Barbara Netter is honorary chair of the Board of Directors and co-founder of Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy. Mrs. Netter was a therapist in New York and Connecticut. She served as staff therapist at Pelham Family Services in Pelham, NY, for 20 years.
Mrs. Netter held a private practice for 15 years. She was facilitator at the Den for Grieving Kids of Family Centers for 12 years. In 2003, Mrs. Netter was awarded the Louise Grisafi Community Health Award in recognition of her volunteer contributions to the community.
In addition to serving as honorary chair, Mrs. Netter serves on the Board of the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania and on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Health Initiative at Greenwich Hospital.
Mrs. Netter also serves on the Advisory Board of the School of American Ballet in New York City and is a patron of the arts who supports the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Connecticut Ballet to name a few.
In 2011, Mrs. Netter received the Spirit of Greenwich Award for her contributions to the community. In 2013, Mrs. Netter received an honorary doctorate degree of humane letters from Quinnipiac University. The Connecticut Council of Philanthropy awarded the John H. Flier Award to Mrs. Netter in 2015. Mrs. Netter was the honoree for the 2020 Philly Fights Cancer, highlighting pancreatic cancer at the Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania.
Mrs. Netter is a graduate of New York University. She attended the Family Institute of Westchester and received her MS from Iona College in New Rochelle, NY.
Learn more about how Mrs. Netter and her husband, Edward, founded the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy.
Andy Alisberg was born in New York City, where he lived until his family moved to West Hartford, CT, when he entered eighth grade. He graduated from Conard High School in West Hartford and Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME, where he earned an AB with Honors in Economics in 1976. He later earned an MBA from Harvard University in 1981.
Mr. Alisberg spent most of his professional career in the institutional equities business on Wall Street. He worked at CJ Lawrence in institutional equity sales and at UBS and its predecessors where he managed relationships with some of the firm’s key mutual fund and hedge fund clients. Andy managed Armillary Partners, a global equities fund, for five years.
Mr. Alisberg is an active philanthropist. He served on the Greenwich YMCA Board of Directors for six years as vice chairman and as head of the Nominating Committee. He has been a Swim Across America participant for four years. He and his family have supported the Wendy Walk since its inception. Andy has been a key organizer for each reunion of his Harvard Business School class. He is also active in political fundraising.
Mr. Alisberg has lived in Greenwich for 29 years with his wife Susan, the founder of Alisberg Parker Architects. They have three children, Will (31), Katie (29) and Maggie (26).
Working within the Chardan Investment Banking Division, Gbola Amusa, MD, MBA, CFA, is responsible for advising disruptive health care companies on capital formation strategies, mergers and acquisitions, and other transactions. Dr. Amusa joined Chardan at the end of 2014 to focus on identifying companies that will generate exceptionally high long-term investment returns from creating and sharing in real value for society. While in the Chardan Equity Research Department from 2014 through July 2021, Dr. Amusa’s coverage, top picks and counter-consensus calls were all associated with exceptional alpha generation. In a 2019 study by TipRanks, Dr. Amusa was ranked second out of more than 6,000 Wall Street analysts for his stock-picking performance.
Dr. Amusa was previously managing director, head of European Pharma Research, and Global Pharma & Biotech coordinator at UBS Wealth Management USA, where he oversaw 25 analysts and was the top ranked European pharma analyst in the Institutional Investor (II) Survey. Prior to UBS, Dr. Amusa was a senior research analyst and head of European Pharma research at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. He started his career in finance at Goldman Sachs as an associate in the Healthcare Investment Banking Group, where he worked on large transactions including the Amgen/Immunex merger. Additionally, Dr. Amusa was previously a healthcare finance and strategy consultant working with governments, companies, leading foundations and think tanks. Dr. Amusa’s views on health care have been cited for socially responsible investing (SRI) and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) by sustainability organizations like the Foundation Strategy Group’s (FSG) Shared Value Initiative, GMI Ratings and the AtM Index.
Dr. Amusa earned a BSE with honors in biomedical engineering from Duke University, an MD from Washington University Medical School and an MBA (GPA 4.0/4.0) from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. He currently serves on the board of directors for BiomX and Renovacor. He has been published in Human Gene Therapy Clinical Development.
Teresa (Terri) Burgess, PhD, has deep experience in biopharma drug research, development and leadership. Dr. Burgess began her 20-year career at Amgen as a research scientist and rose to serve more than 10 years as director within Amgen’s Oncology Research organization. During her journey, she developed a breadth of technical expertise and leadership experience integrating drug discovery, target validation, IND-enabling preclinical studies, regulatory science and clinical trials across Amgen’s multi-modality drug platforms.
