People

Peter Blume-Jensen, M.D., Ph.D., is Founder, President, and CEO of Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. He has extensive experience in oncology R&D and oncogenic kinase signaling. From 2001 to 2008, Peter was Department Head at Serono, US and later at Merck & Co, Inc. where he established and led integrated oncology drug programs into the clinic. From 2008 to 2010, he was Vice President, Ext. Sci. Affairs and Global Therapeutic Area Advisor for Oncology at Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. He co-led the scientific due diligence and M&A resulting in the acquisition of Plexxikon. From 2010-2014 he was CSO for Metamark Genetics where he built R&D and a novel, scripted proteomics tissue imaging platform. Here he led 4 clinical studies culminating with the blinded validation and launch of ProMark®, an outcome-predictive prostate cancer biopsy test included under NCCN guidelines and coverage. From 2014 till 2018 Peter was CSO for XTuit Pharmaceuticals where he established a novel prodrug platform in collaboration with Dr. Jeremiah Johnson, MIT, now continued at Window Therapeutics. Peter is the inventor of the AP3 platform and the OncoSignature patient selection method.

Peter serves on the SAB for several private biotech companies and academic institutions. His review “Oncogenic Kinase Signaling (Nature, 2001) is a citation classic in the field of clinical medicine. He received his M.D. from Copenhagen University Medical School, Denmark, his Ph.D. from The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala, Sweden, and conducted his Post-Doctoral Fellowship under Tony Hunter at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA.

Rasmus Holm-Jorgensen is Chief Financial Officer at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Previously, he was part of the founding team and SVP, Chief Strategy and Portfolio Officer of Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals since its inception in 2015 to April 2022, including through the IPO to the launch of its first product. Prior to Kiniksa, he was Group Vice President and General Manager at Synageva BioPharma, where he created a new business unit with a portfolio of multiple rare disease programs following the company’s IPO in 2011 and culminating in the company’s sale for $9 billion. From 2008 to 2011, Rasmus drove the successful turnaround of the global commercial audiology organization of the GN Group, a global leader in intelligent audio solutions. From 1996 to 2008, Rasmus worked for Novo Nordisk in Denmark, U.S., Brazil and Mexico, where he held positions of increasing responsibility within general management, economy and planning, portfolio analysis, investor relations for North America and finance for LATAM. Rasmus received an M.S. in Economics from the University of Copenhagen and has completed executive training at INSEAD, Stanford University and Harvard Business School.

Jean-Marie Cuillerot, M.D., is Chief Medical Officer at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Jean-Marie was previously the Chief Medical Officer at Dragonfly Therapeutics where he established and led a clinical team advancing multiple potential first-in-class assets. Prior to Dragonfly, Jean-Marie was the chief medical officer of Agenus, where he led development activities for five investigational therapies. At EMD Serono, an affiliate of Merck Serono, Jean-Marie served as the global head of clinical development in immuno-oncology (IO) and as the vice president of clinical immunotherapy/IO. He oversaw the company’s IO portfolio which included two checkpoint inhibitors and two immuno-cytokines. Notably, Jean-Marie led the clinical development of avelumab, the first drug approved to treat Merkel cell carcinoma and second-line bladder cancer, from pre-IND though global submissions in record time, an achievement that earned him the Merck CEO Award. From 2007 to 2012, he was at Bristol- Myers Squibb, where he was medical lead for the life cycle management of ipilimumab, an anti-CTLA-4 antibody and the world’s first immune checkpoint therapy for cancer, where he designed and led Phase 2 and Phase 3 studies across multiple indications and supported regulatory filings in the United States and Europe. Earlier in his career, Jean-Marie also served in clinical development at Novartis, as a clinical research physician at the Centre d’Immunologie Pierre Fabre, and as an assistant professor at the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Strasbourg. Jean-Marie received a B.S. in biochemistry, an M.Sc. in cellular and molecular biology and an M.D. at the University Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France).

