Team

Dr Richard Mason is Apollo Therapeutics’ chief executive officer. Richard has over 20 years’ experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including leading Johnson & Johnson Innovation in Europe. Before this, he was CEO of novel anticoagulant antibody company XO1 until the company was acquired by Janssen in March 2015. Previously, Richard was the executive leadership team member responsible for strategy and business development at listed companies BTG Plc and Cambridge Antibody Technology Plc where he led numerous M&A and partnering transactions. Richard received degrees in medicine from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and immunology from University College London and trained in internal medicine in London. During 2020, he served on active duty with the British Army as part of the UK government’s pandemic response, including as a member of the UK Vaccines Task Force.

Dr Sanjay Aggarwal is Apollo Therapeutics’ chief medical officer. Sanjay has spent over 20 years in the biopharmaceutical industry, including extensive experience in building and leading clinical development teams. He has a track record of taking drugs through development to successful regulatory approvals. He joined Apollo from Angiocrine Bioscience, a clinical stage cell and gene therapy company. Previously he was the architect of the Rezurock™ (belumosudil) phase 2 and 3 development program at Kadmon, leading to its FDA approval for chronic graft versus host disease. Before Kadmon he was the global development lead for Kyprolis® (carfilzomib) at Amgen, leading to its approval in multiple myeloma in the USA, EU and numerous other territories. Earlier in his career, he held positions of increasing responsibility in both biotech (Exelixis, Onyx Pharmaceuticals) and pharma (GSK, Novartis, Sanofi), overseeing development of early and late-stage assets across several therapeutic areas, and including roles in the USA, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Sanjay studied mathematics and medicine to earn his medical degree (MB BChir) from The University of Cambridge where he was a member of Queens’ College. He has an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Clinically, he trained in internal medicine and public health and is a member of the Royal College of Physicians (UK).

Dr Richard Butt is Apollo Therapeutics’ chief scientific officer. He joined Apollo in 2016 and served as the organization’s chief executive officer until 2021. Richard spent more than 20 years at Pfizer, holding multiple leadership roles in preclinical and clinical R&D. During his tenure, he led programs to candidate selection, developed IND-enabling and preclinical regulatory packages, and led design, planning, execution and delivery for over 30 clinical studies spanning Phase 0 to Phase 2. Richard has always focused on project and portfolio leadership across the preclinical, translational and clinical phases of R&D. Richard is a cell biologist with a degree in biochemistry from the University of York and a doctorate from University College London.

Jamie Heath is Apollo Therapeutics’ chief financial officer. He has over 25 years of experience in corporate finance based in London and New York, specializing in working with global life science companies. Recently, he served as chief development officer at BTG Plc with responsibility for corporate strategy and business development. In this role, he oversaw a number of acquisitions, in-licensing deals and joint ventures, including the sale of the company to Boston Scientific for $4 billion. Jamie has led numerous M&A and capital raising transactions and held senior roles at Merrill Lynch, Centerview Partners and Deutsche Bank. He holds a master’s degree from Oxford University.

Arjun Krishnan is Apollo Therapeutics’ chief business officer. Prior to joining Apollo, Arjun worked with a range of growth equity and venture backed businesses in various segments of healthcare, including biotech, medtech and healthtech. Previously, he led business development at BTG Plc, subsequently taking on operating leadership roles within BTG’s global pulmonology business unit, which developed and commercialized therapies for the treatment of COPD. Arjun started his career on Wall Street within equity research at JPMorgan, following which he was an investor in public and private companies in the healthcare sector at Magnetar Capital and HealthCor. He received a bachelor’s degree in quantitative analysis from Franklin & Marshall College.

Dr Sunil Kadam is Apollo Therapeutics’ Chief Regulatory, Quality and Compliance Officer.  Prior To joining Apollo, Dr. Kadam held a number of Regulatory leadership roles in small, medium and large Pharmaceutical companies.  He was responsible for global regulatory strategy and has led submission of NDA/BLA and MAA applications.  He was responsible for the approval of Moterity™ at Shire/Takeda and Illiccix™ at Telix Pharmaceuticals. More recently Dr. Kadam worked closely with companies as the lead regulatory consultant for gene therapy, oncology and theragnostic product development. Dr. Kadam holds a Masters and Doctoral degree in Industrial Microbiology from University, College, Dublin, Ireland.

Dr Daniel Wilkinson is Apollo Therapeutics’ Head of Portfolio and Program Strategy. Prior to joining Apollo, Daniel held a number of roles in the biopharmaceutical and financial industries. Most recently Daniel was at Immunocore where he was part of the strategy & competitive intelligence team, working across the pipeline from early-stage research to clinical and commercial programs. Most recently he was responsible for tumour strategy in the lung cancer and melanoma space. Prior to joining Immunocore, Daniel worked as equity analyst covering European biotech and pharma in a number of roles across the City, including at Morgan Stanley. Daniel holds a master’s degree in chemical biology and a doctorate focused on Diabetes from Imperial College London.

