The Verismo Team

Dr. Kim is a co-founder and CEO/President for Verismo Therapeutics. He has over 17 years of experience in building and operating biopharmaceutical companies from start-up to publicly traded biopharmaceutical and revenue generating CMO companies.

Dr. Kim was one of the starting members at VGX Pharmaceuticals, a spinout from University of Pennsylvania in 2005. He headed the corporate development and brought in Needham & Co. to complete a merger with Inovio Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: INO) in 2009. He led a series of funding that resulted in more than $20M and led to Phase I and II clinical trials for 4 DNA-vaccine pipelines in the U.S. In 2013, Inovio signed a global licensing deal with Roche for its DNA-vaccine-based pipelines.

Dr. Kim was a co-founder/CEO for GeneOne Life Sciences (former VGX International), a KOSPI-listed biopharmaceutical company in Korea. He orchestrated the public company acquisition and initiated a new drug development division within the company in 2005. As a global leader in DNA vaccine, the company completed the first-ever preventive DNA vaccine Phase 1 clinical trials in Asia. He led a series of public fundings in a total of $38M and structured numerous transactions, including in- and out-licensing of pipelines with the U.S., E.U., and Asian companies. In 2008, GeneOne acquired a DNA vaccine CMO company in Houston, and as a new CEO, Dr. Kim led the company’s restructuring and expansions, successfully built new marketing teams, and implemented strategies. The company doubled its manufacturing capacity with a series of investments from the partners. In 2010, the revenues were quadrupled (4x) and achieved its first profit. Inovio and GeneOne were at $3.41B combined in market capitalization as of 12/01/2020. Dr. Kim was named Forbes Korea’s CEO of the year in 2010 and Fortunes Korea’s Best CEOs in 2011. He placed GeneOne in the KOSPI 200 index in 2008.

Prior to joining Inovio, Dr. Kim was a clinical associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Dental Medicine. He received a DMD from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Laura Johnson joined Verismo Therapeutics as Chief Scientific Officer, overseeing the company’s research and development. Dr. Johnson brings over 20 years of experience in molecular and cellular immunology, including 16 years of gene-engineered T cell immunotherapy translational expertise.

Following her Master’s degree in Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and Doctorate in Immunology, Dr. Johnson did a four-year postdoctoral fellowship under Dr. Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda MD. Throughout this fellowship, she pioneered some of the first successful gene-engineered T cell therapy clinical trials for patients with advanced cancers (metastatic melanoma and synovial sarcoma). Her experience covered the full span of translational science from beginning to end, from target selection and bench research through manufacture and testing of the clinical cell product, to formation and implementation of biomarker strategy and conducting clinical analyses.

Following her fellowship at the NCI and as an Assistant Professor at Duke University Medical Center, Dr. Johnson shifted her focus to patients with brain tumors, with funding from multiple awards, including from the American Brain Tumor Association. While at Duke, she developed both syngeneic and immune-deficient preclinical models to investigate chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies on glioblastoma (GBM).

From Duke, Dr. Johnson was recruited to the University of Pennsylvania to work with Prof. Carl June. Dr. June is an inventor of the CD19 CAR T technology that became Kymriah ®, the first global registered gene-engineered immunotherapy for patients with hematologic malignancies. As a director, she built the solid tumor immunotherapy lab, one of the founding groups in the Penn Center for Cellular Immunotherapies. Her laboratory provided translational research for multiple solid tumor targets and data to enable clinical trials using EGFRvIII CAR T for GBM. Dr. Johnson’s work resulted in 3 patents for advances in gene-engineered cell therapies. While at the University of Pennsylvania, she received an NIH New Innovator award, and her laboratory research was funded by the NIH, Novartis, Internal awards, and GlaxoSmithKline.

Dr. Johnson made the move from academia to industry by joining GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as a Senior Director and the first Head of Translational Medicine for their nascent Oncology Cell Therapy Research Unit. At GSK, she created subdivisions for preclinical research and clinical development. From a Head of Preclinical Translational Research to Head of Clinical Biomarkers in the newly formed Experimental Medicine Unit, Dr. Johnson successfully established strategy and implementation for global clinical cell therapy trials, including NY-ESO-1 T cell receptor (TCR), ranging from first in human through pivotal trials across multiple indications (lung, synovial sarcoma, MRCLS, myeloma).

Dr. Johnson received a BSc in Biology/Biological Sciences from Simon Fraser University and a MSc and a PhD in cellular and molecular immunology from the University of British Columbia.

Gene joined Verismo Therapeutics as the Chief Financial Officer. He brings over 25 years of experience in financial management, M&A, and strategy. His experience includes preparing private companies for public filings, structuring M&A deals of both publicly traded and private companies, investor relations, and developing and implementing strategic business plans. At Verismo, Gene is responsible for the company’s financial management functions, including accounting and internal control, financial planning and analysis, funding, and investor relations.

Gene holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from UCLA and an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Mala Talekar, MBBS, DNB, DABP, joined Verismo Therapeutics as the Vice President of Clinical Development. She is board-certified in both General Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology with more than 20 years of experience in the field.

Prior to Verismo, Mala was a medical director and clinical lead for multiple Phase I through Phase III immuno-oncology and cell therapy trials at GSK where she received several Innovation Awards. Before joining the industry, Mala was an attending physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Cancer Immunotherapy Program where she managed, along with Dr. Stephan Grupp, inpatient and outpatient care for children receiving tisagenlecleucel.

Mala holds an MBBS from Grant Medical College at the University of Mumbai, a DNB in Pediatrics from the National Board of Pediatrics in India and DABP in both General Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology Oncology from the American Board of Pediatrics.

