ABOUT US

TheraPten is a Canadian preclinical biotechnology company. The company has collaborated with the Canadian National Research Council for its preclinical studies. TheraPten’s concept is simple and straightforward: put back a naturally occurring tumor suppressor to those cancer patients who lost it.

MANAGEMENT

Athanasios (Nassos) Alevizopoulos, Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman

Dr. Alevizopoulos is a Brunner Prize recipient for the excellence of his PhD in cancer signal transduction, earned from the University of Lausanne in 1996. He also holds an MBA from the same Institution. In the last 20+ years he has held positions in small biotechs as well as multinational companies in Greece, Switzerland, Germany, and the USA, cutting across the whole value chain of biopharmaceutical drug development, with a focus on cancer and rare diseases. Dr. Alevizopoulos is a technical expert reviewer of several European grants, such as Eureka-Eurostars, European Research Council and Horizon 2020. Among other achievements, he successfully designed, outsourced and managed preclinical and clinical research drug development projects in oncology and led teams to achieve an Orphan Drug Designation in cancer. As a private biopharmaceutical consultant, he previously helped companies meet scientific and regulatory objectives for experimental or established small and large molecule drugs and define optimal drug product positioning and go-to-market strategies. He has extensive experience in both in and out-licensing of biotechnologies and in developing and using risk-adjusted valuation models. Dr. Alevizopoulos has authored scientific papers in Medline, expert reports and two patent applications.

Harvey Lalach, Co-Founder, Chief Business Officer

Mr. Lalach is a senior level executive with over 25 years of project management and development across diverse business sectors and organizations ranging from start-ups to mid cap in both private and public companies. He has extensive experience in both Canadian and US capital markets and security regulations. During the last 15 years Mr. Lalach was the President and CEO of Assure Energy Inc., a producing oil & gas company with exploration primarily in the Western Sedimentary Basin. Most recently was the CFO and director for ACL International, an Oil and Gas Company with exploration activities in Indonesia. Additionally Mr. Lalach is experienced in the biotech industry serving for 7 years as co-founder and President of Anavex Life Sciences Corp., a US listed biotech developing small molecules for the treatment of CNS and Oncology disorders.

SCIENTIFIC & BUSINESS ADVISORS

Ramon Parsons, Co-Founder, Scientific Advisor

Ramon Parsons, MD, PhD is Professor and Chair Oncological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. He earned his MD and PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and had postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins. He was Professor at Columbia University for several years. His accomplishments there include discovery of PTEN, elucidation of the frequent alteration of the PI3K/PTEN pathway, and generation of mouse models of cancer due to PTEN mutation. Prof. Parsons’s research aims to understand the PTEN tumor suppressor, determine the impact of altered PTEN signals in cancer progression and altered energy metabolism, and also to understand breast carcinoma initiation and epigenetic regulation of chromatin in cancer. Prof. Parsons is the recipient of an AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research (2011) and a member of the Society of Scholars of the Johns Hopkins University (2015).

Maximilien Murone, PhD, MBA, Business Advisor

Dr. Murone is a scientific executive with 23+ years of experience In the biopharma industry. He is co-founder and CEO of Avrion Therapeutics, a precision gene therapy company in Switzerland. He previously served as COO at Cellestia Biotech, developing targeted therapies for oncology, and for 10 years as Associate Director at Debiopharm, where he was in-licensing novel assets and managing the early-stage pipeline of the company. He holds a PhD from the Swiss Institute of Experimental Cancer Research, and an executive MBA from HEC Lausanne. He spent three years as postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular Oncology at Genentech, Inc.

John Derpanopoulos, PhD, Business Advisor

Dr. Derpanopoulos has over 35 years of experience in investment, finance & business. Previously, he was a principal at Quadrex International, a hedge fund, CEO of EFG Euroinvestments, Chief Economist of Eurobank, founding partner of Tradicom International, an Athens based fund management boutique, Chief Economist at the London subsidiary of Sanwa International (currently MUFJ Bank), and Chief Economist of Sarasin International Securities in London. He holds a BA, MA in Economics and a PhD in Agricultural & Resource Economics from the Univ. of California at Berkeley.

John Cosmopoulos, MBA, Business Advisor

Mr. Cosmopoulos has over 20 years’ experience in technology transfer, intellectual property management, early-stage startups, marketing and fundraising, negotiations and licensing transactions at the University of Ottawa and Tufts University. He executed option/license deals, catalyzed the formation of over 20 startup companies with successful fundraising that ranges between seed rounds and $21 million Series A, and supported a multitude of research collaborations. He holds a M.Sc. degree in molecular biology from Carleton University and a MBA degree from Queen's University (Canada), and the Certified Licensing Professional designation.  

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