Mersana has a seasoned management team whose collective experience spans pharma and academia, drug discovery and development, in-licensing, business development, medical oncology and regulatory affairs.
Julie A. Olson, Ph.D., President, CEO and Director
Julie Olson has been CEO of Mersana since 2004. She previously served as Vice President of Licensing in the R&D Division of Pfizer, leading a group focused on in-licensing clinical compounds and biologicals, including four compounds projected to achieve over $5 billion in annual sales. Between 1984 and 2003, she played multiple roles at Pfizer. In the mid to late 90s, she led the External Technology Group, responsible for over forty research alliances with biotechnology companies and hundreds with universities, concentrating on platform technologies in genomics, chemistry, screening, pharmaceutics, and drug safety, as well as collaborations to discover pre-clinical candidates, managing a budget of over $100 million annually. Prior to her positions in licensing, Dr. Olson led a drug discovery group in high throughput screening and chemistry, as well a team focused on drugs for infectious diseases. She received her undergraduate degree from MIT and Ph.D. from the Rockefeller University, prior to post-doctoral work at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Robert J. Fram, M.D., F.A.C.P., Chief Medical Officer
Bob Fram joined Mersana in 2007. Bob has 31 years of experience in medical oncology, of which 11 years have been in the biopharmaceutical industry. Most recently, he was Vice President, Clinical Development at ImmunoGen, leading their antibody-based clinical programs in oncology. Prior to ImmunoGen, Bob led oncology clinical development programs for small molecule anticancer drugs at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Ilex Oncology, and Knoll Pharmaceuticals. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fram completed his post-doctoral training in Internal Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and in Hematology and Oncology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Fram is board certified in Hematology, Oncology, and Internal Medicine and has served on the staff at Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School and as an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and at the University of Maryland Cancer Center. He was a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Brown University Medical School. Dr. Fram has contributed to 91 publications in the fields of experimental therapeutics and Hematology/Oncology including journal articles, book chapters, and published abstracts.
Peter B. Leone, MBA, Chief Operating Officer
Pete Leone has been with Mersana since 2003. Prior to joining Mersana, Pete was a Senior Principal at PureTech Ventures. He has held executive management positions over a 20-year career in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and healthcare service delivery. Pete was formerly President and CEO at Phenome Sciences, now part of Antisoma plc, a company that developed metabolic probes to predict drug safety and therapeutic response, technologies that lead to discovery of a drug in critical care and development of new cancer agents. Prior to Phenome, he was a founder and President of DigiTrace Care Services (now SleepMed), now a $75 million annual revenue company that employs Beth Israel-Deaconess licensed technology to treat CNS and sleep disorders. Pete was a Partner at Corporate Decisions, a strategy consulting firm now part of Mercer. He has an MBA from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree in Engineering Science and pre-medical studies from Dartmouth College. Previous consulting and direct experience included General Electric in engineering, Procter & Gamble in marketing, and Sandoz Pharmaceuticals.
Timothy B. Lowinger, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer
Tim Lowinger joined Mersana in 2008. Tim has over fifteen years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and brings a wealth of international experience to his role in leading our Research team. From 1993 to 2007, Dr. Lowinger held a number of positions at Bayer Pharmaceuticals in the US, Germany, and Japan, where he contributed to the discovery of more than 15 pre-clinical and clinical candidates in a variety of indications. Most notably, he led the team that discovered and advanced Nexavar® (sorafenib), an anti-cancer agent that is approved for indications including renal and hepatocellular cancer, with Phase III studies underway in numerous other cancers. Later, as the VP and Department Head of Chemistry Research in West Haven, he managed a department of scientists in the disciplines of medicinal, analytical, computational, combinatorial and synthetic chemistry, focused on the discovery and clinical proof-of-concept of new therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, diabetes and obesity. He also served as VP of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Angiotech Pharmaceuticals where he managed a multidisciplinary team of scientists focused on developing polymer-based pharmaceutical products for local administration as well as medical devices incorporating pharmaceutical agents. Dr. Lowinger has a BSc (Hons.) in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and he was a Merck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ohio State University in the labs of Professor Leo A. Paquette.
