Corporate Governance

Roberto Bellini is currently a Managing Partner at BSQUARED Capital, a family office biotech fund. He previously served as President and CEO of BELLUS Health between January 2010 and July 2023. Under his leadership BELLUS Health developed camlipixant, a P2X3 antagonist for chronic cough from preclinical to Phase 3. BELLUS Health was subsequently acquired by GSK plc in 2023. Mr. Bellini holds a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from McGill University.

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.

David Canner is a Partner at Soleus Capital. David has served on the board for a number of companies. Prior to joining Soleus in 2018, David completed his PhD at MIT in Biology after finishing his undergraduate studies at Princeton University where he received a BA in Chemistry.

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.

Arvind Kush, the Chief Financial and Chief Business Officer of Candid Therapeutics, has over 15 years of finance and investment banking experience. Prior to Candid, Arvind was Chief Financial Officer at RayzeBio, where he helped the company raise over $160 million in a private financing in 2022, complete its $350+ million IPO in 2023 and close its $4.1B acquisition Bristol Meyers Squibb in February 2024. Arvind holds a Bachelor in Engineering in Computer Science from Visvesvaraya Technological University and an MBA from Goizueta Business School, Emory University.

Amit Munshi is a 30-year industry veteran who is currently Chief Executive Officer of Orna Therapeutics and former President, Chief Executive Officer and board member of ReNAgade Therapeutics. Previously Mr. Munshi served as President and CEO of Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc., which was subsequently sold to Pfizer, Inc.

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.