) and Sakigake (PMDA) designations. In that role, he also led the business development process that resulted in Ignyta’s acquisition by Roche for $2 billion; after the Roche acquisition, Zach served as the Ignyta site head where he was responsible for overseeing the integration into Roche. Before assuming the COO role, Zach was Ignyta’s Chief Financial Officer, helping the company go public and raise its first $120 million in capital. Prior to joining Ignyta, Zach served in roles of increasing responsibility across business development, marketing, new product planning, finance, and regulatory affairs at Fate Therapeutics, Halozyme Therapeutics, Neurocrine Biosciences and Transkaryotic Therapeutics (“TKT;” now the Human Genetic Therapies division within Takeda/Shire) and was a life sciences consultant at L.E.K. Consulting. Zach is currently a Director at Radionetics Oncology and Telperian.
Zach holds B.S. (with honors) and M.S. degrees in biology, with a concentration in neuroscience, from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.