Kristina Masson, Ph.D., MBA, is Co-Founder and EVP, Business Operations at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. and President and CEO of the company´s research subsidiary Acrivon AB located in Medicon Village, Sweden. Here she has established all infrastructure, heads all operations, and runs the phospho- proteomic discovery hub and early drug programs for the company’s proprietary AP3 platform. In 2016, she founded and operated OncoSignature AB, a small biotech company focused on identifying predictive biomarkers for clinical-stage cancer therapeutics for U.S. companies. OncoSignature’s business was subsequently acquired by Acrivon AB. Prior to that, she was a Principal Scientist at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA where she co-led, managed, and participated in cross-functional teams in both preclinical and clinical-stage therapeutic antibody programs, designing projects to identify predictive biomarkers, combination strategies and resistance mechanisms. Before joining Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Kristina was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Golub lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, developing assays for novel therapeutics and automated high-throughput drug screening approaches centered around synthetic lethality in cancer. Kristina received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Lund University, Sweden, and she received her Executive MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. Kristina is a member of the Board of Directors for Acrivon Therapeutics Inc. and Aqilion AB.

Eric Devroe, Ph.D., is Chief Operating Officer at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Eric is an executive and entrepreneur with significant experience helping found, launch, and build new life science companies. Most recently, he served as Founder & CEO of Xione Therapeutics, Inc., an oncology focused spin-out of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Prior to Xione, he was Strategic Advisor, Therapeutics Discovery at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Founder and CEO of Opsonix, Inc., an infectious disease focused spin-out of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. Prior to Opsonix, he served as Executive Director of Strategic Alliances at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Earlier in his career he served as VP, Business & Strategy Development at Metamark Genetics, Inc., and an Associate at Flagship Pioneering. He holds a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology from Harvard University.

Mary Miller is Chief Legal Officer at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Mary has over 20 years of corporate legal experience, having served as a strategic, proactive, and collaborative senior executive at several companies. Previously, she was General Counsel of Butterfly Network, a medical device company that she helped take public through a SPAC transaction. Prior to Butterfly, Mary served as the Chief Risk Officer and General Counsel of Columbia Care Inc., one of the largest vertically integrated medical marijuana operators in the United States, where she oversaw all legal, regulatory and compliance aspects of the organization, including helping to take the company public on the Canadian NEO exchange. Mary also spent several years starting and scaling her own digital media company, which she sold to Purch Media in 2016. Mary spent the first 7 years of her legal career at the law firm Ropes & Gray. Mary was named one of Boston Business Journal’s 2012 40 Under 40 and Mass High Tech’s 2013 Women to Watch. She received her J.D. from Boston College Law School and B.A. from Boston College.

Erick Gamelin, M.D., Ph.D., is Chief Development Officer at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. From 2019 to 2021, he served as Chief Medical Officer at Step Pharma, a biotech focused on developing drugs in hematological malignancies. Previously he served as Vice President, Oncology at Dynavax Technologies focused on oncology vaccines and immune therapies, and prior to that as Vice President at Macrogenics Inc., working with immune therapies and bispecifics. Before that, he held leadership positions in early development at the Oncology Vaccine department at Pfizer, and with Targeted Therapies at Amgen.

Erick is a Medical Oncologist and Pharmacologist, former Professor of Oncology, and CEO of a national university cancer center and hospital, the West Oncology Institute. He received the title of Chevalier in the National Order of Merit by the French Minister of Health. During his career in academia, he has led a research lab in oncogenomics and genetics, funded by the French NCI, focused on the mechanisms of acquired resistance of cancer cells. He received his Ph.D. in molecular pharmacology from Bordeaux University and did his Post-Doc at the NIH, Molecular Therapeutics Section, Medical Oncology Branch. He has led over 100 Phase 1-3 oncology trials and coauthored more than 135 articles in peer-reviewed international journals.

Adam D. Levy is Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Investor Relations at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Prior to Zentalis, he was Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Turning Point Therapeutics, where he was part of the team that delivered a $4.1B transaction when the company was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2022. Earlier in his career he held positions of increasing responsibility in Corporate Strategy and Corporate Development at Pfizer Inc., Novartis AG, Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Gilead Sciences, where he was Head of Corporate Strategy. Adam also served as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey and Company, focusing on supporting clients in the pharmaceutical industry. Adam received an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a BS in Genetics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Praveen Marapaka, Ph.D., is SVP, Global Regulatory Affairs at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Prior to joining Acrivon, he held senior leadership roles at Merck KGaA, AstraZeneca, BICARA Therapeutics and was accountable for driving regulatory strategies for company’s product portfolio, leading to approvals of many oncology and immuno-oncology products. He has effectively led global teams at Schering-Plough, and other pharmaceutical companies, managing all aspects of a product life cycle, from pre-clinical to post-approval. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, was the Principal Investigator for several NIH grants (Oncology, CV and Neurology therapeutic area), a research fellow at Washington University, St. Louis and a Royal Society Fellow in the UK.

