President and Chief Executive Officer, Jonathan Lanfear, is an accomplished biopharmaceutical executive with more than 25 years of experience in the life sciences industry and has demonstrated distinct success in creating and driving strategies, building and developing teams, establishing R&D partnerships, and creating new business opportunities. Prior to joining HiberCell, Jonathan was a Principal at Lanfear Advisors LLC, where he provided Corporate Strategy and Operations consultancy services to public and private sector biotech and bio/pharmaceutical companies. Prior to establishing his consulting practice in 2020, he was the Global Head of R&D Business Development at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, based in Cambridge, MA.
Before joining Takeda, Jonathan spent approximately eight years at Pfizer Inc as a Senior Director and Transactions Lead in the Worldwide Business Development, Strategy, & Innovation (WWBDS&I) organization based in New York. His prior roles also include Biotechnology Equity Research at AG Edwards/Wachovia and Team Leader, GMP Operations and Downstream Processing at Searle/Pharmacia (prior to the company’s acquisition by Pfizer). Over his career, Jonathan has led hundreds of transactions of all types, integrated acquired entities, lead operations, and managed strategic alliances/partnerships. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Bioengineering, both from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), along with an MBA from Washington University (St. Louis).
Nandita Bose, Ph.D., has more than 18 years of accomplishment and innovation in the immuno-oncology field. She joined HiberCell from Biothera Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where she served as senior vice president of translational immunology. She has extensive experience in translational research involving delineation of immunopharmacodynamic effects in healthy volunteers and cancer patients as part of Phase I/II/III company-sponsored trials and investigator-initiated trials/ compassionate-use studies.
In addition to being adjunct faculty at North Dakota State University, she has held leadership roles in several scientific organizations. As the only industry member of the Education Committee of American Association of Immunologists (AAI), she has chaired committee-sponsored symposia to mentor undergrads and post-doctoral fellows. She is a working member of the Industry Council of Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) and has sat on scientific grant review committees for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). She is a reviewer for several cancer immunology journals including SITC’s leading journal, Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer (JITC).
Nandita earned her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the University of Georgia and conducted her postdoctoral work in cellular immunology at University of Minnesota and 3M Pharmaceuticals.
José Iglesias, M.D., is chief medical officer at HiberCell. He has more than 30 years of experience in oncology. Prior to working with HiberCell, José was vice president and head of translational medicine at Boston Biomedical Inc., where he was responsible for the clinical development of seven early pipeline compounds in immuno-oncology, solid tumor oncology and hematologic malignancies.
Previously, José was chief medical officer at Biothera where he was responsible for the clinical development program of Imprime-PGG. Prior to that, he was the chief medical officer for Bionomics where he was responsible for the clinical development of its oncology pipeline, including antivascular agents, monoclonal antibodies and small molecule kinase inhibitors. Before that, he served as vice president, clinical development, at Celgene Corporation, where he was responsible for the Phase III development of Abraxane in pancreatic cancer, lung cancer and metastatic breast cancer.
José is author or co-author of more than 60 publications in the area of Oncology, with over 6,000 citations. He received his M.D. in oncology and cancer biology from the Universidad de Montevideo, Uruguay.
Eric Lightcap is a passionate and accomplished scientist with 24 years of experience in oncology and immuno-oncology drug discovery. As a leader managing biochemists, cell biologists, computational biologists and bioinformaticians, he has a successful history of applying mechanistic studies to highly novel therapies, leveraging insights from functional and correlative genomics and proteomics with in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo studies, to inform the translation of multiple oncology assets into the clinic. These efforts led to the exploration of diverse and unexpected biology. In particular, his exploration of the mechanism of action for Velcade resulted in an appreciation of the role of the integrated stress response, especially endoplasmic reticulum stress, in sensitive models.
He has worked on both small molecule and antibody teams and served on phase 1 clinical teams for the successful development and application of pharmacodynamic and predictive biomarkers, including for Velcade (clinical pathway engagement biomarker), pevonedistat (mechanism of action leading to the clinical exploration of carboplatin combination and validation of ERCC1 as a predictive biomarker of combination benefit), TAK-676 (clinical pathway engagement biomarker) and TAK-981 (characterization as an innate immune stimulator).
Eric received a B.S. in Biochemistry with Honors from Indiana University, Bloomington; a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, Evanston. Eric began his work in oncology at ProScript, a small biotech company where he first worked on Velcade and neddylation, and through acquisitions transitioned to LeukoSite, Millennium, and Takeda.