Paolo has 25+ year of experience in the life science sector. He brings extensive experience in Research, Development and Commercialization in the Pharmaceutical Industry. He successfully conducted submissions and approvals of new cancer medicines and new indications in USA and in Europe. Paolo held important executive positions in Lilly and GSK. He was the first President of GSK Oncology, and, in eight years, he brought to cancer patients seven new medicines, focussing on precision medicine (first non-chemo combination therapy for patients with BRAF mutation in patients with melanoma, VEGF inhibitor for patients with sarcoma, thrombopoietin agonist for ITP and aplastic anaemia, etc). Under his leadership, the GSK oncology franchise generated important value and it was sold to Novartis in 2014 for 16 billion USD.
In Lilly, he was responsible of the development of Alimta a chemotherapy agent reaching the peak sales of more than 2 billion USD and, Alimta is still the backbone chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer.
Paolo was the CEO of GammaDelta Therapeutics a company based on the innovative science and transformative discovery of prof Adrian Hayday and Oliver Nussbaumer PhD at King’s College in London. In 5 years, he successfully led the completion of the allogeneic cell therapy product development of Vδ1 gamma delta T cells and the initiation of the clinical trial using (for the first time) the subtype Vδ1 of gamma delta T cells. Takeda in October 2021 exercised the option to acquire Gamma Delta Therapeutics.
Paolo was professor of Pulmonary Medicine at the University of Pisa, and he was a NIH Fogarty fellow at the Respiratory Science Center of the University of Arizona. He has been the author of more than 300 publications.
Paolo is a member of the Board for Psioxus Therapeutics and for Genmab Therapeutics where he is also the Chairman of the Scientific Committee

Mike Owen has worked in biomedical research, and in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries for over 40 years. He currently serves as a director on four boards. He is the Chairman of Ossianix Inc, a privately held biotechnology company, and is also on the boards of Zealand Pharma A/S, ReNeuron plc and Sareum Holdings plc. Dr Owen is also an advisor to several Venture Capital LPs and is Chairman of ReNeuron’s and Avacta plc’s SABs. Prior to board services, Dr Owen co-founded and served as the first CSO of Kymab Ltd, a biopharmaceutical company, recently acquired by Sanofi. Prior to co-founding Kymab, Dr Owen worked for GSK where he was SVP and Head of Research for Biopharmaceuticals R&D. Prior to joining the Pharma industry, Dr Owen was a Principal Scientist at the ICRF London laboratories (now CR-UK) where he was noted for his work on lymphocyte development and on the molecular basis of diversity in the adaptive immune system. Dr Owen received a BA degree from Oxford University in 1973 and a PhD from Cambridge University in 1976. He was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Peter Parker trained as an undergraduate in Biochemistry (BA) at Oxford and then as a post-graduate under Professor Sir Philip Randle in Clinical Biochemistry (D.Phil) at Oxford. He subsequently gained an MRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship to work with Professor Sir Philip Cohen in Dundee and then moved his research interests to oncology, initially with Professor Mike Waterfield in London, subsequently moving as one of the founder members to the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at UCL. In 1990 he was appointed Principal Scientist at ICRF, which in 2002 evolved to become the London Research Institute (LRI). Peter moved with the LRI into the newly founded Francis Crick Institute in 2015 as a Senior Group Leader. Peter has held a joint appointment with King’s College London since 2006 where he was Head of the Cancer Division until 2017 and subsequently was Director of the Cancer Research UK King’s Health Partners Centre at KCL. Peter is currently an Emeritus Professor at the Francis Crick Institute and at King’s College London. Peter Parker’s team have published over 350 primary research articles and reviews in the area of signal transduction, biomarkers and cancer. This body of work has led him into various drug development and biomarker programmes. Peter co-founded PiraMed, Symansis and FASTBASE Solutions, biotech companies all directed at interventions or the stratification of patients for interventions.

Jim Momtazee is the Managing Partner of Patient Square Capital. Mr. Momtazee has 24 years of investment and acquisition experience, the vast majority of which was focused on the health care sector. Prior to Patient Square, he spent over twenty-one years at KKR, initially joining in 1996. He helped establish the firm’s health care industry group in 2001 and subsequently was head of the Americas Health Care Team for over ten years. In that role, he managed a team of over twenty dedicated health care professionals overseeing five different health-care-related investment strategies including private and growth equity. He was a member of the Americas Private Equity Investment Committee beginning in 2013 and was chairman of both the Health Care Strategic Growth and Health Care Royalty & Income Investment Committees.

