Introducing a novel therapeutic modality unlocked from an ancient molecule

Introducing a novel therapeutic modality unlocked from an ancient molecule

Michelle C. Werner is a seasoned pharmaceutical executive with more than 20 years in the industry spanning both commercial and research & development (R&D) responsibilities. Most recently, Michelle served as Worldwide Franchise Head, Solid Tumors at Novartis Oncology, where she was responsible for delivering the disease area strategies across multiple tumors and led business development efforts resulting in a doubling of long-term portfolio value for the franchise. 

Previous to Novartis, Michelle was a senior leader at AstraZeneca, where she held multiple positions during her five-year tenure. As Global Franchise Head in Hematology, Michelle was critical in launching multiple indications worldwide for CALQUENCE® and was responsible for developing the mid- and long-term strategy for AstraZeneca in hematology. Prior to this role, Michelle served as Head of US Oncology, where she led the business through dramatic growth in both team and revenue through eight-plus product launches as well as Country President for the Nordics and Baltics, where she also served as an elected Board Member to Sweden’s pharmaceutical industry association.

Previous to AstraZeneca, Michelle was with Bristol Myers Squibb for 10 years in various positions of increasing responsibility including roles in sales, marketing, and market access in the US and UK, and above market in Europe (based in France) and global almost exclusively in oncology. Michelle started her professional career in R&D, working hands-on with patients at the Oncology Clinical Trials Unit at Harvard Medical School before moving into industry in clinical operations.

Outside of her corporate responsibilities, Michelle is a wife and mother to three children and is a member of the rare disease community. She is currently serving a Board appointment for the non-profit organization Rare Disease Renegades, a purpose that fuels her passions both personally and professionally. 

Michelle holds a B.A. in biology & anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the London Business School (UK). She also completed an Executive Education program for Women on Boards at Harvard Business School in 2018. 

Chris Henderson, Ph.D., is the Chief Scientific Officer of Alltrna. Prior to Alltrna, as SVP, Head of Research at Biogen, Dr. Henderson led a team responsible for preclinical programs and target validation across the company’s core disease areas of neurode­gen­er­a­tive diseases, multiple sclerosis and immunology, neuromuscular and muscle diseases, ophthalmology, and genetic and neurode­vel­op­mental disorders. Prior to this, he held multiple roles of increasing responsibility at Biogen including Vice President of Neuromuscular and Movement Disorders Research and Early Development, where he worked with a team of clinicians and scientists to take programs from early research to clinical proof of concept. Prior to moving to the U.S., Dr. Henderson was Co-Founder and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Trophos, which leveraged its proprietary screening platform to generate olesoxime for spinal muscular atrophy. Prior to his roles in industry, Dr. Henderson co-founded the Center for Motor Neuron Biology and Disease and was the Director of the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative at Columbia University. While at Columbia, he became Director and now serves as Chief Advisor of Target ALS Foundation. Dr. Henderson has more than 90 scientific research publications and been an editor and reviewer for top-tier scientific journals. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from University of Cambridge and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pasteur Institute.

Theonie is a senior principal at Flagship Pioneering, where she conceives, builds, and grows the science, intellectual property, and business strategy that form the foundation of Flagship’s next breakthrough startups. She co-founded Alltrna and serves as its Chief Innovation Officer.

Theonie is a Business Advisory Board member of the Harvard Institute for RNA Medicine and a member of the Bioscience & Investor Inclusion Group (BIIG) Diverse Talent Network Group. 

Prior to joining Flagship, Theonie completed her Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focused on replication fork dynamics in the context of cancer development and therapeutics. 

Theonie has received several awards and has been granted multiple fellowships for her academic work, including an NIH NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship. During her graduate studies, Theonie held multiple leadership positions on Executive and Curriculum Committees. She also completed a Wharton Business Foundations Specialization and was a mentor at the yearly Larta Institute NIH CAP FeedForward Sessions.

Theonie’s work has resulted in multiple pending patents and publications, including articles in Nature Biotechnology, Molecular Cell, and Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Joanne has more than 25 years of experience in senior finance roles. Prior to Alltrna, she was Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations at Rubius Therapeutics, where she joined in 2017, led all financial aspects of the business and built the financial and operational infrastructure required for Rubius to grow substantially, advance four programs into clinical trials, establish a clinical manufacturing facility, raise nearly $800 million in capital, and evolve from a private to a public company with peak market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion. 

