Board of Directors
R. Scott Greer, Chairman, Numenor Ventures
As chairman of the board, Mr. Greer brings more than 25 years of experience founding and leading successful biotech companies. As managing director of Numenor Ventures, he is a private investor in and consultant to the life sciences industry, providing strategic advisory services to early stage companies and making direct investments in over 20 healthcare, technology and consumer product companies. Mr. Greer was a founder and served as chief executive officer and later as chairman of the board of Abgenix, a public biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing human antibody-based therapeutics, until its $2.2 billion acquisition by Amgen in 2006. Mr. Greer also served as chairman of the board of Sirna Therapeutics before its $1.1 billion acquisition by Merck in 2007. Mr. Greer currently serves as Chairman of Acologix, and is also on the board of BAROnova, Nektar Therapeutics, and StemCells. Previously, Mr. Greer served on several other public and private company boards including Affymax, Anaptys Biosciences, Chimeros, CV Therapeutics (acquired by Gilead Sciences), Illumina, and Inogen. Prior to forming Abgenix, Mr. Greer spent five years at Cell Genesys in senior management roles and previously held positions at Genetics Institute (acquired by Wyeth). Mr. Greer also was a certified public accountant. Mr. Greer holds a B.A. in economics from Whitman College and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.
Larry Green, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Green is a globally-recognized expert in the development and use of transgenic mice for the discovery of human therapeutic antibodies. He is an inventor of more than 40 issued patents on antibody discovery technologies, antibody development technologies and therapeutic product candidates. He joined Aliva Biopharmaceuticals as chief executive officer in September 2008, closing a $12 million Series A financing round in December 2009, concomitant with the formation of Ablexis and at which time Aliva Biopharmaceuticals Inc. became a subsidiary of Ablexis.
He began his professional career at Cell Genesys in 1992 and was a scientific founder of its spin-out, Abgenix, serving in an executive leadership role at the time of Abgenix's $2.2 billion acquisition by Amgen in 2006. He is a co-inventor of Abgenix's (now Amgen's) XenoMouse® technology and led the successful design and creation of multiple enhancements to that technology platform. While serving as director of antibody operations at Abgenix, his department instituted process improvements that resulted in a 200-fold increase in recovery of antigen-specific antibodies while reducing the effort and timeline, culminating in a greater than 95 percent average annual success rate in generating leads that met or exceeded drug candidate design goals. During his tenure at Abgenix, Dr. Green led or significantly contributed to at least 60 therapeutic antibody discovery projects that resulted in lead candidates in clinical trials, pre-clinical development or research for the pipelines of Abgenix or its partners. He has consulted for biotechnology companies, legal firms and venture capitalists in areas of antibody and biologic drug discovery and development, platform technology creation and use for biologic drug discovery and enhancement, target identification and validation, product and technology in-licensing, and matters of intellectual property.
Dr. Green received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted post-doctoral work at the University of Colorado-Boulder and Stanford University. He has a B.S. with honors in chemistry from the University of Kentucky. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.
Cary Pfeffer, M.D., Third Rock Ventures
Cary Pfeffer joined Third Rock Ventures in 2007 and drives the firm’s overall interface strategy with pharmaceutical and large biotech companies as well as academic institutions. Additionally, he supports the business development efforts within its portfolio companies. He also assumes active leadership roles in its portfolio companies, functioning as interim chief business officer through the first 12-18 months post launch.
Dr. Pfeffer has more than 15 years of business development and transaction experience, facilitating the successful development and implementation of leading collaborations across the spectrum of newly emerging and established biotech companies.
Before joining Third Rock Ventures, Dr. Pfeffer founded The Pfeffer Group, which provided business development and strategy advisory services for leading biotechnology and life sciences companies. Prior to that, he spent more than 10 years at Biogen in a variety of executive domestic and international management roles focused on business and market development, product development and commercial operations. Earlier in his career, Dr. Pfeffer spent several years in corporate finance in the Health Care Investment Banking Group of Lehman Brothers.
Dr. Pfeffer earned his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.B.A. from the Wharton School and a B.A. in biochemistry from Columbia University.
Lou Tartaglia, Ph.D., Third Rock Ventures
Lou Tartaglia joined Third Rock Ventures in 2007 and plays an integral role in the overall scientific diligence, formation and efforts of its portfolio companies and investment opportunities. He also assumes active leadership roles in its portfolio companies, functioning as interim chief scientific officer through the first 12-18 months post launch.
Dr. Tartaglia has more than 20 years of scientific experience and therapeutic product project leadership and is recognized as a thought leader in obesity and metabolic diseases. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including first authorship on a manuscript selected by Cell as one of the 15 most important papers they have published in 30 years.
Prior to joining Third Rock Ventures, Dr. Tartaglia was senior vice president and general manager of GeneLogic. Prior to GeneLogic, Dr. Tartaglia was vice president of New Ventures at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, as well as vice president of metabolic diseases where he was responsible for the discovery and development of multiple therapeutic programs. Before joining Millennium, he worked at Genentech on the tumor necrosis factor receptors.
Dr. Tartaglia holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.
