ABOUT

Nick is a seasoned leader with twenty years of experience in C-suite positions at biotechnology companies.

He was previously the CEO and Co-Founder of Invisible Sentinel, a global molecular diagnostics company. Under his leadership, the company’s proprietary diagnostics were sold into multiple end-markets, culminating with a successful sale of the business to bioMerieux, Inc. in 2019.

Following the acquisition, Nick also served as a Vice President for bioMerieux, leading the U.S. Sales and Marketing teams while retaining his CEO responsibilities for the Invisible Sentinel subsidiary.

Nick also has extensive experience launching new biotechnology companies in the Greater Philadelphia Region and has contributed to the early development and initial funding of various diagnostic and therapeutic ventures. He is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Agent Capital and an investment advisor for Tellus BioVentures and Valley Forge Investment Corporation.

Nick received a B.S. in Chemistry from Villanova University. Shortly after that, he began his scientific career in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, studying host-pathogen interactions. He then earned a Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Thomas Jefferson University, where he studied antigen presentation.

Nick currently serves on the Boards of Vittoria Biotherapeutics and NexEOS Bio, a privately held medical diagnostics and therapeutics company. He was previously the President of the College of Sciences Alumni Board at Thomas Jefferson University. He holds multiple utility and design patents for scientific technologies and has authored various peer-reviewed manuscripts in the fields of bacteriology, virology, immunology, molecular biology, and cancer immunotherapy.

Rosemary Mazanet is the Chief Medical Officer of Vittoria Biotherapeutics. She brings over 30 years of experience in patient care, drug development, and biotechnology investments.

Rosemary is a clinician scientist who moved from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute to the nascent Biotech industry in the early 1990s. At Amgen, she joined or led clinical development teams that led to the FDA approval of many innovative biotech drugs. She later joined Oracle Partners, LP, one of the first healthcare-focused hedge funds, as a general partner. She subsequently co-founded Apelles Investment Management, a New York-based healthcare-focused financial services firm specializing in cross-capital structure, credit, and stressed/distressed investing within the healthcare sector.

She remains active in restructuring biotech development programs and in-line management of companies in various areas of healthcare and wellness through her consulting firm, R.Mazanet, LLC. She also continues to advise financial firms on new investments.

Rosemary received her M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and then trained in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Medical Oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Rosemary is an Emeritus Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Co-Chair of Wharton’s LDI Executive Advisory Board.

As COO of Vittoria Biotherapeutics, Keith brings over two decades of biotechnology entrepreneurial experience and a proven track record of building successful organizations. In his role, he manages the advancement of Vittoria’s novel therapeutics into the clinic, including Vittoria’s lead program, VIPER-101, for treating T-cell lymphoma.

Before joining Vittoria, Keith served as the Chief Operating Officer of Iveric Bio, an Astellas Company (formerly known as Ophthotech Corporation) focused on discovering and developing therapeutics and gene therapies for retinal diseases. He oversaw company operations and strategy and was instrumental in the $6 billion acquisition of Iveric Bio by Astellas. Before his work at Iveric, he was the Director of Program and Alliance Management at Pharmasset Inc. before Gilead acquired the company for $11 billion. He had previously been the Director of Program and Alliance Management at Eyetech Pharmaceuticals until OSI Pharmaceuticals acquired the company for $935 million.

Keith received a B.S. in Applied Physics from the State University of New York College at Geneseo and an M.S. in Engineering Management from Drexel University. He then earned an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Adam is the Vice President of Research and Development at Vittoria Biotherapeutics and brings over 20 years of experience as a cancer immunologist and translational researcher primarily focused on developing groundbreaking cancer immunotherapies. He is also an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Cancer Biology, as well as Microbiology and Immunology, at Thomas Jefferson University’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College. He is also the co-leader of the Immune Cell Regulation and Targeting (IRT) Program of the NCI-designated Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University.

