Prior to his tenure at Fibrocor Therapeutics, Bill served as the Senior Vice President, Alliance Management at Evotec having moved over from the business development team, there he made significant contributions to the company’s collaborations and success. Prior to Evotec, he held positions with Eurofinns/DiscoveRx and started his career at Pfizer. Over his career, Bill has gained extensive insight into the global drug discovery and biopharmaceutical landscape, honing his understanding of the intricacies of the drug discovery process and staying abreast of industry and technology, as well as, commercial trends. Bill’s expertise and deep understanding of the pharmaceutical industry have resulted in a consistent track record of successful program implementation and company value creation. Throughout his career, he has spearheaded numerous high-impact initiatives, including shared-risk, integrated drug discovery collaborations leading to substantial deal terms.

Prior to founding Fibrocor in 2017, he established an international reputation as a clinician-scientist in translational fibrosis research, pioneering the integration of human tissue samples with preclinical models as a foundation for target discovery and drug development.  Prof. Gilbert was previously the CSO of Fibrotech Therapeutics, a company that developed and progressed an orally active anti-fibrotic drug to first-in-human studies before being acquired by Shire Plc in 2014.  He has consulted and provided advice as a KOL to major pharmaceutical companies including Boehringer Ingelheim, Astra Zeneca, Novartis and Merck, in addition to serving on the scientific advisory board of Mesoblast Inc.  Prof. Gilbert has, notably, served at a steering/executive committee level in a broad range of clinical trials.
Prof. Gilbert maintains his academic appointment at the University of Toronto with a prestigious Canada Research Chair, along with his specialist physician appointment at St. Michael’s Hospital.  He is a fellow of the Royal Australasian and Canadian Colleges of Physicians and the American Society of Nephrology.

Prior to joining Amgen in 2002, Bill was a Scientific Director and Project Leader in the Vascular Biology Department at Immunex where he worked in various positions of increasing responsibility within research and development for 14 years (Cellular Immunology, Tumor Immunology and Immunobiology). Bill was involved with preclinical work that led, in part, to the development of Eternacept. During the 12 years Bill was at Amgen, he progressed to become an Executive Director at the Amgen Washington site where he was originally an investigator in the Hematology-Oncology Therapeutic area focusing on target discovery/validation, therapeutic discovery and preclinical development of targeted biotherapeutics including receptor-Fcs, effector function-enhanced monoclonal antibodies, blocking antibodies, anti-CD3 bispecifics and antibody drug conjugates-ADC. As a scientific leader, Bill fostered and managed innovation and moved to the newly formed Therapeutic Innovation Unit (TIU) at Amgen where he directed a group of 19. In the TIU, Bill and his teams developed strategic platforms that offered biological innovation and created novel biological insight into diseases across multiple therapeutic areas/modalities, including cancer immunotherapy, general oncology (targeted therapeutics), iPSC (cyno, human) generation, and cyno autologous tumor model development for pharmacological evaluation of biotherapeutics. Bill was the lead or co-lead of multiple biotherapeutic programs from target discovery and validation into Phase 1. Bill subsequently co-founded Sound Biologics in 2015, where he served as the executive vice president of research and development and drove the biology and IND-enabling/IND filing activities for its lead programs. The company focused on its unique MabPair antibody platform development and on drug discovery and clinical development of MabPairs directed against Oncology and Immuno-Oncology-related targets. Its two lead MabPair, programs, a dual-function ICI, and a targeted B cell lymphoma therapy are currently in Phase 1/2 of clinical development. Bill’s major research interests include growth factor/ growth factor receptors, transplantation.immunobiology, T cell function/adaptive immunity, immunotherapy, immunooncology and cancer biology. Bill has developed multiple preclinical in vivo pharmacology disease models in transplantation, angiogenesis and cancer and has enjoyed developing targeted biological anti-tumor therapies including antibody drug conjugates. Bill has an ongoing interest in translational medicine including the identification and development of biomarkers and building evidence for therapeutic biological impact in patients during the Phase 1 and the E2L transition. Bill is passionate about delivering impactful medicines to cancer patients and other patients with serious illness. Bill is a named inventor on over 50 issued US patents, multiple European/ROW patents and multiple pending applications. He is the author or co-author of more than 110 peer-reviewed publications. Bill received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. He did his post-doctoral work at Rice University/UTHSC.

He previously served as the SVP, Chief Financial Officer at Harmony Biosciences, where he built upon the company’s key functional capabilities, and executed financial and operational strategies to prepare for commercial launch and IPO. Prior to Harmony, Mr. Vittoria spent the majority of his career as a financial executive resolving complex financial and operational issues in life science, manufacturing, distribution, service and construction organizations. Mr. Vittoria has a bachelor’s degree in public accounting and an MBA in corporate finance, from Pace University, Lubin School of Business, and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA).

PrezistaTM, OlysioTM, JyselecaTM and RekambysTM. He started his career in industry at the Janssen Research labs in Beerse (1988-1998), next moved to Tibotec-Virco, where he was Vice President, Drug Discovery, Early Development and CM&C (1998-2008) and most recently was Chief Scientific Officer at Galapagos (2008-2021). Under his leadership, Galapagos built out a pipeline of first-in class medicines that drove the growth of the company to a top European biotech player. He has been responsible for all aspects of drug discovery, preclinical research, CM&C, phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials. He has a broad experience in anti-infective, autoimmune and anti-fibrotic disease research. Piet Wigerinck is an independent board member of Ipsen SA, France, miDiagnostics NV, Belgium and Atriva Therapeutics GmbH, Germany. He is the scientific co-founder of Xinvento, Netherland.

Dr Ford is a UK trained pulmonologist and completed his PhD in the cellular biology of COPD at Imperial College London as part of Prof. Peter Barnes’ lab. Whilst there he set up his own lab with clinical commitments in cough and difficult asthma. He was then a translational medicine expert at Novartis, the chief medical officer at Galecto and head of fibrosis programs at Galapagos. Latterly, he was SVP, clinical development at Puretech. He now runs phraktion, a broad based pharma consulting group, utilising around a hundred industry experts to provide end to end solutions for biopharma.

He has an outstanding background in the life sciences industry managing all accounting, financial and business operations. In his role as Director of Finance, he oversees all accounting operations, and he is responsible for the company’s long-term financial health and growth. He previously served as the company’s Financial Controller and guided the company through a successful early-stage financing. Prior to joining Fibrocor Therapeutics, Adeola was the Financial Controller, New Ventures at Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP) where he manages the holistic accounting and finance activities for several new ventures within TIAP’s portfolio. Adeola earned his MBA (Finance) from Morgan State University, Maryland, USA and holds the designation of Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CGA Canada). He is also a Fellow (FCCA) of The Association of Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA Global).

Prior to joining Fibrocor, Marianna served as strategic partner to many senior executives across Pfizer’s Research and Development organization, providing valuable insights and guidance to drive organizational success.   As a project manager she supported many of Drug Safety’s and Toxicology internal programs, most notably the Organ-on-a-Chip collaboration with Draper Labs and provided comprehensive oversight of Drug Safety’s Science and Technology Programs.   She has a deep understanding of project management, executive administrative communications and operational support within the pharmaceutical landscape. Her ability to forge strong relationships and leverage her expertise in navigating complex landscapes has earned her a reputation as a trusted partner and thought leader.   Marianna has a B.A. in Business Management and is AIM accredited in Change Management.