Chris Schade is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience across private and public biopharma companies, including proven leadership in several executive roles. He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Halda Therapeutics, a private biotechnology company developing a novel class of cancer therapies. Prior to Halda, Chris was a Growth Partner at Flagship Pioneering where he worked with leaders at Flagship-founded biotech companies on organizational development, long-term strategy, financing, and business development. Previously, he was President and Chief Executive Officer and Board member of Aprea Therapeutics (Nasdaq: APRE) from 2016 to 2022, including as Chairman from 2020 to 2023. He led Aprea in developing its pipeline of anti-cancer therapies through the company’s IPO in 2019. Chris has also served in executive leadership positions at several other biotech companies with emerging clinical candidates including: Chief Executive Officer of Novira, a privately held antiviral drug discovery company until it was acquired by Johnson & Johnson; Chief Financial Officer of Omthera Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a Nasdaq-listed specialty pharmaceuticals company focused on new therapies for dyslipidemia until it was acquired by AstraZeneca Plc; and, Senior Vice President of Administration and Chief Financial Officer at Medarex, Inc, a biopharmaceutical company focused on antibody-based therapeutic products for oncology, inflammation, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases until it was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Earlier in his career, Chris was Managing Director at Merrill Lynch in London and for nearly 20 years held various corporate finance and capital markets positions in New York and London for both Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase.
Currently, Chris serves on the boards of several companies, including as Board Chair for Omega Therapeutics (Nasdaq: OMGA), Director at Valo Health, and Director at Integra LifeSciences (Nasdaq: IART) where he chairs the Audit and Finance Committees. He received an A.B. degree from Princeton University and received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Barry Kappel is the founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Sapience Therapeutics. As a biotechnology entrepreneur, executive and native New Yorker, Dr. Kappel is driven to help develop and foster the biotechnology community in New York, and Sapience is the latest example of this effort.
Prior to founding Sapience, Dr. Kappel was a senior executive of ContraFect Corporation, a company that he played an integral part in founding in 2009. As the Senior Vice President of Business Development, he was involved in all aspects of the company, including financing activities, licensing of the company’s key technologies, establishing scientific collaborations with academic and corporate partners, presenting to regulatory authorities and developing a corporate strategy. Prior to ContraFect, Dr. Kappel was a Senior Consultant at Easton Associates, LLC, a boutique life science consulting firm located in Manhattan. Easton Associates has since been acquired by Navigant Consulting.
Dr. Kappel holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Emory University, a Ph.D. in Immunology and Pharmacology from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and an M.B.A. from the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Dr. Kappel was also chosen as a Howard Hughes Pre-Doctoral Fellow and has published 17 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Robert Ruffolo is the retired President of Research and Development for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Corporate Senior Vice President of Wyeth (now Pfizer). In that role, Dr. Ruffolo managed an R&D organization of 9,000 scientists with an annual budget in excess of $3 billion. Dr. Ruffolo joined Wyeth in 2000 as Executive Vice President, responsible for Pharmaceutical Research and Development.
Prior to joining Wyeth, Dr. Ruffolo spent 17 years at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (now GlaxoSmithKline) where he was Senior Vice President and Director of Biological Sciences, Worldwide. Before joining SmithKline Beecham, he spent six years at Lilly Research Laboratories where he was Chairman of the Cardiovascular Research Committee. During his career in the Pharmaceutical Industry, he played a significant role in the discovery and/or development of a number of marketed products, including Carvedilol (Coreg/Kredex/Dilatrend) for the treatment of congestive heart failure and acute myocardial infarction, Ropinirole (Requip) for Parkinson’s Disease, Dobutamine (Dobutrex) for congestive heart failure and Eprosartan (Teveten) for hypertension.
Dr. Ruffolo holds a B.S. in Pharmacy summa cum laude with Distinction, 1973, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology, 1976, both from Ohio State University. Thereafter, he spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Ruffolo has authored nearly 500 full-length publications and over 200 abstracts and has edited 17 books.
J. Andrew Sanford has more than 30 years of experience in investment banking, equity capital markets, corporate finance and business development across multiple industries including the biopharmaceutical sector. Mr. Sanford has a measurable track record in driving new business and market share expansion across a broad client base which includes corporate, private equity, venture capital and institutional investors.
From May 2005 to July 2019, Mr. Sanford served as a Managing Director of Equity Capital Markets at Wells Fargo Securities, including as Group Head from May 2007 to July 2019. In this capacity, Mr. Sanford ran all aspects of the equity capital markets business including new business equity origination, new issue syndication and convertible bond and corporate derivatives new business origination. He also served as a member of the Investment Banking and Capital Markets Operating Committee from January 2009 to July 2019.
Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Mr. Sanford worked at J.P. Morgan Securities where he served as a Managing Director in Equity Capital Markets from May 2000 to May 2005. From August 1987 to May 2000, Mr. Sanford worked at Citigroup where he held positions of increasing responsibility, most recently serving as Managing Director in Equity Capital Markets.
Mr. Sanford received a B.A. with honors from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
David Scheinberg is the chairman of the molecular pharmacology and chemistry program at the Sloan-Kettering Institute. Dr. Scheinberg also founded and chairs the Experimental Therapeutics Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, co-chairs the Pharmacology Graduate Program at the Weill-Cornell University Medical College and is a professor in the Gerstner-Sloan Kettering Graduate School at MSKCC, as well as at Weill Cornell Medical College. From 1992 until 2003, he was Chief of Leukemia Service at Memorial Hospital. In 2013, Dr. Scheinberg was Interim Director of Sloan-Kettering Institute.
A physician-scientist, Dr. Scheinberg specializes in the care of patients with leukemia. He investigates new therapeutic approaches to cancer, both in the hospital and in the laboratory. The focus of his research is the discovery and development of novel, specific immunotherapeutic agents. He has developed eight therapeutic agents, which include the first humanized antibodies to treat acute leukemia, the first targeted alpha-particle therapies and alpha generators, and the first tumor-specific fusion oncogene product vaccines; they have all reached human clinical trials. Dr. Scheinberg has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, chapters and books.
In the private sector, Dr. Scheinberg was previously a board director of several publicly-traded biotechnology companies, including ContraFect Corporation and Progenics Pharmaceuticals, and was the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Active Biotherapeutics, Inc., which was acquired by Progenics Pharmaceuticals. He is currently a member of the scientific advisory boards of OncoPep and Ensysce Biosciences. He founded and is a director of the Therapeutics Discovery Institute, a non-profit drug discovery corporation serving Rockefeller University, Weil Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Scheinberg advises charitable foundations, cancer centers, and biotech companies and sits on several journal editorial boards.
Dr. Scheinberg holds an A.B., cum laude, distinction in all subjects, from the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, 1977. He holds an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University, 1983, and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 1983.