Leadership

Mark Germain is a biotechnology company-builder and financier who has served as founder, director, chairman, and investor across more than twenty companies in the sector, guiding many of them through corporate partnerships, technology acquisitions, mergers and acquisitions, financings, and public offerings. Among the companies he co-founded are Incyte Corporation, Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc., Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and ChromaDex, Inc. — a track record that places him among the more prolific founders of durable, publicly traded life-science enterprises.

A lawyer by training, he graduated from New York University School of Law in 1975, Order of the Coif, and practiced corporate and securities law as a partner in a New York firm before moving into senior operating roles — including president of a public company sold in 1991 — and then into the biotechnology field. He is a Managing Director at The Aentib Group, a boutique merchant bank in New York; serves as Chairman of the Board of Scinai Immunotherapeutics Ltd., a publicly listed Israeli company developing vaccines and treatments for infectious disease; and previously served as a director and Vice Chairman of Pluristem Therapeutics Inc. He also advises Caring Cross, licensor of the company’s tri-specific CAR-T and additional CAR-T product candidates. This combination of legal, transactional, and boardroom experience anchors the governance and capital-formation discipline that the chairmanship of a listed biotechnology company demands.

Amir is a public-company chief executive with more than 35 years of senior leadership across the healthcare and technology sectors, spanning the full range of scale from $10M startups to $90B Fortune 20 enterprises. He has raised more than $500M for the businesses he has led, has managed global operations of over 2,500 employees generating approximately $2B in annual revenue, and currently serves on the boards of both public and private companies. He has led global innovation projects at Merck and CR Bard. His career combines company-building with turnaround leadership inside major public organizations, giving him direct command of the governance, capital-formation, and value-creation disciplines a listed biotechnology company demands of its CEO.

He also brings genuine scientific depth to the role: he has founded and led companies in molecular / biological science and medtech, driving innovation and launching more than 50 medical products and technologies worldwide, and secured multiple successful regulatory outcomes with the FDA, EMA, and ISO — the same pathways that define a biotech’s route to market. As an inventor he holds more than 40 issued patents across biological, chemical, and technology domains. Amir pairs this record with a pragmatic, no-nonsense approach focused on growth, performance, innovation, and disciplined execution.

Raju Chauhan has over 30 years of experience working in technology development and managing teams across the globe with a proven record of creating and delivering innovative, cost-effective solutions for mission-critical business problems. Raju has been an integral part of managing projects for several fortune 50 companies as well as startups in healthcare space.

Formerly at Cardinal Health, Raju managed teams spread across several locations in USA. Raju has also managed and worked with many different teams in several countries including Canada, China, India, and Ukraine. Raju has worked in many different industries including Medical device manufacturers, Healthcare, Oil and Gas, Software, Telecommunications, Food and Beverages, Airlines, Credit Bureaus, Background Checks, Real Estate, Professional Services and Utilities.

Raju received his Masters of Computer Science degree from Mississippi State University, Mississippi State.

Thomas Pernice is a seasoned corporate executive and strategic advisor with more than 25 years of experience spanning the White House, the C-suites of Fortune 500 companies, and the family offices of businessman David H. Murdock. A Presidential appointee across three administrations, he served on senior staff as a diplomatic representative of the United States, traveling to more than ninety-two countries, and was later appointed Senior Policy Advisor and Executive Director of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), the highest-level external advisory body at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Within Pacific Holding Corp., the conglomerate of the late David H. Murdock, he served on the chairman’s global leadership team and held senior executive and officer roles at Dole Food Company Inc. and Castle & Cooke, Inc., overseeing corporate affairs and executive-level functions. He was previously a partner in the Cappello Group, a boutique investment and merchant bank in Los Angeles, and a co-developer and partner in Green Partners USA, an international real estate development fund formed in partnership with Goldman Sachs, the Bond Companies, and former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. Mr. Pernice currently serves as President of Modena Holding Corp., a strategic advisory firm counseling early-stage and Fortune 500 companies, and as a director of Trio Petroleum, Inc. (NYSE-American: TPET). He also serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Murdock Family Office for Justin M. Murdock, representing his business and investment interests across operating companies and strategic initiatives. He holds a B.A. from the University of Southern California. Mr. Pernice brings to the board deep experience in government, capital formation, and corporate strategy at the highest levels.

Dr. José Iglesias is a physician-executive with more than three decades of leadership in oncology drug development, having served as Chief Medical Officer or head of global clinical development at multiple public and private biopharmaceutical companies. He has built and led clinical, medical affairs, and translational medicine organizations across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, directing programs from first-in-human Phase I through pivotal Phase III and post-marketing. His career spans the full scale of the industry — from emerging biotechs where he stood up medical departments and clinical functions from the ground up, to global enterprises including Eli Lilly, Amgen, and Celgene — giving him direct command of the clinical-development, regulatory, and evidence-generation disciplines that define a listed biotechnology company’s path to market.

He brings exceptional scientific and regulatory depth to the role. He has led the development of, and secured regulatory approvals for, foundational oncology medicines — gemcitabine (Gemzar) across lung, breast, and bladder cancer; pemetrexed (Alimta) in non-small cell lung cancer and mesothelioma; and nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) in pancreatic cancer, NSCLC, and breast cancer, the last establishing a new worldwide standard of care in metastatic pancreatic cancer. He has represented programs in face-to-face negotiations with the FDA, EMA, Health Canada, and regulators across Asia and Australia, and his immuno-oncology work encompasses checkpoint-inhibitor combinations, innate-immune activators, CAR-T, and TLR agonists. Trained through fellowships at Duke, the University of Toronto, and the Weizmann Institute, fluent in five languages, and author of more than 70 peer-reviewed papers and abstracts — including the landmark New England Journal of Medicine pancreatic cancer trial — Dr. Iglesias pairs deep translational science with pragmatic, disciplined execution across the entire arc of clinical development.

Lawrence (Larry) Florin possesses extensive clinical development experience helping to found, build and grow Site Management Organizations (SMOs), Clinical Research Organizations (CROs) and clinical technology companies. Larry has served in global leadership roles in these and sponsor companies directly overseeing clinical operations, project management patient engagement, clinical outsourcing as well as business development. He also has led executive consulting engagements focused on strategic program design planning from development through post-marketing and life-cycle management and other value-add activities. Moreover, Larry also has significant financing experience having supported fundraising activities exceeding $75M.

In addition to his considerable experience designing and leading drug and biologic, drug-device combination and device product development programs across multiple therapeutic areas (including oncology and orphan disease indications), Larry is a frequent speaker at and contributor to industry meetings and publications across a range of topics. Larry has been recognized for his efforts in leveraging technology to improve patient recruitment and retention, risk-based monitoring and overall study management—including spearheading the development and marketing of leading-edge enterprise clinical analytics and patient engagement systems.

Larry earned a BS in biology from Ursinus College and an Executive MBA from Temple University.