Dr. Burgess co-founded Paradigm Shift Therapeutics (PSTx) in 2014 to identify drug candidates with the potential to enhance immune surveillance. PSTx was founded with a mission to bring social responsibility to drug development with the end goal of creating affordable drugs that are accessible to all.
Her professional experience also includes service as chair and vice chair for the California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) and as an ad hoc reviewer for federal grants and professional journals. She has been active in educational and mentoring programs at the local, state and national levels throughout her career. Dr. Burgess obtained her AB from University of California, Berkeley; her PhD from University of California, San Francisco (biochemistry and biophysics); and was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Santa Barbara.
She has published widely in top research and medical journals throughout her career. Most recently, she has begun consulting for small- and medium-sized biotech firms, sharing her expertise in pre-clinical critical path and IND enabling study plans.
Dan Englander is founder and managing partner of Ursula Capital Partners, an investment management firm founded in 2004. Mr. Englander is director, America’s Car-Mart, Inc. (NASDAQ), an automotive retailer, since 2007; Copart, Inc. (NASDAQ), a provider of online auctions and vehicle remarketing services, since 2006; and CKX Lands, Inc. (NYSE, a land management company.
In addition to these responsibilities, Mr. Englander is director of Crème de la Crème, a private childcare company. Prior to founding Ursula Capital Partners, Mr. Englander was investment banker and managing partner with Allen & Company.
Mr. Englander earned his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University.
Maria Fardis, Ph.D., is CEO at Lassen Therapeutics and a Venture Partner at Frazier Life Sciences and is the Chair of Board of Directors at Obsidian Therapeutics. She is a member of the Board of Directors at CRISPR Therapeutics as well as Quanta Therapeutics. She has over 20 years of scientific and management experience in public and private companies. Dr. Fardis previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer at Iovance Biotherapeutics, a publicly traded Biotechnology company.
As CEO at Iovance, she led the transformation from an early stage development company to a company with late-stage cell therapy programs for the treatment of solid tumors. Prior to Iovance, Dr. Fardis served as the Chief Operating Officer of Acerta Pharma B.V., where she worked on the development of Calquence until the company’s acquisition by AstraZeneca. Prior to that, she worked at Pharmacyclics, Inc. She was a key contributor in the creation of a broad clinical program leading to global approvals for Imbruvica in multiple hematologic malignancies.
She served as Chief of Oncology Operations and Alliances at Pharmacyclics. Before Pharmacyclics, Dr. Fardis held increasing senior positions in medicinal chemistry and the project and portfolio management at Gilead Sciences, Inc., during which time she was involved with different therapeutic areas including antivirals, oncology, and cardiovascular therapeutics and worked on the development and life cycle management of Letairis.
Maria received her PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and her B.S. summa cum laude in Chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She also holds an MBA, received with the highest honors, from Golden Gate University.
Peter Glicklich is the managing partner of the New York office of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, a Canadian-based law firm specializing in M&A, crossborder transactions, real estate, infrastructure and related matters. Prior to this, he was a partner at Roberts & Holland, LLP, mainly a private client tax-focused law firm. Mr. Glicklich is a 1981 cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School and a summa cum laude from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Economics), 1977. He serves on the Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA, and serves as Finance VP of the International Fiscal Association (USA Branch).
Michael Gregory is co-managing partner of Avidity Partners, a biotechnology/healthcare-focused investment manager with a seasoned research team of six investment professionals with substantial scientific and investment expertise, and investments in public and private companies.
From 2010-2018, Mr. Gregory was portfolio manager and head of Healthcare at Highland and managed an investment team of eight to 10 people and an average gross market value of $1 billion to $2 billion. He also served as CIO of the $4 billion alternative Investment platform and served as a member of the Equity Investment Committee, Private Equity Investment Committee, Credit Investment Committee and Executive Committee. In 2006, Mr. Gregory founded Cummings Bay, a biotechnology/healthcare-focused investment manager that became an affiliate of Highland in 2010.
Mr. Gregory holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, having completed a highly specialized joint program in healthcare within the Yale Schools of Medicine, Management and Public Policy. He holds a BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, lecturer at Yale University and serves on a number of academic and scientific boards including University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, The University of Texas Center for Brain Health, The Center for Vision Health, Dallas Services, University of Texas Southwestern Cary Council (Steering Committee) and had prior Board appointments at University of Pennsylvania Center for Brain Injury and Repair, Southern Methodist University and Tower Center.
Kevin Honeycutt was named CEO and president of Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy in December 2018 and elected to its board of directors in June 2022. As chief executive officer, Mr. Honeycutt’s role is to help realize and enhance the vision of ACGT’s co-founders, Barbara Netter and her late husband Edward, by focusing the organization on solving the next generation of challenges brought by metastatic cancers while continuing to build organizational alliances and joint ventures.