Monica Phadnis is SVP, Clinical Operations at Acrivon Therapeutics. Monica brings 17 plus years of global clinical oncology strategy and operations experience in biotech, pharma, clinical research organizations and academic settings. She is an end-to-end delivery expert for precision medicine treatments (TEPMETKO®, tepotinib), immunotherapy (BAVENCIO®, avelumab), and antibody-drug conjugate targeted therapies (ENHERTU®, fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki).

Monica began her career as a Program Manager in Selventa, a company discovering genetic pathways for drug resistant solid tumors. She was recruited by Memorial Sloan-Kettering to lead the Breast and Thoracic Oncology Unit as a Portfolio Manager where she managed the entire portfolio of 75 plus clinical trials and staff of 30 plus to deliver various institutional and sponsor based multi-phase studies. She was selected as the New York State leader for Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) national program.  Monica then developed her career as Therapeutic Compound Lead and Executive Director for Iqvia and Syneos respectively where she was program management head of Tepotinib and Bavencio.  In her recent roles as VP of Clinical Operations at Relay and MetaboMed, Monica filed two INDs and up started entire clinical operations department including multiple vendor selections across US, EU and Asia.

Monica is a frequent ASCO poster presenter as well as guest speaker and panelist for many oncology conferences. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from University of Mumbai and Pre-Medicine Diploma from Harvard University.

John van Duzer, Ph.D., is SVP, CMC at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. John is a senior pharmaceutical industry executive with over 30 years of proven expertise in medicinal chemistry research, chemical development and GMP manufacturing of both active pharmaceutical ingredients and drug products. Prior to Acrivon, he was the SVP of Chemistry and Manufacturing at Acetylon. John is the inventor of Ricolinostat and Citarisnostat, selective HDAC6 inhibitors studied in the clinic for the treatment of multiple myeloma. When Celgene acquired Acetylon, he led the CMC tech transfer team that integrated Acetylon’s manufacturing processes into Celgene. Previously, while at Novartis, he invented Lumarcoxib, a marketed selective COX-2 inhibitor. At Eloxx Pharmaceuticals, he was the VP of Technical Operations responsible for all aspects of chemical development. He also served as the VP of Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing at Collegium Pharmaceuticals where he oversaw tech transfer of the commercial product Nucynta to a new manufacturing site. He is also the co-inventor of 36 patents and has co-authored 18 peer-reviewed scientific papers. John received his Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from Yale University, and B.A. in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Bruce Close is VP, Quality and Compliance at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Previously, he was a Principal Quality Consultant at Halloran Consulting. From 2007 to 2020, Bruce served as Executive Director, Compliance Operations at Celgene, where he focused on GxP regulatory and healthcare compliance. Prior to Celgene, he was in Compliance and Quality at Schering Ag / Bayer directing quality improvement initiatives and GMP auditing and training. Bruce held a similar role at Regeneron with responsibility for GLP Quality Assurance. Earlier in his career, he was a scientist at Baxter. Bruce received a B.S. and a B.A. from Rutgers University and a M.S. in Jurisprudence from Seton Hall University.

James (Jim) Dunyak, Ph.D., is VP, Biostatistics at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Previously, he was the Senior Director of Biostatistics at Certara. From 2015-2021, Jim served as the Senior Director of Clinical Pharmacometrics at AstraZeneca responsible for identifying opportunities to utilize innovative trial designs and statistical analysis methods in drug development. At Metamark Genetics, he held increasing roles of responsibility including most recently Head of Research and Development managing the R&D department. Earlier in his career, Jim held senior roles at Novartis, MITRE Corporation, and the Naval Research Laboratory. Additionally, he served as a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Texas Tech. Jim holds multiple degrees, including a B.S. from Virginia Tech, a M.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics/Probability Theory from University of Maryland, a M.S. in Biostatistics from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a M.S. in Regulatory Affairs from Northeastern University.

