Kobi M. Sethna, President and Chief Executive Officer, Member of the Board of Directors
Mr. Sethna is a globally experienced, pharmaceutical industry general manager with more than 30 years of successful research-driven product development and product marketing experience. During his career, Mr. Sethna has held executive level responsibility for various business segments and geographic regions. He has also served at the corporate level in senior executive marketing positions and has had responsibility for clinical research, regulatory affairs, manufacturing and business development.

For most of his career, Mr. Sethna was a vice president of the Lederle Pharmaceutical Division of American Cyanamid International. In this capacity he directed multidisciplinary, global, therapeutic-specific business teams with particular emphasis in the areas of oncology, anti-infectives, anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular medicine for both hospital and office practice use. Mr. Sethna also completed an assignment with ICN Pharmaceuticals, as group vice president and general manager, to assist the company in the establishment of certain western hemisphere operations and business development.

Before joining Lederle, Mr. Sethna held progressively senior management positions in the US and overseas with Pfizer and Parke-Davis (Warner Lambert).

Mr. Sethna holds a bachelor's degree in pharmacy and an master's degree in pharmaceutical marketing from The Ohio State University. He serves as Vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego, California, is a member of the Advisory Board of the College of Biological Sciences UCSD, and a Trustee of the Center of Integrative Medicine of Scripps Hospital.

G. Kenneth Lloyd, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, R & D, and Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Lloyd has more than 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry with a successful track record of team building, drug discovery and drug development in both major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Prior to joining Nereus, Dr. Lloyd served as vice president of biology and drug discovery at SIBIA Neurosciences, Inc., as assistant vice president at Wyeth-Ayerst Research and as associate director at Synthelabo Recherche. Dr. Lloyd has over 200 scientific publications and serves on several scientific advisory boards and scientific review panels.

Dr. Lloyd received his bachelor's and master's degrees from McGill University and his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Toronto.

Michael A. Palladino, Jr., Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Scientific Co-founder

Dr. Palladino is a cell biologist who has made significant contributions to the understanding of the roles of cytokines in the development of serious inflammatory diseases and cancer. Prior to joining Nereus, Dr. Palladino also served as vice president for preclinical development at Applied Molecular Evolution in San Diego where he was responsible for identifying, in-licensing and developing their lead product candidate, which is now in Phase II clinical trials for cancer. He has also worked as director of cell biology and director of research strategies at Genentech. Dr. Palladino has published over 250 scientific articles and has served as an associate editor on multiple leading scientific journals.

Dr. Palladino received his bachelor’s from St. Peters College and earned his Ph.D. from New York University and held postdoctoral positions at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Charles White, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer

Charles White, Ph.D. joined Nereus Pharmaceuticals in June 2006. He is responsible for overall business leadership with a focus on negotiating partnerships and licensing agreements with pharmaceutical, biotech and academic collaborators.

Dr. White has spent over 25 years in the biopharmaceutical industry with leadership roles in R&D, project management and corporate development. Prior to joining Nereus, he was vice president of business development for Organon where he was responsible for oncology and immunology. He came to Organon via an acquisition of Covance Biotechnology Services where Dr. White was a founding member of the executive team responsible for business development and was instrumental in launching the company and its rapid growth. Dr. White spent his previous 11 years with DuPont in a variety of leadership roles with the last three years as vice president for business development for Medisorb Technologies International, LP, a DuPont joint venture company.

Dr. White received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
 

Howard T. Holden, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Regulatory Affairs and Compliance

Dr. Holden has more than 23 years of experience in regulatory affairs and compliance in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. During his time in the industry, he has built and led regulatory and compliance functions for programs from IND to NDA, BLA, and MAA; developed and implemented regulatory drug development and compliance strategies; and obtained approval for several products in the U.S., Europe and Canada. Prior to joining Nereus, Dr. Holden was Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Compliance at Stressgen Biotechnologies and Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Senior Director at Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert, Director at Centocor and Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Holden has over 120 publications on tumor immunology and natural host resistance.

Dr. Holden received his bachelor’s degree from Drew University and his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Miami, School of Medicine.

Matthew A. Spear, M.D., Vice President and Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Spear has been working in oncology research and development since 1986. He received a B.A. degree from the Johns Hopkins University and an M.D. degree from Stanford University. His residency / fellowship was conducted in the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard University program. He subsequently served as an Associate Professor on the faculty of the UCSD Medical School / UCSD Cancer Center where he managed a clinical practice, molecular biology drug discovery research laboratory, and clinical trial program. Prior to joining Nereus Dr. Spear led multiple oncology clinical development programs at Pfizer. He has also served on NIH / NCI study section, biotechnology and pharmaceutical advisory boards, IRB/SRC, and scientific journal editorial review committees related to cancer, as well as authoring numerous scientific papers and patents.

Dr. Spear received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his M.D. from Stanford University Medical School in Palo Alto, CA.

Ray Lam, Ph.D., Vice President Microbiology and Anti-Infective Discovery

Dr. Lam has more than 20 years of pharmaceutical industrial experience in the discovery and development of new drug candidates from natural sources. Before joining Nereus, Dr. Lam served as senior principal scientist of the natural product department at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and as a research scientist of the biotechnology department at the National Research Council of Canada. Dr. Lam holds 16 U.S. patents for anticancer and anti-infective agents and is the author of more than 100 published articles and abstracts.

Dr. Lam received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from University of Calgary.

Barbara Potts, Ph.D., Vice President, Chemistry and Oncology Research

Dr. Potts is an organic chemist with nearly ten years of industrial experience in drug discovery and development. Before joining Nereus, she served as a senior scientist at Agouron Pharmaceuticals, a Pfizer company. She has 19 publications and 7 patents to her credit.

She received her bachelor’s degree from William Paterson College of NJ and her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, with an emphasis on marine natural products chemistry. She subsequently pursued postdoctoral research in structural biology at The Scripps Research Institute.

Donald J. Salz, Vice President, Finance and Administration

Mr. Salz has more than 18 years of senior level financial management experience in the health care services industry and management consulting. This includes eight years of experience with health care-related companies ranging from early stage start-up ventures to multi-billion dollar companies. Previously, he was with Arthur Andersen as an audit manager in its health care group.

Mr. Salz earned his bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Northern Iowa and earned his certified public account certificate.

Gary McDaniel, Chief Information Officer

Mr. McDaniel has over 20 years of biopharmaceutical experience in both drug discovery research and scientific informatics. Prior to joining Nereus, Mr. McDaniel held positions at SIBIA Neurosciences and Merck Research Laboratories where he was responsible for the computer hardware and software systems in high throughput screening and in the research computing department at the La Jolla site. Previously, Mr. McDaniel developed tumor-associated antigen hybridomas and then moved into developing laboratory information systems at Hybritech, which was acquired by Eli Lilly.

At Nereus, Mr. McDaniel has developed enterprise-level data systems to manage and provide access to the large volume of data generated in the drug discovery process.

Mr. McDaniel holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from National University.