Michael Gilman

Chief Executive Officer, Arrakis Therapeutics

Michael is CEO of Arrakis Therapeutics. In addition, Mike currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Novartis Venture Fund, Obsidian Therapeutics, and Scholar Rock (NASDAQ: SRRK) and on the Scientific Advisory Board of FutuRx. Previously, Mike was Chief Executive Officer of Obsidian Therapeutics, a venture-funded company focused on applying synthetic biology to gene and cell therapies. Prior to Obsidian, Mike was Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Padlock Therapeutics, a venture-funded company focused on autoimmune disease,acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2016. From 2012-2013, Mike served as Senior Vice President, Early-Stage Pipeline, at Biogen Idec, with responsibility for managing the company’s development programs through clinical proof-of-concept. He joined Biogen Idec in March 2012 following its acquisition of Stromedix, a venture-funded company focused on fibrosis and organ failure, where he was Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Prior to founding Stromedix in 2006, Mike served as Executive Vice President, Research at Biogen Idec, with responsibility for the company’s discovery research activities in Cambridge and San Diego. From 1994 to 1999, Mike was at ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, where he was Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer. From 1986 to 1994, Mike was on the scientific staff of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where his research focused on mechanisms of signal transduction and gene regulation. Mike was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and a SB in Life Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Matthew Gline

Chief Executive Officer, Roivant Sciences

Mr. Gline joined Roivant in 2016 and served as Chief Financial Officer from 2017 until 2021, when he was appointed our Chief Executive Officer. Prior to Roivant, Mr. Gline was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, Fixed Income Digital Structuring, where he focused on technology and data strategy. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Mr. Gline was a co-founder of Fourthree, a risk analytics technology and consulting company. From 2008 to 2012, he served as Vice President at Barclays, Enterprise Risk Management Advisory, where he provided analysis for corporate clients related to capital markets access for financing and risk management. Mr. Gline earned his AB in Physics from Harvard College.

John G. Houston

Chairperson, Chief Executive Officer, and President, Arvinas

Dr. John Houston serves as Chairperson, Chief Executive Officer, and President at Arvinas. With over 30 years of experience, he served as the Senior Vice President of Specialty Discovery at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). He spent more than 18 years at BMS in roles of increasing responsibility and had accountability for all Discovery Biology disease teams as well as various Discovery technology departments. Dr. Houston was a member of the BMS R&D Executive Leadership team and chaired the Target Portfolio Committee, which had governance oversight in the discovery space. With his teams and research colleagues, he progressed over 200 compounds into early development, several of which advanced into late-stage clinical trials and toward commercialization.

Prior to joining Bristol Myers Squibb, he worked at Glaxo Wellcome Research and Development in the UK, where he served as head of the Lead Discovery Unit. Dr. Houston currently serves on the boards of directors of NextCure, Inc., Oerth Bio, Cybrexa Therapeutics and BioCT.

Dr. Houston obtained his B.Sc. degree in Medical Microbiology from Glasgow University and obtained his Ph.D. in Microbial Biochemistry from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. He also completed his post-doctoral studies on an MRC grant at Glasgow University.

Robert Ang

President and Chief Executive Officer, Vor Bio

Robert Ang, MBBS, MBA brings experience as a senior biotech executive and is formerly a physician, venture capitalist, and strategy consultant. Prior to Vor Bio, Robert was Chief Business Officer at Neon Therapeutics, serving as part of the early team that established the company prior to its Series A investment through IPO. Before Neon, he served as Senior Vice President of Business Development at Bavarian Nordic, where he was primarily responsible for conducting a $975 million transaction with Bristol-Myers Squibb for PROSTVAC, a Phase 3 immuno-oncology asset, and served as Head of Business Development and Medical Affairs for Cadence Pharmaceuticals. Robert also worked at Frazier Healthcare Ventures, a leading life sciences venture capital firm, where he was involved in several pharmaceutical and biotechnology investments including Cadence Pharmaceuticals (purchased by Mallinckrodt), Incline Therapeutics (purchased by The Medicines Company), Alnara Pharmaceuticals (purchased by Eli Lilly), and Collegium Pharmaceuticals. Robert also has strategy consulting experience at the Boston Consulting Group and has general surgical training. He holds an MBBS (Doctor of Medicine) from the University of Western Australia and an MBA with honors from Columbia Business School. Robert serves as the Board Chair of Enara Bio, a UK-based biotechnology company focused on non-classical HLA targets for immuno-oncology approaches. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), the leading international advocacy organization dedicated to realizing the promise of regenerative medicines and advanced therapies.

Moderator

John Carroll

EDITOR & FOUNDER, Endpoints News

John D. Carroll is a biotech analyst and writer with decades of prize-winning experience in journalism. A co-founder of Endpoints News, he has covered biopharma for the past 15 years. Aside from his daily industry coverage for FierceBiotech, where he was named editor in 2003, leaving in 2016, Carroll has been a regular speaker at biotech events around the globe. He’s been quoted by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Financial Times, The Times of London and more. He’s also keynoted at biotech gatherings around the world and addressed student audiences at MIT and Harvard. Carroll has contributed stories from Central America and Ireland to the Dallas Morning News and Time and wrote for the Houston Press. He spent 6 years as editor and publisher of the Dallas Business Journal, was publisher of Texas Business and early in his career was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team of reporters and editors at the Kansas City Star & Times.