At Vittoria Biotherapeutics, Adam spearheads research and development, focusing on the company’s platform gene-editing technology and leading pre-clinical development. He also leads the company’s discovery efforts and development of pipeline products.

His prior research has already led to successful phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, two upcoming phase 1 clinical trials examining cancer vaccines and CAR-T cell therapies for gastrointestinal malignancies, innovative strategies for universal CAR-T cell therapies, cell therapies for non-cancer indications, and discoveries in neurodegenerative disease, intestinal homeostasis, genetic dermatopathology, and more. His research findings are extensively published in high-impact journals, and he was identified in 2022 as the most prolific colorectal cancer immunotherapy researcher worldwide. He has received numerous other awards, including ones in teaching, innovation, and translational research.

Adam earned his B.S. in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of the Sciences and his Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Thomas Jefferson University.

At Vittoria Biotherapeutics, Lavanya leads the development and optimization of robust and scalable cell therapy manufacturing processes for the Company’s novel cell therapy candidates. She is a strategic leader who directs GMP-compliant manufacturing operations, including technology transfer, process development and optimization, and GMP manufacturing.

Before joining Vittoria, Lavanya led drug product development (DPD) at Century Therapeutics, an iPSC-derived allogeneic cell therapy company. She built the DPD group to support delivering Century’s first IND in close collaboration with an external manufacturing site and laid the foundation by building platform processes to support iPSC-derived iT and iNK programs. She also developed a deeper understanding of cryopreservation to improve post-thaw outcomes.

At Janssen (now Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine), where she began her career in cell therapy in 2019, Lavanya led drug product process development to successfully deliver late-stage activities, including process validation and process characterization to support BLA filing of cilta-cel (now commercially known as CARVYKTI). During this time, she played a role in developing PPQ strategy, leading investigations related to LVV. Before joining the Development organization at Janssen, she was a Scientist in the Discovery organization, developing novel targeted therapeutics for the delivery of nucleic acids (siRNA, ASOs).

Lavanya obtained her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University and her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Adi is the Sr. Director of CMC and CDMO Management and leads the day-to-day manufacturing operations and third party CDMO activities. She is a solution-driven CMC cell and gene therapy leader with 15+ years experience in GMP-compliant technical operations, including technology transfer, process development, facility readiness, and manufacturing. She manages high-performing cross-functional teams (quality, supply chain, analytical, regulatory CMC, manufacturing) internally and externally to define CMC strategy and deliver ViTToria’s lead Clinical stage program (Viper-101).

Prior to joining Vittoria, Adi was the Associate Director of Project Management at Minaris Regenerative Medicine, where she oversaw the management of CMC projects to support the development and commercialization of cellular therapies for multiple clinical and commercial stage clients. In this role, she managed and mentored a team of project managers to deliver projects on time and within budget. At Minaris, prior to leading the Project Management Office (NJ site), Adi manufactured (Operations) and released (Quality) clinical phase CGT drug products for multiple GMP and GTP programs.

Adi’s experience also includes developing and transferring off-the-shelf cell-based products from R&D to GMP manufacturing and analytical testing (Lonza). She was also instrumental in the facility buildout and tech transfer for a late-stage wound care biologics project, ensuring seamless setup and operational readiness from inception to completion (Smith and Nephew).

Adi holds a B.E. in Chemical Engineering from the Bapuji Institute of Engineering and Technology in Karnataka, India. She also has an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and an M.S. in Information Systems from Stratford University.

Steven is the Director of Laboratory Operations at Vittoria Biotherapeutics and a distinguished translational scientist specializing in the immunologic treatment of cancer through the genetic engineering of immune cells.

He previously held several senior investigator roles at prestigious institutions, including the National Cancer Institute, where he studied anti-tumor cellular therapies under the mentorship of Steven A. Rosenberg. Steven also pioneered CAR T and TCR T approaches during his tenure at the National Cancer Institute, laying the groundwork for many of the field’s current advancements. Notably, one of the early phase CAR19 projects he contributed to later became an FDA-approved CAR-T therapy.

