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 joined Flagship Pioneering as a Growth Partner in January 2023. Previously, Mr. Schade was President and Chief Executive Office of Aprea Therapeutics, where he has been serving as a member of the board since 2016 and as Chairman of the board since 2020. Prior to Aprea, he held leadership positions at Novira, Omthera Pharmaceuticals and Medarex. In addition to industry expertise, Mr. Schade brings extensive corporate finance and capital markets experience from the investment banking industry, with roles at Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase & Co. In addition to Sapience Therapeutics, Mr. Schade also serves on the board of directors of OMEGA Therapeutics, Aprea Therapeutics, Integra LifeSciences, Ring Therapeutics and Alltrna Therapeutics.
Mr. Schade received a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University.
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.