Meet our board members

Sanford Zweifach is a senior executive with 30 years in the life sciences industry. Mr. Zweifach has served as the Founder and President of Pelican Consulting Group, a biotechnology consulting firm, since December 2019. Prior to Pelican Consulting Group, Mr. Zweifach founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Nuvelution Pharma, Inc., a pharmaceutical company, from June 2015 to November 2019. In addition to serving on the board of Carisma Therapeutics Inc., Mr. Zweifach currently is the President and CBO and board member of IMIDomics, Inc, and serves on the boards of directors of Essa Pharma Inc. (Nasdaq: EPIX) and Compugen Ltd. (Nasdaq: CGEN).

Mr. Zweifach received a B.A. in Biology from University of California San Diego and a M.S. in Human Physiology from University of California Davis.

Steven Kelly joined Carisma in February 2018 bringing nearly thirty years of experience in Pharma/Biotech at all phases of the business across multiple therapeutic categories. Prior to joining Carisma, Mr. Kelly held a number of leadership positions in the biotechnology industry including: CEO, Pinteon Therapeutics; CEO, Theracrine; CCO, BioVex; CEO, Innovive Pharmaceuticals; as well as various commercial and manufacturing roles at Sanofi, IDEC Pharmaceuticals and Amgen.

Steve holds a BS from the University of Oregon and an MBA from Cornell University.

John Hohneker, M.D., brings over 30 years of extensive experience in drug development and leadership across the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors. He most recently served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Anokion SA. Prior to this, he held the role of President of Research and Development at FORMA Therapeutics Inc. Before joining FORMA Therapeutics, Dr. Hohneker held roles of increasing responsibility at Novartis AG, including most recently as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Development, Immunology, and Dermatology.

Dr. Hohneker currently serves on the Board of Directors of Curis, Inc., Sonata Therapeutics, Inc., and Trishula Therapeutics, Inc. Dr. Hohneker received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Gettysburg College and his M.D. from the Rutgers School of Biomedical and Health Sciences (formerly the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Rutgers Medical School).

Dr. Briggs Morrison brings with him over 25 years of leadership experience. Morrison served as Chief Executive Officer of Syndax Pharmaceuticals and as a member of the company’s board of directors since 2015. He also currently serves as a managing director of MPM Capital, a healthcare-focused venture capital firm, since June 2015. Prior to joining Syndax Pharmaceuticals and MPM Capital, Dr. Morrison held several leadership positions at AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Merck, overseeing the development of numerous biopharmaceutical products in multiple therapeutic areas, from first-in-human trials through to global regulatory approvals. He is also a board member of the Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES), a non-profit organization dedicated to optimizing the global clinical research system.

Dr. Scadden is the Gerald and Darlene Jordan Professor of Medicine and Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. He founded and directs the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-founded and co-directs the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Dr. Scadden is Chairman Emeritus and Professor of the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. He has received numerous honors and awards and has served on the board of scientific counselors for the National Cancer Institute, the board of external experts for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the board of directors of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and is an affiliate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Dr. Scadden is a scientific founder of Fate Therapeutics, Inc., and Dianthus Therapeutics, Inc., and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Editas Medicine, Inc. Dr. Scadden received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and his M.D. from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.

Marella Thorell brings more than 25 years of extensive experience in finance and operations across both public and private biotech companies. She is currently the Chief Financial Officer of Seres Therapeutics. Prior to this, she held the role of Chief Financial Officer of Evelo Biosciences. Her prior roles include Chief Accounting Officer at Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Chief Financial Officer of Palladio Biosciences prior to its acquisition by Centessa, and Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Realm Therapeutics. Before her time at Realm Therapeutics, Ms. Thorell held positions of increasing responsibility at Campbell Soup Company and Ernst & Young, LLP.

Ms. Thorell is a Director and Chair of the Audit Committee of ESSA Pharmaceuticals and was previously Chair of the Board of Vallon Pharmaceuticals before its merger in 2023. Ms. Thorell received a bachelor’s degree in business from Lehigh University.

Ms. Cheng brings over 20 years of experience in biopharmaceutical commercialization and research, with a strong focus on oncology. She currently serves as the EVP, Chief Commercial Officer, and Head of Business Development at Karyopharm Therapeutics. Previously, she was Vice President, Head of Marketing and Corporate Affairs at Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals. Ms. Cheng also spent over a decade at Amgen in various leadership roles, including Executive Director, Head of Marketing & Sales for multiple myeloma and Head of Oncology National Sales, contributing to the commercialization of key oncology brands.