Prior to Rubius, Joanne was Senior Vice President of Finance, New Ventures at Flagship Pioneering, where she provided financial and operational oversight to multiple early-stage Flagship portfolio companies. Prior to Flagship, she served as Chief Financial Officer of Novelos Therapeutics, a publicly held biotechnology company developing small molecule drugs for the treatment of cancer. 

Previously, Joanne spent 10 years with Ascential Software and predecessor companies, serving in various senior finance roles through multiple merger, acquisition, and divestiture transactions with aggregate consideration of more than $4 billion. 

Joanne started her career in the assurance practice of the Boston office of Deloitte & Touché LLP. She holds a B.S. in business administration from Bryant University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

Will has more than two decades of experience in the design, development, and manufacturing of small molecule and oligonucleotide therapeutics. Prior to joining Alltrna, Will served as the Vice President and Head of Oligonucleotide and Small Molecule Development at Biogen. During his 24 years with the company, he was responsible for a wide range of activities from medicinal chemistry research and automated parallel synthesis to building both the chemical development and the end-to-end oligonucleotide development and manufacturing teams. 

Will and his teams have supported dozens of small molecule and oligonucleotide clinical programs and played pivotal roles in the successful worldwide regulatory CMC approvals of Tecfidera® (dimethyl fumarate) in multiple sclerosis and Spinraza® (nusinersen) for spinal muscular atrophy.

Will earned his B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Connecticut and pursued his postdoctoral research at Duke University. He is co-author on more than 40 publications and patents and has contributed to five book chapters.

Caroline is an RNA biology professional with more than 25 years of experience in both academic and industrial research & development (R&D). Prior to Alltrna, Caroline served as the Director of RNA Science at Moderna, where she led the RNA Science Department within Moderna’s R&D Platform, developing mRNA-based technology for application as a new drug modality in infectious disease, personalized cancer medicine, oncology, autoimmune, and rare disease. Under her leadership, Moderna expanded the mechanistic understanding of mRNA design principles underlying current and future mRNA therapeutics, including Moderna’s SpikevaxⓇ mRNA vaccine for COVID-19.

Previous to Moderna, Caroline spent 20 years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology performing research focused on protein synthesis across all kingdoms of life, with a particular emphasis on the role of transfer RNA (tRNA) and RNA modifications in translation, rules of mRNA decoding, genetic code expansion, and ribosome biogenesis.

She has co-authored more than 40 publications, book chapters, and patents. Her peer-reviewed publications include PNAS, Nature Communications, Cell Metabolism, and Nucleic Acid Therapeutics. She has co-edited a book on ​‘Protein Engineering’ published by Springer and contributed a chapter entitled, ​‘Specialized Components of the Translational Machinery for Unnatural Amino Acid Mutagenesis: tRNAs, Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases, and Ribosomes.’ Caroline earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Prior to joining Alltrna, Anne was the Director of the Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR) at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health (NIH). During her tenure at ORDR, she oversaw the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN), a network of rare diseases research consortia focusing on research programs into more than 200 different rare diseases and other research programs. Additional research programs included the PaVe-GT gene therapy development program, which seeks to treat four ultra-rare diseases using a platform approach, grant programs to speed rare disease diagnoses and many-diseases-at-a-time strategies, and rare diseases informatics. 

Prior to ORDR, Anne worked at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), where she predominantly focused on rare diseases drug review and most notably founded the Rare Diseases Program, which focused on developing regulatory science, policy, and processes intended to facilitate rare disease drug development and review. 

Anne received her M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed her Internal Medicine Internship and Residency at Georgetown University Medical Center. She is Board certified in Internal Medicine.

Gale brings more than 20 years of strategic and broad experience in Human Resources (HR) in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Prior to joining Alltrna, Gale was the Head of HR for Cyteir Therapeutics. At Cyteir, she provided strategic human resources leadership to the development and implementation of HR strategy to support the growth of the company from a private to a publicly traded company.

Prior to Cyteir, Gale was at BMS, where she held two roles of Global Talent Management Lead and Head of HR as part of the Devens Biologics Manufacturing Campus. At BMS, she provided strategic human resources leadership to develop and implement transformative talent practices including strategic workforce planning, talent management & succession planning, organizational development, and leadership development. Her leadership contributed to successful achievement of strategic business objectives, growing the organization at both the local and global levels.