Among the major health care investments made during Mr. Momtazee’s tenure at KKR was Jazz Pharmaceuticals (2004); HCA (2006), a $33 billion transaction which at the time was the largest cash buyout in history; PRA Health Sciences (2013); and BridgeBio Pharma (2016). Mr. Momtazee currently serves on the Boards of Directors of BridgeBio, PRA Health Sciences (lead independent director), and the Medical Device Manufacturers Association. He previously served on the Boards of Directors of Ajax Health, Alliance Imaging, Arbor Pharmaceuticals, BrightSpring Health Services, Covenant Surgical Partners, EchoNous, Entellus Medical, Envision Healthcare, Global Medical Response, HCA, Heartland Dental, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Lake Region Medical, and Spirox.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Momtazee was one of three executives who moved to London to launch KKR’s European investing operations and also spent several months helping launch Accel-KKR, a software and technology-enabled services investment firm. Prior to KKR, Mr. Momtazee worked at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and was involved in a broad range of merchant banking, M&A, debt, equity and restructuring transactions.

Mr. Momtazee received a bachelor’s degree with distinction, Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford University and a master’s degree in business administration, Arjay Miller Scholar, from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Laura Furmanski, Ph.D., is a Partner at Patient Square Capital and Head of Patient Square Insights. Dr Furmanski has 20 years of health care experience across consulting and operating roles, most recently as managing director & partner at Boston Consulting Group. While at BCG, Dr Furmanski worked with biopharma and medical device companies on a range of R&D, market access, and broader strategy topics, and she played a lead role in creating BCG’s data and analytics offerings for the health care sector.

Prior to BCG, Dr Furmanski created and was SVP and head of the bioinformatics business area for QIAGEN, a life science company. In that capacity, her team built and launched the company’s genomic clinical decision support platform for oncology and rare diseases. She managed the engineering and commercial teams that delivered a portfolio of innovative informatics products to biopharmaceutical companies, academic research institutions, and clinical labs. Dr Furmanski was also a partner at McKinsey & Co, where she worked across the entire health care value chain.

Dr Furmanski holds a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA and a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.

Neel Varshney, M.D., is a Founding Partner of Patient Square Capital. He has over 15 years of investment and health care experience. Prior to Patient Square, Dr Varshney was a managing director within KKR’s Americas Health Care Team, where he focused on health care private and growth equity. Prior to joining KKR in 2016, he was a vice president at Linden Capital Partners, focused exclusively on health care. Earlier in his career, Dr Varshney was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company in the health care, private equity, and corporate finance practices and worked in business development at Medtronic. He trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a Harvard academic teaching hospital, where he cared for patients.

Dr Varshney has served on the boards of directors of companies across health care sectors and stages, including Ajax Health, BrightSpring Pharmerica, CORPAK MedSystems, Envision Healthcare, EPIX Therapeutics, Headlands Research, Slayback Pharma, and Virtus Pharmaceuticals.

Dr Varshney holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and medical doctorate with honors from Harvard Medical School and MIT in the Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program. He also holds a master’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Oxford. Dr Varshney is a Soros Fellow and Rhodes Scholar.

Vasundhara Bhargava is a Vice President at Patient Square Capital. Ms. Bhargava has over 8 years of investment and acquisition experience, most recently as a vice president at Golden Gate Capital. Earlier in her career, Ms. Bhargava was a private equity investor at GIC, and prior to that was an associate at TPG Capital, the private equity platform of alternative asset manager TPG. Prior to TPG, Ms. Bhargava was an analyst in the investment banking division at Goldman Sachs.

Ms. Bhargava holds a bachelor’s degree in finance, a bachelor’s degree in economics, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Indiana University. She also holds a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Dr Richard Mason is Apollo Therapeutics’ chief executive officer. Richard has over 20 years’ experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including leading Johnson & Johnson Innovation in Europe. Before this, he was CEO of novel anticoagulant antibody company XO1 until the company was acquired by Janssen in March 2015. Previously, Richard was the executive leadership team member responsible for strategy and business development at listed companies BTG Plc and Cambridge Antibody Technology Plc where he led numerous M&A and partnering transactions. Richard received degrees in medicine from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and immunology from University College London and trained in internal medicine in London. During 2020, he served on active duty with the British Army as part of the UK government’s pandemic response, including as a member of the UK Vaccines Task Force.

Sam has 20 years’ experience in the biotechnology industry, both as a top-ranked equity analyst in the City and, subsequently, as an entrepreneur and chief executive. He is CEO of Istesso Limited, an IP Group backed drug discovery company, oversees IP Group’s biotechnology portfolio and sits on the Group’s Executive Committee. He is Chairman and/or non-executive director of the IP Group portfolio companies Diurnal Group plc, Glythera Limited and Microbiotica Limited, as well as being Non-Executive Chairman of C4X Discovery Holdings plc. Sam holds a PhD in molecular biology from Cambridge and a degree in biology from Oxford.