About AYALA

David Sidransky, MD is the Co-Founder and General Partner of the Israel Biotech Fund. David is a renowned oncologist, research scientist and Professor of Oncology and Cellular & Molecular Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital. David was Vice Chairman of ImClone Systems until its acquisition by Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) for $6.5 billion in 2008. He founded several biotechnology companies, including Oncormed Inc, a genetic testing company that was sold to Gene Logic in 1998, and Response Genetics (NASDAQ: RGDX), a developer of markers for cancer therapy.

Roni Mamluk, PhD is a senior biopharmaceutical executive with 14 years of experience in drug development companies and background in all aspects of R&D, general management and fundraising. Prior to Ayala Roni was at Chiasma (NASDAQ: CHMA) a biopharmaceutical company focused on orphan diseases where she fulfilled multiple positions including CEO (2013-2015). She is an inventor of their oral delivery technology, led the development of their lead product through all stages of development, including NDA submission. She was a key player in fundraising for the company including several private financing rounds and led a $70 million crossover financing and a successful IPO of over $100 million in 2015. Roni is now a board member at Chiasma. Prior to that she was heading preclinical development of an oncology product at Adnexus (which was later acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY)) in Waltham, MA and prior to that did her post doc at Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School in the field on angiogenesis. Roni received her PhD, summa cum laude from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Robert Spiegel, MD is a physician and oncologist with over 30 years of biopharma experience. At Schering-Plough he was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Clinical Research, prior to becoming Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Schering-Plough Research Institute in 1998, a position he held until his retirement from Schering-Plough in 2009. Robert has deep experience in clinical product development, has been involved in filing over 30 New Drug Applications, and has extensive familiarity with regulatory authorities in the US and globally. Robert currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the private company Vidac Pharma and is on the Board of Directors of the public companies Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) and Edge Therapeutics (NASDAQ:EDGE). Robert is a venture advisor to the Israel Biotechnology Fund, Senior Advisor to Warburg Pincus as well as a consultant to various biopharma companies. Robert is also an Associate Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. Earlier in his career, Robert was a Research Fellow at the NIH, National Cancer Institute and Assoc. Professor at NYU Cancer Center.

Murray A. Goldberg has financial and operational experience at leading global pharmaceutical companies. Murray served as Senior Vice President-Administration and Chief Financial Officer of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:REGN), Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & VP-Finance of PharmaGenics, Inc., and as a Managing Director-Structured Finance Group of The Chase Manhattan Bank NA. He currently serves as an advisor at the Israel Biotech Fund and as a board of director at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd. (NASDAQ:TEVA) and at Aerie Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AERI). Murray received his undergraduate degree from New York University, a graduate degree from the London School of Economics & Political Science, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Todd Sone is a partner at aMoon and has over fifteen years of healthcare investment experience. Prior to joining aMoon, Todd was a Managing Director at Signet Healthcare Partners, a NYC-based investment fund that provides growth capital to commercial stage life-science companies. Todd has served on the boards of Arbor Pharmaceuticals (Sold to KKR), Apicore (Sold to Medicure), Impopharma, and Smart Medical Systems. He also helped oversee the investment in Claris Lifesciences (sold to Baxter). Prior to joining Signet, Todd was an Investment Director at Joddes Limited, a family investment holding company with interests in a number of healthcare companies, including Pharmascience, Paladin Labs, Medicom, and Oral Science. Todd was previously a large-cap pharmaceutical analyst at Morgan Stanley. Todd started his career at Mercer Management Consulting serving clients across North America in the transportation and healthcare industries. Todd received a BCom (with High Distinction) from the University of Toronto and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with concentrations in healthcare management and finance.

Guy Harmelin, MD leads the Alternative Investments at Harel Insurance & Finance since 2017. Previously, he was the Co-Founder and CEO of RondinX, a microbiome drug target discovery company from 2015 to 2017 (acquired by BiomX). Prior to RondinX, Guy served as a Resident Physician at Tel Aviv Medical center and as a principal at 7-Health Ventures, a Life Science Venture Capital Fund.

Clinical Advisor
Renata Ferrarotto is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Head and Neck Clinical Research Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center. In this role, she dedicates time to patient care as well as to clinical and translational research. Her work focuses on clinical development of new personalized cancer therapies for patients with head and neck malignancies, particularly rarer subtypes.

Renata currently leads a project to investigate the importance of Notch1 mutations in patients diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC), a rare salivary gland tumor. Her work demonstrated that Notch1 mutations in ACC define a subgroup of patients with an aggressive disease. She has received numerous awards for her work, including a Conquer Cancer Career Development Award and a Khalifa Scholar Grant.

Renata received her MD degree and completed her Clinical Residency and Fellowship in São Paulo in internal medicine and medical oncology.

Scientific Advisor
Jon Aster is a Professor of Pathology and Chief of the Division of Hematopathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He is also Director of the Specialized Histopathology Core, a CLIA licensed research facility that supports the 1100+ PIs of the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. For over 20 years, Jon has studied Notch signaling in various cancers, therapeutic targeting of Notch, and Notch related biomarker test development and implementation.

Jon’s lab has led or collaborated on work that has produced a number of firsts in Notch signaling, including production of the first mouse model of Notch leukemia; demonstrating that Notch signals can induce T cell development from bone marrow progenitors; demonstrating that T-ALL cells depend on continued Notch signaling for growth; detecting and characterizing frequent Notch1 mutations in human and murine T-ALL; solving key Notch structures at high resolution, including the structures of Notch transcription complexes on DNA; identification of Myc and mTOR as important downstream targets of leukemogenic Notch signaling; development of the first selective antibody inhibitor of specific Notch receptors; report of genome-wide Notch1 binding patterns in cancer cell genomes; and the description of Notch1 loss-of-function mutations in human squamous cell carcinomas.

Scientific Advisor
Evgeny Izumchenko is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology, Division of Head and Neck Cancer Research, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Eugene is a a leading researcher in the field of Notch signaling and carcinogenesis, and has an extensive background in tumor biology, molecular oncology, immunogenetics and genomics technologies.

Eugene’s research focus is on understanding the complex interplay between the genetic and epigenetic alterations in carcinogenesis and disease progression, and on exploiting this understanding for developing novel biomarkers for diagnosis and risk stratification as well as in identifying targets for therapeutic intervention. He has multiple publications, including in Nature Communications, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, Annals of Oncology and Cancer Discoveries.

Eugene received his PhD from Ben-Gurion University via the BGU /Fox Chase Cancer Center (FCCC) Partnership Graduate Research Program, where he provided some of the earliest insights on biomarkers for early assessment of breast tumor aggressiveness, and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Florida, where he described novel mechanism by which dysregulation of genomic stability drives cancer development.