Gale spent over 10 years at AstraZeneca before joining BMS. She was the HR Lead at the company’s R&D facility in Waltham, Massachusetts. At AstraZeneca, Gale was instrumental in the growth and expansion of the R&D site, through strategic talent management, talent acquisition, leadership development, organizational development, and performance management.

Gale holds a B.S. in Management from Bentley University and a Master of Science in Human Resources Development from Villanova University.

Rachel Green, Ph.D., is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Harvard Medical School, where she studied RNA and primitive self-replicating systems in Jack Szostak’s lab. These studies developed in vitro selection approaches that have been broadly used for the analysis of functional RNAs in many systems. Her postdoctoral work was performed in the laboratory of Harry Noller at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she defined ribosomal RNA elements essential for binding the universally conserved CCA-ends of the tRNA to orient these substrates for catalysis. 

Her current research at JHU focuses on mechanisms of mRNA translation, ribosome-mediated quality control, and their intersection with cellular signaling pathways. Recent work has broadly focused on defining the molecular mechanisms of mRNA surveillance in bacteria and eukaryotes, using a combination of biochemical, structural, genetic, and genomic approaches. Her research has also revealed a central role for ribosome collisions in the activation of stress response signaling pathways in eukaryotes critical to cell fate. 

She currently is director of the BMCB graduate program at JHU and values her time as a mentor to students and postdocs. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She consults for numerous biotech companies and serves on the scientific advisory board for Moderna, Initial Therapeutics, and Alltrna.

Tracy Johnson, Ph.D., is the Dean of the UCLA Division of Life Sciences, Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professor. She brings to this position more than 25 years of experience studying the biochemistry of RNA. Dr. Johnson earned her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley under the mentorship of Michael Chamberlin, where she studied the role of interactions between RNA and RNA polymerase II in transcription elongation. She moved to the California Institute of Technology, where she worked with one of the pioneers of RNA splicing, John Abelson. At Caltech, Dr. Johnson was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral research fellow and studied the dynamic RNA-RNA interactions involved in splice site recognition. Dr. Johnson began her first faculty position at UC San Diego and moved in 2013 to join the faculty of UCLA, where she was appointed Dean of Life Sciences in 2020. Her laboratory utilizes a combination of molecular genetics, bioinformatic, and biochemical approaches to understand mechanisms of gene regulation, particularly RNA splicing and chromatin modification, and the intersection between these reactions. 

Dr. Johnson has served on a variety of scientific boards including the RNA Society Board of Directors, the HHMI Professors Executive Board, and the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Counselors, and has served as both a standing member and chair of the National Institute of Health’s Molecular Genetics study section. In addition to running a dynamic research program at UCLA, Dr. Johnson is a leader in educational innovation at UCLA and beyond and is particularly engaged in educational initiatives to support the development and success of students from underrepresented groups. In recognition of the impact of her work, she is the recipient of the 2022 Ruth Kirschstein Diversity in Science Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Dr. Johnson is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Science Foundation’s CAREER and PECASE Award and was named one of the Top 20 Women Professors in California in 2013. Since 2014, she has been a HHMI Professor. Dr. Johnson is the Dean of Life Sciences at UCLA and the Senior Associate Dean at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Anastasia Khvorova, Ph.D., has more than 20 years of experience developing oligonucleotide technology and therapeutics. She is a professor in the RNA Therapeutics Institute and Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Chan Medical School, where her lab brings together hardcore organic and oligonucleotide chemists with RNA biologists and pharmacologists to develop novel approaches and solutions to understanding natural and therapeutic RNA trafficking and delivery. Dr. Khvorova founded the UMass Nucleic Acid Chemistry Center, the only nonprofit facility in North America capable of gram-scale synthesis of modified oligonucleotides.

Prior to UMass Chan Medical School, Dr. Khvorova spent 12 years in industry in different executive positions. She has co-founded several biotechnology companies. Dr. Khvorova is named as inventor on more than 150 patents and 300 patent applications and has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including seminal articles in Cell, Nature, and Nature Biotechnology, defining the field of RNAi drug design and development. 

Dr. Khvorova is principal investigator on three major National Institutes of Health grants. She has served as a director of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society and currently is Director-at-Large and Scientific & Research Council Chair of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

Melissa J. Moore, Ph.D., is the Chief Scientific Officer, Scientific Affairs at Moderna. In her role at Moderna, Dr. Moore is responsible for leading mRNA biology, delivery, and computation science research. 

