Team Category: Leadership

Kristin Neff is the Vice President of Clinical Operations at GentiBio. Kristin is an experienced Clinical Operations leader with a deep commitment to pursuing treatments for autoimmune diseases and is passionate about improving the lives of people living with Type 1 diabetes. Kristin was the VP of Clinical Operations at Provention Bio where she led the pivotal teplizumab program in patients with recently diagnosed type 1 diabetes. Kristin continued to work in type 1 diabetes at Sanofi after their acquisition of Provention Bio. Previously, Kristin worked at Anokion on clinical development programs for celiac disease and multiple sclerosis, and at ImmusanT, InVivo Therapeutics and Taris Biomedical. Kristin has extensive experience in all phases of clinical development, and in building clinical operations teams and managing out-sourced programs, as well as experience in strategic planning and project management. Kristin has an M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Massachusetts. In addition to getting clinical studies done, Kristin enjoys reading, movies, baking for friends and family, and traveling.

Mark Bach is Chief Medical Officer for GentiBio. He is a physician scientist trained as a pediatric endocrinologist and has 30 years of pharmaceutical development experience in the US and globally. Mark joins us from Structure Therapeutics, where he was CMO, and prior to this, held clinical development leadership roles at Ascendis Pharma as SVP, Endocrine Medical Sciences, Janssen as Head of Asia Pacific Medical Science and Merck as head of global Clinical Research Operations. Dr. Bach received an M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, a Ph.D. in pathology from The University of Chicago, and a B.A. in chemistry from Carleton College. In his spare time, Mark likes cooking, baking, photography, bicycling, and travel.

Nishat Shaikh is Vice President of Intellectual Property and Contracts at GentiBio. Nishat was previously at Novartis, where she led the global patent strategy for several of Novartis’s key CAR-T assets, including the first approved CAR-T product, and Novartis’s proprietary CAR-T cell and vector manufacturing platforms. Prior to Novartis, Nishat practiced in the law firm setting, where she counseled academic institutions, biotechs, and pharmaceutical companies regarding patent prosecution, freedom-to-operate analyses, litigation, and licensing. Nishat received her JD, cum laude, from Boston College Law School and her BS from Cornell University in Biological Sciences, concentration in Molecular and Cell Biology, cum laude with Distinction in Research. Prior to attending law school, Nishat was a bench scientist working in humanized antibody development at a San Diego biotech. Nishat lives in the Boston metro area and enjoys spending time with her family and friends, traveling, and reading. Her love of learning has turned her into a serial hobbyist. Her current interests include knitting, rock tumbling, and orchid collecting.

Alexa Perdikis is the Director of Human Resources for GentiBio. Alexa joins us most recently from Cedilla Therapeutics where she held a role building the Talent Acquisition function and focused on cultural and developmental initiatives. Previously she held roles at Agios Pharmaceuticals varying in Talent Acquisition, HR Operations, Benefits and Learning and Development. Alexa holds a BS in Psychology from Northeastern University.

Outside of work, Alexa enjoys traveling to Cape Cod to spend time with family, traveling spontaneously with her husband, playing basketball, and baking. She and her husband have recently started writing songs together. While Alexa cannot sing, she enjoys writing.

Brian Christin is Senior Director, CMC Strategy Lead at GentiBio. Brian has experience advancing multiple cell therapy programs through clinical and commercial development during his time at Dendreon, Juno Therapeutics, Celgene, and Bristol Myers Squibb. Most recently, Brian was the Senior Director of Cell Therapy Product Stewardship at Bristol Myers Squibb (previously Celgene, Juno Therapeutics) where he led a team that maintained technical accountability for approval, launch, and post-approval lifecycle management of the commercial Breyanzi and Abecma programs and supported advancement of multiple early phase cell therapy programs. Born and raised in the Seattle area, Brian stayed in the Pacific Northwest and obtained a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington (Go Dawgs!). Outside of work, Brian enjoys spending time with his family, catching a Sounders or Kraken game, and exploring Washington wine regions.

Tiffany is the Vice President of Discovery at GentiBio. Prior to joining GentiBio, Tiffany was Director of Scientific Evaluation and Strategy and previously Director of Discovery at Rubius Therapeutics. As a starting scientist at Rubius, Tiffany developed the foundation of the company’s engineered red cell platform. She built out prototyping efforts for therapeutic candidates and platform capabilities by establishing the culture science and protein science teams that enabled preclinical activities in Discovery. As head of the Immunology Team, she led initial work in utilizing the red cell platform to address autoimmune diseases. Subsequently, Tiffany led efforts in the antigen specific immuno-oncology space and served as a cross-functional leader driving a program from early discovery through IND approval. Most recently, she led evaluation of external technologies and drove communications with external parties to lay the groundwork for future collaborations and partnerships.  Tiffany is originally from Texas and holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on engineering therapeutic proteins for immune modulation. In her spare time, Tiffany enjoys traveling, exploring places to eat, and being a doting dog aunt by spoiling the house dog with treats and pets.

Hatem Heikal is the Vice President of Finance at GentiBio. Before joining the company, Hatem led strategic finance at several high-growth technology companies, where he was responsible for raising over $700M in funding, led an IPO process, and executed multiple M&A opportunities. Hatem’s career began in venture capital and private equity investing, supporting over $3B in investments across Healthcare, Financial Services, and Education. Hatem has an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In his free time, he enjoys scuba-diving, squash, and cooking.

Tom Wickham is Chief Scientific Officer for GentiBio. Tom brings over 25 years of experience in championing diverse drug platforms including cellular, gene, immuno-biologic, and liposomal therapies from Discovery through Registration-directed clinical trials. Tom recently joined GentiBio from Rubius Therapeutics where he was Senior Vice President of Research and Development. At Rubius, Tom pioneered synthetic biology approaches using genetically engineered red cells for autoimmunity, immuno-oncology, and rare disease applications and built a full Discovery and Preclinical organization leading to multiple product programs and two IND filings. Prior to Rubius, he served as Vice President of R&D at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals where he led preclinical through a Phase 2 registrational trial of a targeted liposomal therapy in breast cancer. Prior to Merrimack, Tom was Senior Director of Preclinical Pharmacology and led efforts at EMD Lexigen (now Merck-Serono) to advance immuno-oncology drugs through preclinical development and into Phase I trials. At GenVec, Inc., he led the advancement of a targeted gene delivery platform for oncology, cardiovascular, infectious disease and genetic disease applications. Tom holds a B.S. in chemical/biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering from Cornell University, and pursued his postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute in the Department of Immunology.

Chandra is Co-founder and Senior Vice President of Research and Development Operations for GentiBio. Prior to joining GentiBio, Chandra was the Director of Project Management at Casebia Therapeutics focused on the Autoimmune Disease portfolio and supporting HSC and in vivo liver-directed gene editing approaches. Previously, he spent over a decade as a scientist in various research and leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Bayer HealthCare, starting in enzymology and protein engineering and transitioning to non-malignant hematology lab head and research project team lead for multiple projects from discovery to IND stage. He started his career in industry working on next-generation PCR and sequencing technologies at Applied Biosystems. Chandra received his B.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Kentucky.