Dennis Berman
Serial Entrepreneur
Dennis Berman has been a co-founder, board member, and seed investor in many private biotechnology and technology companies, five of which have gone public. Currently, Mr. Berman is President of Molino Ventures, a Board advisory and venture capital firm focused on privately held and publicly held health care and technology companies in all stages of development. Previously, he was Co-founder and Executive Vice President of Corporate Development of Tocagen, a publicly traded gene therapy company utilizing a replicating retrovirus and prodrug to activate patients’ immune systems against their cancers.
Other public companies for which Mr. Berman has served as a seed investor, co-founder, and/or board member include Intervu (one of the first software-as-a-service companies), which was acquired by Akamai; Kintera (online fundraising pioneer), which was acquired by Blackbaud; Gensia (focused on purine/pyrimidine metabolism compounds), which was acquired by Teva; and Viagene (the first U.S. gene therapy company, which utilized a non- replicating retrovirus), which was acquired by Chiron/Novartis. In addition, he was co- founder of Genovo (a private gene therapy company founded by James Wilson at University of Pennsylvania). Mr. Berman also was a seed investor in Calabrian (a private water treatment company), which was acquired by SK Capital.
Earlier, Mr. Berman was a corporate law partner at several large law firms, including Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (now Dentons) and Reavis & McGrath (now Norton Rose Fulbright.
Mr. Berman holds a Bachelor of Science from Wharton School in Accounting/ Economics, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in Economics and is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He has been an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard’s Innovation Lab (i-lab) and a guest speaker at Harvard School of Public Health.
Gisele Dion
Director, Audit Committee Chair and Member, Compensation Committee
Gisele Dion has served as a member of the Board of Directors since September 1, 2022. Ms. Dion has served as the Chief Accounting Officer of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals since September 2023. Ms. Dion is the former Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller at Takeda Pharmaceutical Ltd. (“Takeda”). She also served as Senior Advisor to the Chief Financial Officer of Takeda. Prior to Takeda’s acquisition of Shire Pharmaceuticals LLC, Ms. Dion was the Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller at Shire Pharmaceuticals LLC (“Shire”), a biopharmaceutical company. Previous to Shire, Ms. Dion served as Corporate Controller and Senior Director of Technical Accounting at Biogen Inc., a biotechnology company. Ms. Dion previously served on the board of Cytek Biosciences, Inc. as Chair of its Audit Committee. Her prior experience includes serving as a staff member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and she has served as an Audit Advisor Group Member for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Ms. Dion received a B.S. in Accounting and Management Information Systems from Fairfield University. We believe Ms. Dion’s skills in corporate governance and corporate finance in early and late stage pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies makes her uniquely qualified to serve on our Board of Directors.
Roy Freeman, M.D.
Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Autonomic and Peripheral Nerve Disorders, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Dr. Roy Freeman Is a Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Center for Autonomic and Peripheral Nerve Disorders at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Freeman is the former chairman of the World Federation of Neurology research group on the autonomic nervous system, former president of the American Autonomic Society, and former chairman of the Autonomic Section of the American Academy of Neurology. He serves on the Executive Committee and the Steering Committee of the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks (ACTTION), a public-private partnership with the United States FDA. Dr. Freeman is Editor-in-Chief of Autonomic Neuroscience: Basic and Clinical and on the editorial boards of The Journal of the Peripheral Nervous System and Clinical Autonomic Research. He is a founder of several companies in pain and neurodegenerative disease and is on the scientific advisory boards of many large and small pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. His research and clinical interests are in biomarker development in neurodegenerative disease, the physiology and pathophysiology of the small nerve fibers and the autonomic nervous system, and clinical trial design methodology in peripheral and central nervous system disease. He is the principal investigator on NIH-funded studies on the neurological complications of diabetes, the neurobiology of stress, and biomarker development in alpha-synucleinopathies. He has been a principal investigator on many neurodegenerative diseases and neuropathic pain clinical trials. He has authored more than 300 original reports, chapters, and reviews. Dr. Freeman received his medical degree from the University of Cape Town.
Paul C. Grint, M.D.
Dr. Paul Grint was most recently CEO and a member of the board of directors of AmpliPhi Biosciences, which merged with C3J Therapeutics to form Armata Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Grint has more than two decades of experience in biologics and small-molecule research and development, including the successful approval and commercialization of products in the infectious diseases, immunology, and oncology therapeutic areas. Dr. Grint has also served in senior management roles at Cerexa, Forest Laboratories, Kalypsys, Pfizer, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, and Schering-Plough Corporation. He is currently a board member at Codagenix, Persephone Biosciences, CRISPR QC and Synedgen. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, a member of numerous professional and medical societies, and holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s Hospital College, University of London and a medical degree from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital College, University of London.
Milton H. Werner, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Dr. Milton Werner is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Inhibikase Therapeutics, a company developing novel protein kinase inhibitor therapeutics to treat neurodegenerative disease and viral infections inside and outside of the brain. Previously, Dr. Werner served as Vice President of Research at Celtaxsys, a cell-free immunotherapeutics company. From September 1996 until June 2007, Dr. Werner was a Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics at The Rockefeller University in New York City. Throughout his scientific career, Dr. Werner has been an innovator integrating chemistry, physics, and biology into a comprehensive approach to solving problems in medicine, including an explanation of the origin of “maleness” in humans, the mechanistic basis of several forms of leukemia and lymphoma and, more recently, the development of therapeutics that can halt and potentially reverse functional loss in neurodegenerative disease.
Dr. Werner is the author or co-author of more than 70 research articles, reviews, and book chapters and has given lectures on his research work throughout the world. He is the recipient of numerous private and public research grants totaling more than $30 million. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Naito Memorial Foundation Prize, the Young Investigator Award from the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Foundation, the Research Chair from the Brain Tumor Society, and a $1 million Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research Award from the W. M. Keck Foundation. Dr. Werner received his Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Southern California, and he was an NIH intramural postdoctoral fellow prior to his tenure at the Rockefeller University.