MANAGEMENT
Mr. Semerjian is a global biopharmaceutical veteran with extensive US, European and international commercialization experience having led multiple successful hematology/oncology product launches. During his 16-year tenure at Novartis, Mr. Semerjian held both strategic and operational leadership roles including US Hematology franchise head, Global lead for Gleevec and Ribociclib, in addition to leading oncology businesses across Canada, Nordics, Middle East & Africa. He then served as executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Ipsen where he was accountable for worldwide commercialization and portfolio strategy. He briefly served as CEO of Immunomedics before its sale to Gilead. Most recently Mr. Semerjian has been an independent healthcare consultant advising private equity companies focused on healthcare investment. Mr. Semerjian holds an MBA from Cornell University, an MBA from Queen’s University-Canada and a B.S. in Biology from the Lebanese American University.
Dr. Magnani is co-founder and CSO of GlycoMimetics, Inc (GMI). Prior to co-founding GMI, Dr. Magnani founded and led a predecessor company, GlycoTech Corporation, as its President and CEO. Previously, he helped co-found the U.S. subsidiary of BioCarb and became its international Vice President of Research. Dr. Magnani received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and then joined the Laboratory of Biological Pharmacology of the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIADDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He remained at the NIH for 10 years, finally serving as a tenured research chemist. Dr. Magnani is an expert in glycobiology, having discovered and characterized many carbohydrate tumor antigens, such as the FDA-approved cancer diagnostic, CA19-9. He also developed fundamental technology for the identification of functional carbohydrate epitopes. Dr. Magnani is the discoverer of Sialyl Lea and its functions. He was the first to identify the binding domain to the selectins common to both Sialyl Lea and Sialyl Lex and used this information to develop potent selectin antagonists as drug candidates now in clinical trials. He is the recipient of the 2020 Horton Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the 2015 President’s Innovation Award from the Society of Glycobiology. Dr. Magnani has authored over 100 scientific publications and is an inventor on more than 90 issued patents.
Mr. Hahn has more than 15 years of senior financial and operations experience in emerging organizations. He joined GlycoMimetics in 2010. Previously, Mr. Hahn served as executive director of finance at MiddleBrook Pharmaceuticals (formerly Advancis Pharmaceutical), a publicly-traded specialty pharmaceutical company. Prior to Advancis, he was a senior accountant with Bering Truck Corporation. Mr. Hahn has worked with life science companies from early stages through product launch. He has been involved in multiple initial public offerings and has broad experience in developing strategic plans, creating business models, establishing accounting and auditing systems and ensuring Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Currently, Mr. Hahn serves as co-chairman of the BIO Finance and Tax Committee, as a co-chairman of the Steering Committee of the Washington, DC chapter of the Association for Bio Financial Officers (ABFO), and also serves on the Securities and Exchange Commissions’ Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. He received a B.B.A. in Accounting from Shenandoah University and an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland.
Mr. Girard has served as our Chief Business Officer since February 2020 and previously as our Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development. Mr. Girard is responsible for corporate strategy, pursuing partnering and licensing opportunities in support of the GlycoMimetics pipeline and for managing the company's corporate and institutional alliances. Prior to joining our company, Mr. Girard worked in Corporate Development at Shire Pharmaceuticals where he focused on mergers and acquisitions, strategic equity investments and transformative deals. In addition, he was responsible for leading cross-functional R&D due diligence and managing Shire’s strategic alliances through participation on boards and joint steering committees. Mr. Girard has more than 25 years of pharmaceutical/biotech experience, spanning a variety of corporate development, product planning and new product development positions, with a number of companies, including Strakan Life Sciences, Pro-Virus, Inc. and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. He holds a pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing M.B.A. from St. Joseph’s University Haub School of Business and a B.A. from Lehigh University.