Ms. Cheng holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and both a BSc and MA from the University of Cambridge, UK

Dr. Gill is scientific co-founder of Carisma and currently serves as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the company. He is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Attending Physician, Hematologic Malignancies at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Member of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gill obtained his medical degree from the University of Melbourne in Australia in 1999. He underwent internal medicine training at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, followed by hematology training at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, which he completed in 2008. In 2008 he became a post-doctoral fellow at the laboratory of Robert Negrin at Stanford University, where he studied adoptive cellular therapy with NK cells.

In 2011 Dr. Gill moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he did a Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy fellowship under Dr. David Porter, and started working in the laboratory with Dr. Michael Kalos on chimeric antigen receptor T cells for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The Gill Laboratory at the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania was established in 2013 with the overarching goals to produce effective and safe CAR T cells for the treatment of hematologic malignancies such as leukemia and lymphoma. Current interests in the Gill Laboratory include the development of next generation gene editing approaches for adoptive cell therapy.

Dr. Adusumilli, Deputy Chief of Thoracic Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, brings his extensive experience with the investigation of the tumor immune microenvironment and the development of CAR T-cell-mediated immunotherapies.

Dr. Bhardwaj brings extensive immunology experience: she is currently the Director of Immunotherapy, Medical Director of the Vaccine and Cell Therapy Laboratory, and Co-Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute and holds the Ward Coleman Chair in Cancer Research. She has made influential contributions to human dendritic cell biology, specifically regarding isolation, biology, antigen presenting function and use as vaccine adjuvants in humans.

Dr. Coussens is Chairwoman of the Department of Cell, Developmental & Cancer Biology, and Associate Director for Basic Research in the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Sciences University, and holds the Hildegard Lamfrom Endowed Chair in Basic Science.

Dr. Coussens’ research is focused on revealing roles of normal immune cells in regulating various facets of solid tumor development, identifying leukocyte activities that are co-opted by early tumors to support ongoing cancer development, and responses to cytotoxic therapies. Utilizing mouse models of skin and mammary carcinoma, mesothelioma, and pancreatic adenocarcinoma, her research identified critical immune-regulated pathways for therapeutic targeting that are being translated in the clinic in combination with chemotherapy in women with metastatic triple negative breast cancer, pancreas cancer and head & neck squamous cancers.

In recognition of her research contributions to studying underlying mechanisms of cancer development, Dr. Coussens’ has been acknowledged with multiple awards including, a V Foundation Scholar Award (2000), the AACR-Gertrude B. Elion Award (2001), the AACR-Women in Cancer Research Charlotte Friend Memorial Lectureship (2012), the 13th Rosalind E. Franklin Award from the NCI (2015), a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2018), and the AACR-Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship (2018).

Dr. Guey is a leading expert in mRNA therapeutics and Moderna’s CSO of External Research Ventures. In this role, she oversees Moderna’s partnership with Carisma to develop in vivo CAR-M therapies. Dr. Guey brings nearly 15 years of drug development experience in program leadership, research, and nonclinical development. Prior to joining Moderna, Dr. Guey served in senior leadership roles for Tessera, Xilio, Shire, and Pfizer.

Dr. Guey received her PhD in statistics and BS in mathematics from Stony Brook University, and completed her postdoctoral research fellowship in genetic and molecular epidemiology at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre.

Carl June, M.D., is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He is currently director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies and director of Translational Research in the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and is an investigator of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute. He is a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, 1979. He had graduate training in immunology and malaria with Dr. Paul-Henri Lambert at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland in 1978 and 1979, and post-doctoral training in transplantation biology with E. Donnell Thomas and John Hansen at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle from 1983 to 1986. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology.

He maintains a research laboratory that studies various mechanisms of lymphocyte activation that relate to immune tolerance and adoptive immunotherapy for cancer and chronic infection. In 2011, his research team published findings, which represented the first successful and sustained demonstration of the use of gene transfer therapy to treat cancer. Clinical trials utilizing this approach, in which patients are treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T-cells, are now underway for adults with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and adults and children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Early results in that group show that 90 percent of patients respond to the therapy, and more recently, trials of this approach have begun for patients with other blood cancers and solid tumors including pancreatic cancer, mesothelioma and the brain cancer glioblastoma. In 2014, it became the first personalized cellular therapy for the treatment of cancer therapy to receive the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prestigious Breakthrough Therapy designation.