Andrea Campanile joined Verismo as Vice President of Clinical Operations. She has more than 25 years of experience in drug development, facilitating the advancement of cell and gene therapies, biologics, and other drugs from all clinical development stages through to regulatory approval.

Before joining Verismo Therapeutics, she was Vice President of Clinical Operations at Passage Bio, leading the clinical operations team where she oversaw the global operational delivery of gene therapy programs for rare diseases, led the development of the clinical operations function, and, contributed to the development of both the clinical and R&D functional groups. Before Passage Bio, Andrea held senior positions at GSK where she was responsible for strategic operational leadership, oversight, and delivery of global oncology cell therapy, rare disease gene therapy, and other clinical programs across all phases of development.  After receiving her MS in Clinical Pharmacology, Andrea spent the early part of her career at Merck leading clinical operations and development for Phase I/II studies.

Dr. Jun Xu joined Verismo Therapeutics as Senior Director of Translational Science. She has extensive experience from process development and drug product characterization to translational studies in T cell immunotherapy.

After earning her Ph.D in Microbiology and Immunology from Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, she joined as a translational researcher in Product Development Laboratory, Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, at the University of Pennsylvania, in which she focused on understanding of the resistance and response to CAR T therapy in patients with hematological malignancies. In addition, she led development of a novel T cell activation strategy to augment the potency of T cell therapy products and later resulted in co-inventorship. Dr. Xu was then promoted to Associate Director at the same laboratory. In this role, she supervised process development and product characterization of both autologous and allogeneic T cell therapy products in IND-enabling studies, contributing to successful IND submission. Moreover, she oversaw research activities of characterizing drug products derived from patients and investigation into the development of predictive T cell biomarkers from starting materials and/or drug products in T cell immunotherapy trials.

More recently, she served as VP of Process Development and Clinical Studies at UTC Therapeutics where she created the department and established bioanalytical platforms for correlative studies including evaluating the efficacy and safety of cell therapy products in patients.

Dr. Xu first- or co-authored several manuscripts on the top journals including Nature Medicine, Nature, Blood and Seminars in Cancer Biology. She received a BS in Applied Biology from Zhejiang University (China) and a MS in Biology from New York University.

Jacqueline has 13 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and cell therapy industry with deep expertise in quality management, including experience in building a quality and compliance program for an autologous cell therapy product from the ground up. Throughout her career, Jacqueline has managed site quality assurance and quality control under a variety of regulatory environments including the US and EU.

In her previous role as Sr. Director of Quality Operations at Adaptimmune, Jacqueline was responsible for the oversight of Quality Batch Release Operations for US/EU, Quality Control Analytical testing, and Quality Control Microbiology. She was also responsible for developing the Quality modules of the GxP quality system and implementing the Quality policies, and standard operating procedures to establish a compliant manufacturing site at the Philadelphia location.  Prior to this role, Jacqueline worked at MedImmune, a subsidiary of AstraZeneca, in the quality unit responsible for maintaining compliance for vaccine manufacturing.

Jacqueline has her Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Aprelev is a start-up member and a Director of Corporate Development for Verismo Therapeutics.

Prior to joining Verismo, Dr. Aprelev spent two years as a postdoc in the translational research lab at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. There, he led a project on targeted drug delivery using mural and human red blood cell hitchhiking. He organized and managed the workflow of cross-functional teams of scientists, engineers, and medical doctors to achieve unprecedented drug delivery efficacy to the pulmonary endothelium, which resulted in two federal grants, an NIH fellowship, a provisional patent, and several peer-reviewed publications. During this time, Dr. Aprelev also completed a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania technology transfer office, where he analyzed the patentability and the marketability of new inventions.

Dr. Aprelev obtained his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Clemson University. During his PhD, he developed a new technology to probe the physical properties of blood at nano- and micro-scales and led teams of PhD and undergraduate students to understand the molecular origins of interfacial interaction and nano-rheology of clotting insect blood, as a result of which, he received a 2-year NASA Graduate Fellowship, authored nine publications, presented seven oral and six poster presentations, and helped jump-start numerous successful scientific careers. Dr. Aprelev received his BS with honors in Physics with minors in Economics and Mathematics from Union College.

Raymond Luke joined Verismo Therapeutics as Director of Manufacturing Science and Technology and brings more than 10 years of experience in CMC. Prior to joining Verismo Therapeutics,

Mr. Luke spent six years at Adaptimmune developing TCR-T and next generation cell therapies targeting NY-ESO-1, MAGE-A4, MAGE-A10 and AFP against solid tumor indications He held leadership roles within CMC and was responsible for GMP manufacturing and technical oversight at CDMOs, technology transfer (sending and receiving) into cGMP manufacturing and technical oversight of manufacturing operations. He also led teams responsible for developing automated processing solutions, analytical development of commercial-ready assays and late-stage process characterization for afamitresgene autoleucel.

Raymond worked in a variety of roles at WuXi AppTec, University of Pennsylvania, Cancer Institute of New Jersey, LifeCell and Chromocell. Mr. Luke holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Genetics from Rutgers University.

Dr. June is a founding advisor for Verismo Therapeutics. Professor June maintains a research laboratory that studies various mechanisms of lymphocyte activation that relate to immune tolerance and adoptive immunotherapy for cancer and chronic infection. In 2011, his research team published findings detailing a new therapy in which patients with refractory and relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia were treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells. The June laboratory has published more than 500 publications and has a google scholar h-index of 155 with more than 100,000 citations. He currently serves as the Richard W. Vague Professor in immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and as the Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine, as well as the Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including his election into the National Academies of Medicine and Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.