Speakers: Philippe Calais, MatriSys; Ping Cao, BridGene; Johannes Hermann, Frontier Medicines; Heather Webb Hsu, Inipharm; Shengjiang (Shawn) Liu, Avirmax; Matthew Meyer, Life Sciences at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Organizers: Toby Freedman (Synapsis Search); Sarah Bodary (AbCellera); Donald McCarthy (Samsara BioCapital); Shichang Miao (PBSS), Lu Lu (MicuRx Pharmaceuticals, Inc.)
Date: 2024-07-24
Time: 8:30-13:00 Pacific Time
Registration fee: 0
Location: Online via Zoom
Major Sponsor:
Vendor show vendors registered to date:
Registration: http://www.PBSS.org
Registration deadline:2024-07-23  (it will close sooner if the seating cap is reached)

About the Topic

This symposium series aims to provide a platform for promising biotech startup companies to highlight their science and share their stories in building a fledgling business.

-- Philippe Calais, the President and Chief Executive Officer of MatriSys Bioscience, has 37 years of  experience managing across all functions of the drug development chain from discovery  through commercialization, partnership, fund raising and IPOs. Philippe is also the founder and  the executive chairman of the board of Phileas Pharma, developing a gene therapy for a rare  children ophthalmology disease. Philippe also serves as the executive chairman of the board of  clinical stage oncology Transcode Therapeutics (Nasdaq: RNAZ). In addition, Philippe teaches  clinical development for graduate students as a Research Associate Professor in the Center for  Molecular Biology & Biotechnology in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science at Florida  Atlantic University (FAU) and is a member of the FAU amyloid task force.  Prior to joining MatriSys, Philippe served as Director and Interim Chief Executive Officer of  CohBar (Nasdaq: CWBR) .

He has more than 24 years of experience in North America and 13 years in Europe managing  specialty and biotech both privately held and publicly traded (Nasdaq, OTCQB, TSX, CNSX)  companies in broad therapeutic spaces including oncology, anti-infectives, cardiovascular, CNS and the microbiome. He also served as head of global strategic marketing for anti-infectives at  Hofmann-La Roche.

Philippe holds a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy and a Doctorate in Pharmacy from the  University François-Rabelais in Tours, France.

-- Heather Kay Webb Hsu is the Chief Scientific Officer for Inipharm, a company focused on drugs targeting genetically-defined mechanisms for the treatment of chronic liver disease and metabolism.  Heather Hsu has over 25 years of pharmaceutical/biotech industry experience with research and development. Her PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan included a collaboration with Eli Lilly.  In the years since, Heather has led pharmacology and nonclinical research teams in indication areas including, oncology, cardiometabolic and liver diseases at companies including Johnson and Johnson and Gilead Sciences as well as Calistoga Pharmaceuticals.

--Matthew J. Meyer is the chief business advisor in the life sciences practice of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich &  Rosati. Based in San Francisco, Matthew leads the firm's life science business advisory practice—an innovative resource aimed at providing start-up and emerging growth stage life sciences companies with  business insights, strategy, capabilities, and transactional support related to financings, company set-up,  growth, commercialization, partnerships, and M&A transactions. 

Matthew is an experienced, high-impact business executive and corporate attorney who has held  diverse roles of increasing responsibility across a wide range of private and public biopharma, digital  health, and precision medicine companies from start-ups to Fortune 50 corporations in the U.S. and  Europe, including Pfizer, Novartis, Myriad Genetics and CareDx. His leadership capabilities include  delivery of strong commercial results, structuring and executing dozens of partnering transactions across  the product life cycle, raising debt and equity capital in the private and public markets totaling over $500  million, and working with founders, management teams, and boards to address complex business issues  to support their companies’ rapid growth. On the legal side, Matthew has extensive transactional and  general corporate experience, having served as the general counsel of several life science companies  including CareDx. 

Matt had strong entrepreneurial interests since he was a child. In high school, he started a travel  services business from his parent’s basement. Since then, has always enjoyed helping enterprises start  and grow. At Pfizer, Matt was the youngest in-house counsel hired and was exposed to senior level  executives and transactions as a junior attorney, which forced him to navigate the political and business  complexities of a Fortune 50 company with little professional experience. 

Matthew holds a B.A. degree in Government, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Cornell University  and a J.D. degree from the Villanova University School of Law.