Mr. Johnson has over twenty-five years of biopharma experience with a solid track record of leading multi-billion commercial franchises. Bruce has experience in developing and launching new products, establishing new capabilities, and improving profitability. He has experience leading turnarounds, as well as starting, building and launching new businesses. He has worked in the oncology area for many years and successfully led product launches across a variety of disease areas to include: breast, lung, kidney, melanoma and neuroendocrine tumors, as well as a wide range of hematologic malignancies and rare diseases. He was directly involved in the product launch for Venclexta, Zometa, Sandostatin/Sandostatin LAR, Jakavi, Gleevec/Glivec, Tasigna, Afinitor and Rydapt. He has worked for several organizations to include: Memorial Sloan Kettering, Sandoz, Novartis, AbbVie and more recently Cancer Expert Now, Inc., a digital health company, where he was Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer and helped lead the organization to achieve national recognition by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 500 fastest growing small companies in America. His education includes graduate work at Columbia University in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and at Rutgers University School of Management in Marketing and Finance. He received a BA in Microbiology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Mr. Dinneen-Long has more than 15 years of in-house experience at several public pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, with expertise in corporate governance, securities regulations and SEC reporting, licensing and M&A transactions and corporate finance. Prior to joining the company, Mr. Dinneen-Long served as Senior Counsel at AstraZeneca/MedImmune, where he supported strategic initiatives, pipeline programs and sophisticated transactions with values up to $2 billion. As Associate General Counsel at Emergent BioSolutions, Inc., he advised on complex corporate transactions, supported the company’s SEC reporting and provided legal advice to all functional areas of the business. He was also the Assistant General Counsel at Guilford Pharmaceuticals, managing all day-to-day legal operations, including providing legal support for multi-site Phase III clinical trials. Before joining the biotechnology field, Mr. Dinneen-Long spent eight years as an associate at law firms in Chicago, Kansas City and Washington, D.C. He earned his J.D. with honors from the Chicago-Kent College of Law and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lisa DeLuca, Ph.D., is the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at GlycoMimetics, Inc. Dr. DeLuca has 30 years of pharmaceutical experience with 27 of those years in Regulatory Affairs at both large pharma and small biotech companies. The majority of her regulatory career has been spent in the oncology therapeutic area. She has experience across multiple solid and liquid tumor types, including acute myeloid leukemia. Dr. DeLuca was the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Celator Pharmaceuticals and was responsible for all regulatory activities for CPX-351 (Vyxeos). Vyxeos was the first therapeutic in over 40 years to improve survival for high-risk AML patients. At Celator, she served as a key member of the management team responsible for taking Vyxeos through clinical development, manufacturing optimization, NDA preparation, and the acquisition of the company by Jazz Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. DeLuca’s career is hallmarked by multiple product registrations and approvals, and her experience spans the drug development spectrum from pre-IND to post-approval and life cycle management. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in biology from Eastern Michigan University, earned her Ph.D. from the University of Toledo, and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.
Ms. Irish has served as Vice President, Accounting since January 2019 and previously held the positions of Senior Director, Accounting and Reporting, and Director, Accounting and Reporting, since joining GlycoMimetics in April 2014. Ms. Irish has more than 25 years in finance and accounting, with a significant portion of that time working for both private and public life science companies including Vanda Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Zyngenia Inc, Avalon Pharmaceuticals and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR). Ms. Irish is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Maryland and holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a member of both the Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants (MACPA) and the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA).
Dr. Peterson has more than 25 years of experience in drug discovery. Having joined GlycoMimetics in 2012, he manages the company's internal and external discovery chemistry efforts and provides strategic guidance on drug candidate optimization. Prior to joining GlycoMimetics, Dr. Peterson was Principal Scientist at H Lundbeck A/S where he served as Project Leader for several CNS related programs. Prior to that, he was a Distinguished Research Fellow at Neurogen Corporation where he managed the Hits to Lead group. Dr. Peterson received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Yale University where his research focused on oligosaccharide synthesis – including the E-selectin ligand sialyl Lewisx.
Mr. Ridgell has over seventeen years of project management experience leading drug development projects and programs, including over ten years at ICON Clinical Research, where he held several positions in Project Management and gained experience working on numerous projects spanning a wide variety of compounds, indications and dosage forms. Prior to joining GlycoMimetics, Mr. Ridgell spent two years at Rexahn Pharmaceuticals as Director, Project Management. Mr. Ridgell joined GlycoMimetics in 2016 and has served as Director and Senior Director of Project Management, and was promoted in February 2022 to Vice President, Portfolio and Project Management. Mr. Ridgell is responsible for overseeing major project operations and ensuring key objectives are met with respect to scope, schedule, cost and quality. He is also accountable for implementing Project Management skills, tools and best practices across the organization. Mr. Ridgell is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and member of the Project Management Institute since 2007. He holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from The Johns Hopkins University and B.S. degree in Marine and Environmental Chemistry from the Florida Institute of Technology.
Dr. Rock worked for 16 years in biopharma roles of increasing responsibility before joining GlycoMimetics in 2022. Most recently he was Chief Medical Officer at Partner Therapeutics. Previously, at MacroGenics he led the program culminating in FDA approval of MargenzaTM. Dr. Rock has worked in biopharma on small molecules and biologics in all stages of development and marketing authorization. These agents include BusulfexTM, Inqovi®, Jynarque®, Leukine®, MargenzaTM, Nucala, and Sprycel®, as well as investigational GNX-8, guadecitabine, lorigerlimab, the MAGE-A3 cancer vaccine, OPB-31121, OPB-51602, OPB-111077, retifanlimab, tebotelimab, and others not disclosed. Earlier, he worked for a year as a life sciences buyside analyst at Leerink Swann and Company and for 2 years as an FDA Medical Officer in oncology drug review. Dr. Rock holds a BA in Biology and Economics from Swarthmore College. He earned Ph.D. then MD degrees at Stanford before Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Medical Oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Tiwari has over twenty-five years of diverse experience and joins GlycoMimetics from Rafael Pharmaceuticals where he was Vice President and Head of CMC Operations working on development of devimistat in multiple indications including patients with relapsed or refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Prior to that, he worked at ZyVersa Therapeutics (previously Variant Pharmaceuticals), where he held the position of Assistant Vice President, CMC Operations and Product Development. He has extensive experience in both large and small molecules, including pre-formulation, formulation development, analytical characterization, process development, scale-up, technology transfer and process validation. He is the author of many peer-reviewed journal articles and the recipient of numerous awards for technical achievements. Deepak holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences, both from St. John's University, N.Y, and a B.S. in Pharmacy from the University of Delhi in India.