Prior to joining ACGT, Mr. Honeycutt served as president of the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade and executive director of the Avon Foundation for Women. Through his consulting firm, Honeycutt Partners, he served in a variety of roles helping lead major projects for the American Diabetes Association, the New Venture Fund, the Entertainment Industry Foundation, the United Cancer Front, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other leading nonprofit organizations.
Mr. Honeycutt currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Global Cancer Institute and Friends of Mozart and is a member of the National Council of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He is a past Board member of the Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Chau Q. Khuong has been a member of our Board of Directors since 2016. Mr. Khuong is a biotech entrepreneur and venture capital investor. From 2003 until 2021, he worked at OrbiMed Advisors, a global healthcare-dedicated investment firm, where he was a Partner and member of the investment committee for the OrbiMed venture capital funds. Over the past two decades, he has been an active lead investor in innovative drug development and medical device enterprises across all stages and therapeutic areas including oncology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology, gene therapy and gene editing.
Mr. Khuong currently serves or has served in a Board of Directors capacity of numerous public and private companies, including Arius Research (acquired by Roche), BELLUS Health, Durata (acquired by Actavis), Fusion Pharma, Glaukos Medical, Intellia, Intercept, Inspire Medical Systems, NextCure, Otonomy, Pieris, Rempex and ReViral. He holds a B.S. in molecular, cellular and developmental biology with a concentration in biotechnology and an M.P.H. with a concentration in infectious diseases, both from Yale University.
John L. Lahey, PhD, is president emeritus of Quinnipiac University, a private university located in Hamden, CT. Upon his arrival at Quinnipiac in March 1987, Dr. Lahey initiated a strategic planning process, leading to the University’s growth from 1,902 students in 1987 to more than 8,500 students in 2021.
Dr. Lahey also serves as a director of Avangrid Inc. (NYSE), Independence Holding Company (NYSE) and The Yale New Haven Health System. He is also currently professor of logic and philosophy at Quinnipiac University.
Dr. Lahey holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in philosophy from the University of Dayton; a PhD in philosophy from the University of Miami and a second master’s degree in higher education administration from Columbia University.
Alexandra N. Landes is co-founder and executive director of Wendy Walk. This national non-profit organization raises funds and awareness for rare sarcoma by hosting walks and other events around the country. Ms. Landes has secured $3.8 million for international research from individuals, corporations and family foundations.
Previously, Ms. Landes was Manhattan community relations associate for the Office of the New York City Public Advocate. She graduated from Tufts University and from the Boston University Oxford Honors Program. Currently, she is earning a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University.
Dr. Bruce Levine, the Barbara and Edward Netter Professor in Cancer Gene Therapy, is the Founding Director of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility (CVPF) in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. (Biology) from Penn and a Ph.D. in Immunology and Infectious Diseases from Johns Hopkins. First-in-human adoptive immunotherapy trials include the first use of a lentiviral vector, the first infusions of gene edited cells, and the first use of lentivirally-modified cells to treat cancer. Dr. Levine is co-inventor of the first FDA approved gene therapy (Kymriah), chimeric antigen receptor T cells for leukemia and lymphoma, licensed to Novartis. Dr. Levine is co-inventor on 31 issued US patents and co-author of >200 manuscripts and book chapters with a Google Scholar citation h-index of 108. He is a Co-Founder of Tmunity Therapeutics and of Capstan Therapeutics, both spinouts of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Levine is a recipient of the William Osler Patient Oriented Research Award, the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Healthcare Innovation, the National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match ONE Forum 2020 Dennis Confer Innovate Award, the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy Jerry Mendell Award for Translational Science, and serves as Immediate Past-President of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy. He has written for Scientific American and Wired and has been interviewed by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, Time Magazine, National Geographic, Bloomberg, Forbes, BBC, and other international media outlets.
Chen Schor is president and CEO of Adicet Bio, a leader in the field of gamma-delta CAR T-cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. With more than 25 years of global biopharmaceutical leadership experience, he has led several biotech companies across all stages, from formation to early-stage discovery and to publicly traded multi-product companies with significant industry partnerships.
Mr. Schor has led strategic transactions valued at over $8 billion with companies such as GSK, Amgen, Pfizer, Merck KGaA and with equity financing totaling more than $500 million. He led the turnaround of Synta Pharmaceuticals and its reverse merger with Madrigal Pharmaceuticals; served as vice president, global branded business development and pipeline management at Teva Pharmaceuticals; and in leadership positions at several emerging private and public companies. Mr. Schor was a partner at Yozma Venture Capital where he led the foundation and growth of multiple therapeutic companies from inception to significant commercial success and exit.