He has published more than 350 manuscripts and is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including election to the Institute of Medicine in 2012, the William B. Coley award, the Richard V. Smalley Memorial Award from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, the AACR-CRI Lloyd J. Old Award in Cancer Immunology, the Hamdan Award for Medical Research Excellence and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize. In 2014, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Hyam (“Hy”) Levitsky was most recently Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Juno Therapeutics. Prior to joining Juno, Dr. Levitsky held the position of Head of Cancer Immunology Experimental Medicine at Roche Pharma Research and Development in Basel, Switzerland. Prior to that, Levitsky served as a Professor of Oncology, Medicine and Urology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and was also an active staff member in Oncology and Medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dr. Levitsky received a B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and an M.D. from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He trained in Medical Oncology as a Senior Clinical Fellow at Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, rising to full Professor in 2001, and taught in the School of Medicine until 2011. His areas of expertise include Oncology, Immunology, Hematologic Malignances / Bone Marrow Transplantation (serving as Scientific Director of the George Santos Bone Marrow Transplant Program), Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and Pathobiology.

Dr. Levitsky is also a founding Executive Committee member of the Cancer Immunotherapy Consortium of the Cancer Research Institute. He was a Stohlman Scholar of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America (LLS) and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). He was a founding member of MIATA (Minimal Information About T cell Assays), advises the FDA on cancer immunotherapy issues and serves on the External Scientific Advisory Board of the Pasteur Institute’s Center for Human Immunology, has consulted on a number of industry scientific advisory boards and contributes and provides editorial support to several prestigious cancer, immunology, scientific and medical publications. Dr. Levitsky holds several patents.

Dr. Friedman is the Chief Emeritus of Liver Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is renowned for his pioneering research into the underlying causes of fibrosis associated with chronic liver disease, which affects millions of patients worldwide. Dr. Friedman was among the first to isolate and characterize the hepatic stellate cell, the key cell type responsible for scar production in the liver.

Dr. Friedman is widely recognized as a dynamic and respected author, with over 300 peer-reviewed publications. Throughout his career, he has mentored more than 100 postdoctoral fellows and students. He is also a past president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the understanding of liver disease and its treatment, Dr. Friedman received the Saul Horowitz, Jr. Outstanding Alumnus Award from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1993 and the International Hans Popper Award from the Falk Foundation in Freiburg, Germany, in 2003. He also received the Distinguished Achievement Awards from the European Association for the Study of Liver (EASL), the AASLD, and the American Liver Foundation. He currently consults for approximately 25 companies in the liver disease space.

Dr. Friedman received his MD from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, and his Gastroenterology Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Tabas is the Richard J. Stock Professor and Vice-Chair of Research in the Department of Medicine and Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology (in Physiology and Cellular Biophysics) at Columbia University in New York City. Dr. Tabas has extensively studied multiple pathways involved in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) fibrosis, focusing on crosstalk between hepatocytes, liver macrophages, and hepatic stellate cells. His work has revealed key roles for a transcriptional regulator called TAZ and for the process of whereby macrophages clear dead hepatocytes in MASH liver (efferocytosis). Both of these discoveries have led to patent applications and drug development efforts led by pharma and biotech companies. Dr. Tabas also studies the mechanism of atherosclerosis and is currently investigating mechanisms and therapeutic targets that are common between MASH and atherosclerosis.

Dr. Tabas has lectured worldwide and published approximately 300 original research articles and reviews in prestigious journals. He has also served on the Board of Reviewing Editors for the journal Science. Dr. Tabas has been elected to both the Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Tabas' honors include the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award, the Columbia University Doctor Harold and Golden Lamport Research Award, the American Heart Association/ATVB Council Special Recognition Award, the Richard J. Stock Professorship in the Department of Medicine of Columbia University, and the 2011 Alumni Achievement Award from Washington University School of Medicine.

Dr. Tabas received his MD and PhD degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and completed his residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Endocrinology/Metabolism at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, with board certification in both disciplines.