Board of Directors
Annalisa Jenkins, MBBS, FRCP
Chair
Genomics England
Annalisa Jenkins, M.B.B.S., F.R.C.P. is a biopharma thought leader with over 25 years of industry experience. Dr. Jenkins has extensive experience in building and financing biotech companies pursuing cures for the most challenging rare diseases.
Dr. Jenkins served as president and CEO of Dimension Therapeutics, a leading gene therapy company that she took public on the NASDAQ and subsequently sold to Ultragenyx. She held prior senior roles at Merck Serono and Bristol Myers-Squibb. Earlier in her career, Dr. Jenkins was a medical officer in the British Royal Navy during the Gulf Conflict, achieving the rank of surgeon lieutenant commander.
Dr. Jenkins is a board member of several growing companies, and is a committee member of the Science Board to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. She is also a board member at Faster Cures – a center of The Milken Institute – and Chair of The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Florent Gros, MS, EPA, MBA
Earlybird Venture Capital
Florent brings 30+ years of expertise in investment and intellectual property management in the biopharma space. With a background in biotechnology, patent and private law, and a Kauffman Fellowship, he spent 15 years at the Novartis Venture Fund, where he seeded, invested in, and managed numerous startups.
Florent has also founded three biotech companies, including Handl Therapeutics, which was sold in 2020. He led the financing for Oculis, an Earlybird Health I portfolio company, as a co-investor through the Novartis Venture Fund. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Priothera, another Earlybird Health I portfolio company.
John Maraganore, PhD
JMM Innovations, LLC
John Maraganore is a co-founder and executive chair of City Therapeutics. He was the founding CEO and a director of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals - the leading RNAi therapeutics company - which he led for nearly 20 years, raising over $7.5B in capital, forming over 20 major pharmaceutical alliances and creating over $25B in market capitalization.
Prior to Alnylam, Dr. Maraganore held senior leadership roles at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and at Biogen, Inc.
Dr. Maraganore is currently the CEO and principal of JMM Innovations, LLC, which is committed to the advancement of biomedical innovation to patients. He serves on the boards of Beam Therapeutics, Kymera Therapeutics, Rapport Therapeutics and Takeda Pharmaceuticals, in addition to several private company and non-profit boards.
Campbell Murray, MD, MPP, MBA
Double Point Ventures
Dr. Campbell Murray is a seasoned biotech investor, operator, and physician with over two decades of experience in venture capital, biotechnology leadership, and clinical medicine.
As Co-founder and Managing Partner of Double Point Ventures, he leads investments in breakthrough life sciences companies, shaping their trajectory from inception to commercialization. Previously, he was a Senior Partner at Bioluminescence Ventures, General Partner at Agent Capital, and Managing Director at Novartis Venture Fund, where he has cumulatively deployed over $500 million into biotech startups, driving multiple IPOs and M&A exits.
Beyond investing, Dr. Murray has held leadership roles at Diabetes Free and Intima Bioscience and has served on 25 biotech company boards. His expertise spans company creation, early-stage and growth capital investing, and corporate strategy, with a focus on advancing groundbreaking innovations in biotechnology.
James M. Wilson, MD, PhD
GEMMABio
Having started his work in gene therapy nearly 40 years ago, Dr. Wilson was recruited to the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and created the first and largest academic-based program in gene therapy. His laboratory discovered a family of viruses from primates called adeno-associated viruses (AAV) that could be engineered to be very effective gene transfer vehicles. These "vectors" have become the technology platform of choice and have set the stage for the recent resurgence of the field of gene therapy.
Dr. Wilson has also been active in facilitating the commercial development of these new gene therapy platforms through the establishment of ten biotechnology companies. His research has been focused on rare inherited diseases, ranging from cystic fibrosis to dyslipidemias to a variety of neurologic disorders and liver metabolic diseases, and on addressing these unmet needs for patients in marginalized populations. To date, his team’s accomplishments include 3 FDA-approved AAV-based gene therapies, 40+ active programs in development, 95 patents on gene therapy-related technologies, and first-in-patient studies in 15 different diseases.