Therapeutics Team

WARF Therapeutics Drug Hunting Team

Jon Young, Chief Scientific Officer, WARF Therapeutics

Jon has over 25 years of medicinal chemistry experience in pharma and biotech, including > 50 publications/patents and eight clinical candidates. He served as a Director at Merck Research Laboratories and Celgene and as Vice President at Regulus Therapeutics. Jon has significant experience in small molecule, PROTAC and RNA drug modalities.

 

[email protected] | 608.960.9885 | Jon on LinkedIn

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Brian Dyck, Senior Director, Head of Chemistry

Brian brings extensive experience as a supervisor of project teams and external CROs. He has led multiple lead optimization projects simultaneously, with a proven ability to identify high quality compounds for a variety of biological targets. He has delivered multiple clinical and development candidates. He was previously Director of Chemistry at Regulus Therapeutics.

 

[email protected] | 858.449.1330  |  Brian on LinkedIn

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Hongmin Chen, Director, Head of Biology

Hongmin has more than 20 years of pharma and biotech industry experience in drug development of small molecules, biologics and peptides, with hands-on experience driving projects to successful delivery. She has led multiple project teams and managed external collaborations. She previously served as Principal Scientist, Quantitative Bioscience, at Merck Research Laboratories.

 

[email protected] | 617.842.3150  |  Hongmin on LinkedIn

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Advisory Board

Mark Deeg
Dr. Mark Deeg has over 30 years of experience in translational medicine. As a trained endocrinologist and biochemist, he spent more than 10 years at Indiana University conducting basic and clinical research in atherosclerosis and diabetic dyslipidemia before joining Eli Lilly as a clinical research physician conducting early phase clinical trials in endocrinology and metabolism. He subsequently served as Chief Medical Officer for The Chorus Group, Eli Lilly’s semiautonomous group for innovative external research specializing in rapid clinical development programs leading to proof-of-concept. Later, he served as the Chief Medical Officer for numerous biotech companies advancing molecules from the bench to human studies. His experience includes a wide variety of therapeutic areas including renal disease, diabetes and metabolism, oncology, pain, dermatology, men’s health and orphan diseases utilizing a wide range of therapeutic approaches including small and large molecules and oligonucleotides.

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Christopher Dinsmore
Chris Dinsmore joined the WARF Therapeutics Advisory Board in January 2019 to help move therapeutic innovations forward in drug discovery and development. He is a seasoned leader with a track record of advancing early targets to drug candidate identification and through clinical development. Currently, Chris is the Chief Scientific Officer at Third Harmonic Bio, discovering medicines for inflammatory diseases through the discovery and development of regulators of mast cell function and survival. Previously Chris was CSO at Kronos Bio where he was focused on discovering and developing cancer therapeutics by targeting dysregulated transcription. Prior to Kronos, he served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Third Rock Ventures, focusing on the launch of new biomedical companies. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President, Head of Chemistry, of Forma Therapeutics, where he oversaw chemistry functions and platforms in support of discovery and early development. He began his career at Merck Research Laboratories where he held positions of increasing responsibility in medicinal chemistry. After graduating from Bowdoin College with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and art, Chris earned his doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and then carried out postdoctoral research in chemical synthesis at Harvard University.

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Marco Gottardis
Marco Gottardis has more than 30 years of experience as a cancer research investigator in both biotech/large pharma and more than 35 years of experience overall in translational cancer research. He has had roles in drug discovery and development that resulted in multiple drug approvals and recently retired from Janssen Pharmaceuticals R&D (the Pharma division of J&J) after 10 years of service, where he was VP of Oncology and the Disease Area Stronghold Leader of Prostate Cancer (DASL). For eight years, Marco led, both directly and by matrix, the discovery, development and clinical translational teams for prostate cancer. As part of the Oncology SLT, he established the strategy and execution of the prostate cancer pipeline. He also spent 15 years at BMS, where he rose to be an early development lead and co-led all discovery efforts in oncology, as an Executive Director. Marco began his career in biopharma at Ligand Pharmaceutics, where he worked for five years as the Senior Scientist in Pharmacology. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from Columbia College, Columbia University; doctorate at the Wisconsin Clinical Cancer Center, University of Wisconsin; and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Vincent T Lombardi Cancer Center, Georgetown University.

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Goutham Narla
Dr. Goutham Narla earned his B.S. in biology and economics from Santa Clara University in California, an MD and Ph.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in medical genetics at Mount Sinai. After finishing his fellowship, he moved to Ohio in 2012 to work at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), where he later became an Associate Professor with tenure. In July 2018, he joined the faculty at Michigan Medicine to become the seventh Chief of the Division of Genetic Medicine since the division’s inception in 1977. Goutham has held several leadership positions including Director of the Physician-Scientist Training Residency Program, Assistant Program Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) and a member of the Medical School Admissions Committee. His current research focuses on the identification and characterization of key negative regulators and tumor suppressor proteins of cancer development and progression, and the development of small molecule-based therapies that activate tumor suppressor genes for the treatment of cancer. To date, Goutham has authored 11 patents and has more than 110 publications. He has also founded several biotech companies including Dual Therapeutics and RAPPTA Therapeutics.

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Jennifer O’Neil
Jennifer O’Neil is a drug discovery and translational sciences leader with more than 15 years of experience. She currently serves as Senior Vice President of Discovery Biology at Kojin Therapeutics, which is harnessing groundbreaking discoveries in cell-state and ferroptosis biology to develop first-in-class treatments for patients with various forms of cancer, as well as cardiovascular, immunologic, hepatic and degenerative diseases. Before joining Kojin in 2024, Jennifer was Vice President of Translational Sciences at Xilio Therapeutics. She also spent 10 years at Merck Research Laboratories where she held roles of increasing responsibility in the Oncology Discovery group. During her tenure at Merck she worked on all phases of drug discovery from target identification to translational research and multiple modalities including small molecules, antibodies and peptides. She received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Georgetown University, a doctorate in biomedical sciences from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed postdoctoral research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

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Paul Secrist
Paul Secrist is currently the Chief Scientific Officer at Tasca Therapeutics, a seed-stage oncology company in Boston, MA, focused on developing targeted therapies that bind novel auto-palmitoylation sites on target proteins. Paul holds a doctorate in pharmacology from Mayo Graduate School and brings extensive oncology drug discovery experience at both big pharma and small/startup biotechnology companies. He has successfully managed all phases of preclinical drug discovery from target validation, screening and lead optimization through preclinical development, IND submission and clinical biomarker strategy execution. An accomplished oncology drug hunter, Paul played a major role in the discovery and development of two of the most innovative targeted cancer therapeutics yet developed. At Aton Pharma he spearheaded biology efforts studying histone deacetylase inhibitors, ultimately leading to the FDA approval of the first targeted epigenetic drug, Zolinza®, after the company’s acquisition by Merck. Later, at AstraZeneca, Paul led the preclinical team that successfully discovered and advanced AZD5991, a first-in-class inhibitor of Mcl-1, a key cancer cell survival protein historically considered “undruggable,” to the clinic.