She joined Moderna in 2016 from the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School (UMass Chan), where she served as Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology, Eleanor Eustis Farrington Chair in Cancer Research, and a long-time Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. At UMass Chan, Dr. Moore was a founding Co-director of the RNA Therapeutics Institute (RTI) and was instrumental in creating the Massachusetts Therapeutic and Entrepreneurship Realization initiative (MassTERi), a faculty-led program intended to facilitate the translation of UMMS discoveries into drugs, products, technologies, and companies. 

Dr. Moore is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences (2017) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019). She also received the RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2021).

Dr. Moore’s 23-year career in academic research focused on the roles of RNA and RNA-protein (RNP) complexes in regulating gene expression, and her research touched on many human diseases including cancer, neurode­gen­er­a­tion, and preeclampsia. She began working on RNA metabolism during her postdoctoral training with Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D., at MIT, where she also received her Ph.D. in biological chemistry working under Christopher T. Walsh, Ph.D. Dr. Moore holds a B.S. in chemistry and biology from the College of William and Mary.

Christian S. Schade has more than 30 years of private and public pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience, as well as broad corporate finance expertise from his tenure in investment banking. 

Prior to Flagship, he served as the Chairman and CEO of Aprea Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: APRE), a clinical-stage biophar­ma­ceu­tical company. Prior to Aprea, Schade’s previous roles include CEO of Novira (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Executive Vice President (EVP) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Omthera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: OMTH, acquired by AstraZeneca Plc), EVP and CFO at NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG), and Senior Vice President of Administration and CFO at Medarex, Inc. (NASDAQ: MEDX, acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb). 

Before Medarex, Schade served as Managing Director at Merrill Lynch in London and held various corporate finance and capital markets positions in New York and London for both Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase & Co. 

Schade currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Omega Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: OMGA), and serves on the Boards of Ring Therapeutics, Valo Health and Integra LifeSciences Inc. (NASDAQ:IART), where he chairs the Audit and Finance Committees.

Shade received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an A.B. from Princeton University.

Lovisa Afzelius is an origination partner at Flagship Pioneering and leads one of Flagship’s Business Units. A computational scientist by training, she brings to Flagship two decades of leadership experience and a passion for data-driven drug discovery. Lovisa has served as CEO, co-founder, president, board chairman, and executive director, in emerging biotech and large pharma companies. She joined Flagship in early 2020, leading innovation as founding CEO of Alltrna and co-founder and CEO of World Economic Forum 2023 Technology Pioneer Apriori Bio, and co-founder and CEO of Metaphore Biotechnologies and FL89.

Previously, Lovisa built and led Pfizer’s systems immunology function and served as executive director of clinical programs. In this role, she launched several Phase 2 studies across autoimmune indications and as a member of the Inflammation & Immunology Research Unit leadership team, Lovisa co-managed the portfolio from early target discovery to Phase 2 clinical trials across all immunological assets. In addition, she served on Pfizer’s Worldwide R&D Data Strategy Committee.

In 2017, Lovisa co-founded Elsa.science, a digital health company in the rheumatoid arthritis space, where she serves as a board member. She also serves on the board of the Swedish New England Chamber of Commerce. Before moving to the US in 2013, Lovisa was CEO of BioChromix Pharma. She began her career at AstraZeneca as Project Director, Global In Vitro Metabolism Leader and Computational Chemist across cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Lovisa has received numerous accolades for her work. In 2023, she was named to the PharmaVoice 100 list of life science industry leaders and in 2022, she was named one of the Top Women in Biopharma by Endpoints. She was included in the top 100 ​“most influential persons under age 40 in Sweden” by Affärsvärlden, and awarded ​“scientist of tomorrow” at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations’ 30^th anniversary. Lovisa received the Rosenön Award for best thesis of the year within the field of pharmacodynamics/​pharmacokinetics in Sweden.

Lovisa holds a Ph.D. in computational chemistry from Uppsala University, a Master of Science in integrative pharmacology from Gothenburg University as well as an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Ms. Parshall is a seasoned biotechnology leader with more than 35 years in industry. An attorney by training, she spent more than 30 years as the founding Chief Operating Officer of Ionis Pharmaceuticals and subsequently as a Strategic Advisor to the CEO, overseeing legal, finance, business development, portfolio management, strategic planning, manufacturing, regulatory, alliance management, and other functions. While at Ionis she was responsible for raising more than $6 billion in financing from equity-based securities and corporate partner transactions. 