Joon Jung, Ph.D., is VP and Head, Data Science at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Previously, he was the VP and Head of Data Science and Translational Discovery at Theonys where he led data science, bioinformatics, computational chemistry, biophysics and structural biology activities. From 2012-2021, Joon was the Head of Informatics & Translational Science Lead at Cyclerion Therapeutics/Ironwood Pharmaceutical. During his tenure, he developed a suite of web-based bioinformatic applications and a systems biology platform to identify novel indications by integrating -omics data, pathways and protein-protein interactome. Earlier in his career, Joon was a scientist at Merck Research Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Triad Therapeutics. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, a Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry from U.C. Irvine and Hebrew University, and he completed his fellowship in Bioinformatics & Computational Biology at Columbia University.  

Rajshree Kandadai joined Acrivon in September 2023 as vice president of business development. Rajshree has over 20 years of experience in business development and licensing, corporate strategy and alliance management roles with a strong track record in both biotech and pharma. Prior to Acrivon, Rajshree led licensing activities for oncology assets at Mass General Brigham (MGB) Innovation for the Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, the Mass General Hospital and the MGH Vaccine and Immunotherapy center and was responsible for driving several high value transactions. Prior to joining MGB, from 2010 to 2019, Rajshree was senior director corporate development and strategy at Aurigene Oncology. During her tenure at Aurigene, Rajshree established over 15 collaborations, including with big pharma and biotech companies across the U.S., Europe and Japan, delivering over $250 million in realized revenues. Previously, she served as a healthcare equity research analyst both at UBS ISC, where she led the healthcare equity research team, and at HSBC where she covered the U.S. healthcare sector. She holds an Master’s degree in hospital management and a B.S. in microbiology.

Parvin Miah is VP, Head of Human Resources at Acrivon Therapeutics. Parvin has nearly 20 years of global HR experience within the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries.  Prior to joining Acrivon, Parvin held a variety of roles with increasing levels of responsibility at Tango Therapeutics, Biogen, Abiomed (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Novo Nordisk, and Johnson & Johnson.  During her time at these organizations, Parvin has thoughtfully focused on sustaining high performing teams, managing growth, training and development, organizational effectiveness, talent acquisition, employee experience, DE&I, and culture.

Parvin holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. She is a certified coach with additional certifications in the areas of Talent Management, Talent Optimization, and Targeted Selection Interviewing.

Katharine (Katie) Peterson is VP, Finance & Accounting at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. After beginning her career in the life sciences assurance practice at EY, she has helped multiple small biotech companies with public company readiness and IPO-directed efforts.  She brings over a decade of experience in the biotechnology industry, working on financial management, operations, technical accounting, reporting, and planning.  Prior to joining Acrivon, she was Senior Director of Financial Planning & Analysis at Wave Life Sciences, and held various roles within both Spero Therapeutics and Merrimack Pharmaceuticals.  Katie holds a BA in Business Economics form Providence College, an MS in Accountancy from the University of Notre Dame, and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in the state of Massachusetts. 

David Proia, Ph.D., is VP, Biology and Drug Discovery at Acrivon Therapeutics.  David has extensive experience in developing small molecule therapeutics for various solid and liquid tumor indications and has contributed to projects advancing both early and later stage clinical development.  Most recently, David served as VP of Oncology at ROME Therapeutics, where he was the biology lead for the development of agents targeting an endogenous reverse transcriptase.  He served as Senior Director of In Vivo Pharmacology at C4 Therapeutics and project leader on multiple oncology programs, including CFT7455 (IKZF1/3 degrader), currently in clinical trials for patients with multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Prior to C4, he was the Director of Cancer Biology and In Vivo Pharmacology at Synta Pharmaceuticals and a Scientist at AstraZeneca. David has a B.S. in biochemistry from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from Baylor College of Medicine.

Michail Shipitsin, Ph.D., is VP, Biomarker Development at Acrivon Therapeutics, Inc. Michail has over 15 years of experience in translational and biomarker research and development. Previously, he headed biomarker development at Xtuit Pharmaceuticals with a focus on NASH liver disease and cancer. After joining the biotech industry, Michail led development of a first in kind multiplex immunofluorescence prognostic test for prostate cancer at Metamark Genetics.

Michail earned his Diploma in Molecular Biology from Novosibirsk State University. He completed Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Tufts University and conducted postdoctoral studies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute with a focus on biomarkers in breast cancer.