In addition to his role on the ACGT Board of Directors, Mr. Schor is chairman of the board of directors for Carbon Biosciences, a gene therapy company; and a member of the board of directors for Karyopharm Therapeutics, a commercial stage oncology company. Mr. Schor holds an MBA, BA in biology, BA in economics and is a certified public accountant.
John C. Sites, Jr., is a partner of Wexford Capital LLC. Previously, he was GP of a distress investment fund and a private equity firm. From 1981 through 1995, Mr. Sites served as an executive of Bear Stearns & Co., Inc., where he established the mortgage and asset-backed securities department. Mr. Sites is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rhodes College.
Klaus Veitinger, MD, PhD, MBA, is a venture partner in the private equity group at OrbiMed Advisors, since 2007. During his prior 16-year pharmaceutical career, Dr. Veitinger held senior management positions in drug development, licensing and business development, strategic planning and M&A, as well as general management.
Dr. Veitinger has served and currently serves on the Boards of several private and public companies in the life sciences sector. For seven years he was a director of PhRMA. Dr. Veitinger received his medical degree and his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg. He earned his MBA at INSEAD in France.
Martin Winter is a managing director with Alvarez & Marsal and co-head of the Healthcare Industry Group. He brings more than 35 years of broad business and diverse industry sector experience and an extensive operating background.
Mr. Winter has worked extensively with both outpatient services companies and hospital systems seeking to secure successful futures in a complex, challenging and changing environment. His roles have included operating leadership as well as consulting and include such organizations as HealthSouth and the University of Southern California in addition to lenders and many investor-owned provider and services companies. At HealthSouth he aided the company in its complex out-of-court restructuring following discovery of massive financial fraud. Previously, he spent more than 15 years as an executive in a privately owned investment management firm that specialized in equity, fixed income and alternative assets.
Mr. Winter received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a master’s degree in economics from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a past member of the Board and chairman of the Audit Committee of American Independence Corp., at the time a NASDAQ-listed publicly traded health insurance company. He is currently the vice chair of the Board of Advisors of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
Michael T. Lotze, MD, is professor of surgery, immunology and bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Lotze received his MD and PhD degrees from Northwestern University. Except for a two-year period at GlaxoSmithKline, King of Prussia, PA, and a dozen years on the senior staff at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD, Dr. Lotze has done his work at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Lotze serves as associate editor of the Journal of Immunotherapy and Oncology and in 2024 became the editor in chief of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s official journal, the Journal of ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. He initiated the first approved gene therapy protocols at the NIH and has treated more than 100 patients on gene therapy protocols at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the co-inventor of 10 patents in dendritic cell vaccines and antigen discovery, and author of more than 500 scientific papers and chapters in basic and applied tumor immunology and cytokine biology.
Currently, Dr. Lotze is the leader in the area of exploring cancer as a disorder of cell death and is devising novel strategies to approach the disease in this context.
Stuart A. Aaronson, MD, is a cancer biologist who has made seminal contributions in the fields of oncogenes and growth factor signaling. His contributions include the discovery of the first normal function of an oncogene; the identification of erbB2 as an amplified oncogene in human breast cancer; and the identification of KGF (FGF7), an epithelial cell specific growth factor. He also developed stable expression cDNA cloning technology, which has led to the discovery of a number of novel genes with transforming properties.
Dr. Aaronson’s discoveries paved the way for the development of targeted therapies for cancer patients. He previously served as chief, laboratory of cellular and molecular biology at the National Cancer Institute (1977-1993).
He is the author of more than 530 publications and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Distinguished Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service, Rhoads Memorial Award from the American Association of Cancer Research and the Paul Erhlich Prize from Germany.
Nduka Amankulor, MD, serves as Chief of Neurosurgical Oncology and Director of the Penn Brain Tumor Center at University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Amankulor earned his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine and subsequently completed his residency in neurosurgery at Yale New Haven Hospital. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer and genetics biology, as well as a fellowship in neurosurgical oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Most recently, Dr. Amankulor served as Director of Neurosurgical Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Dr. Amankulor’s clinical practice focuses on primary and metastatic brain tumors, as well as spine, intraventricular and skull base tumors, and hydrocephalus. He uses the latest research and treatment options, such as Neuroendoport® surgery and fluorescence-based surgeries, to provide personalized treatment that creates optimal outcomes. In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Amankulor is a leading cancer immunobiologist whose laboratory has performed groundbreaking studies on mechanisms of immune dysfunction in glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Amankulor sees patients at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine.