Ms. Parshall has sat on numerous public and private company Boards of Directors and has extensive Audit Committee and corporate governance experience. She currently is on the Boards of Ionis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IONS), Cytokinetics (NASDAQ: CYTK), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Ring Therapeutics, Repertoire Immune Medicines, and Celdara Medical. She was previously Chair of the Board of Akcea Therapeutics prior to its acquisition. 

Prior to working in industry, she was a partner at the Cooley law firm with a practice focusing on securities law and biotechnology corporate partnering.

Ms. Parshall received her B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College and J.D. from Stanford University. She is a Certified Corporate Director by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD).

Robert Plenge, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Chief Research Officer and Head of Research at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). He leads scientific activities across eleven research sites around the world all focused on transforming patients’ lives through science. Prior to his current role, Dr. Plenge served as head of Discovery & Translational Sciences at BMS, which spanned all therapeutic areas at the company. 

He joined BMS as part of the acquisition of Celgene in November 2019. At Celgene, he served as Vice President, Immunology & Inflammation portfolio, Research & Early Development. Prior to joining Celgene, Dr. Plenge was Vice President and Head of Translational Medicine at Merck. 

Prior to his roles in industry, he was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute while practicing clinical rheumatology and running a research laboratory at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. 

Dr. Plenge is an author of more than 125 manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals, and frequently posts updates to his personal blog, Plenge Gen, commenting on critical discovery moments with a focus on the resulting patient impact. He is a recipient of several academic and corporate awards and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the PhRMA Foundation.

Nancy Simonian, M.D., is a physician-scientist who has dedicated her career to developing drugs for people with serious diseases. She was the founding CEO and is currently a member of the board of directors of Syros Pharmaceuticals, a biophar­ma­ceu­tical company committed to advancing novel approaches to treating cancer based on altering gene expression. 

Prior to Syros, she was Chief Medical Officer at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Vice President of Clinical Development at Biogen. At Millennium, Dr. Simonian oversaw the successful development of VELCADE® to treat multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma, NINLARO® to treat multiple myeloma and ENTYVIO® to treat inflammatory bowel disease. At Biogen, she played a central role in developing AVONEX® and TYSABRI® for multiple sclerosis. 

Dr. Simonian started her career as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She currently serves as a director of Syros (NASDAQ: SYRS) and the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. She previously served as a director of Seagen (NASDAQ: SGEN; acquired by Pfizer in 2023), Evelo (NASDAQ: EVLO), and Arqule (NASDAQ: ARQL; acquired by Merck in 2020).

She trained in medicine and neurology at MGH and received an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in biology from Princeton. 

Michelle C. Werner is a seasoned pharmaceutical executive with more than 20 years in the industry spanning both commercial and research & development (R&D) responsibilities. Most recently, Michelle served as Worldwide Franchise Head, Solid Tumors at Novartis Oncology, where she was responsible for delivering the disease area strategies across multiple tumors and led business development efforts resulting in a doubling of long-term portfolio value for the franchise. 

Previous to Novartis, Michelle was a senior leader at AstraZeneca, where she held multiple positions during her five-year tenure. As Global Franchise Head in Hematology, Michelle was critical in launching multiple indications worldwide for CALQUENCE® and was responsible for developing the mid- and long-term strategy for AstraZeneca in hematology. Prior to this role, Michelle served as Head of US Oncology, where she led the business through dramatic growth in both team and revenue through eight-plus product launches as well as Country President for the Nordics and Baltics, where she also served as an elected Board Member to Sweden’s pharmaceutical industry association.

Previous to AstraZeneca, Michelle was with Bristol Myers Squibb for 10 years in various positions of increasing responsibility including roles in sales, marketing, and market access in the US and UK, and above market in Europe (based in France) and global almost exclusively in oncology. Michelle started her professional career in R&D, working hands-on with patients at the Oncology Clinical Trials Unit at Harvard Medical School before moving into industry in clinical operations.

Outside of her corporate responsibilities, Michelle is a wife and mother to three children and is a member of the rare disease community. She is currently serving a Board appointment for the non-profit organization Rare Disease Renegades, a purpose that fuels her passions both personally and professionally. 

Michelle holds a B.A. in biology & anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the London Business School (UK). She also completed an Executive Education program for Women on Boards at Harvard Business School in 2018.