Steven’s expertise encompasses the activation and expansion of human and murine T cells, innovative methodologies to enrich anti-tumor precursors, and the direct modulation of tumor-specific T-cell phenotypes to enhance in vivo anti-tumor efficacy.

Currently, Steven leads the preclinical research laboratory at Vittoria Biotherapeutics, focusing on the preclinical development of CAR-T and antibody based therapeutics.

Prior to Vittoria, Steven was an Assistant Professor at Duke University within the Brain Tumor Program, developing pioneering dendritic cell (DC) vaccination strategies to control brain tumors. Steven also successfully established a research team from scratch at the Gene Editing Institute at Christiana Care Health, where he embraced and innovated cutting-edge gene editing technology.

Steven holds an M.D. in Medicine from the Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences in Changchun, China, and an M.S. in Immunology at the same institution. He then earned a Ph.D. in Immunology from Sun Yat-Sen University of Medical Sciences in Guangzhou, China.

Trang is a research scientist and program leader at Vittoria Biotherapeutics with over ten years of experience executing research and development projects in academic and government laboratories. She has planned and conducted hands-on research in CRISPR immuno-target screening, CAR-T cell therapy, immortal and primary cell culturing, molecular biology, analytical methods, and multi-color flow cytometry and is especially skilled at collaborating with cross-disciplinary teams of immunologists, biologists, engineers, computer scientists, and bioinformaticians to provide insights, improve products, and guide customers to find the best value.

Before joining Vittoria Biotherapeutics, Trang was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Cancer Institute. There, she worked to enhance CAR-T cell resilience and efficacy in solid tumors via CRISPR gene-editing and developed multiple in vitro cell-based assays to characterize T-cell proliferation and antitumor potency.

Trang received the Rowan Excellence in Graduate Research Award (2019), the IIE-GIRE fellowship (National Science Foundation, 2020), the iCURE fellowship (NIH, 2020), and the NCI Transition to Industry fellowship (NIH, 2022). She holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical/Medical Engineering from Rowan University and a B.E. in Chemical Engineering from the same institution.

Ruchi is a research scientist and program leader at Vittoria Biotherapeutics who earned her Ph.D in the laboratory of Dr. Marco Ruella, Vittoria’s Scientific Founder. Her thesis project focused on the role of CD5 in CAR T cells and forms the basis for Vittoria’s Senza5 technology platform. She also contributed to the clinical translation and development of the company’s lead program, Viper 101.

Ruchi earned a B.S. in Human Biology with a minor in Biomanufacturing from NC State University, an M.S. in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Lori is the Senior Controller at Vittoria Biotherapeutics.

She has over 35 years of accounting experience in the pharmaceutical and consumer products industries. Her responsibilities have included financial reporting (including SEC reporting requirements and compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), budgets and forecasts, and human resource and information technology functions.

From 2010 through 2020, Lori was the Executive Director of Finance and Controller at PanOptica, Inc.

Prior to PanOptica, Lori was the Controller at Helsinn Therapeutics US, Inc. (previously Sapphire Therapeutics, Inc.), where she played a key role in the due diligence, merger, and post-acquisition integration activities when Sapphire was purchased in January 2009. From 1997-2005, Lori worked at VIVUS Inc., in roles of increasing responsibility in both operations and corporate finance.

Lori received a B.S. in Business Economics from Cook College at Rutgers University.

Kelsey is the Office Manager at Vittoria Biotherapeutics. She manages the CEO and COO’s schedules, coordinates company-wide meetings, processes purchase orders, and handles communication/PR efforts, thanks to a decade of experience working with and for C-suite executives, Board members, and private equity firms.

Before she started at Vittoria, Kelsey was the Communications Specialist at CAMcare, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Camden.

She holds a B.A. in Journalism from Temple University and is a Certified Technical Writer.