Board of Directors

Peter Thompson, M.D., serves as a member of our board of directors and is a Partner on the private equity team at OrbiMed, with over 25 years of industry experience. He held executive positions at Becton-Dickinson and Chiron, co-founded and was CEO of Trubion Pharmaceuticals, co-founded Corvus Pharmaceuticals, Cleave Biosciences, Silverback Therapeutics and serves as a director on several company boards. Dr. Thompson is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awardee, an Affiliate Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Washington, an inventor on numerous patents and a board-certified internist and oncologist. He was on staff at the National Cancer Institute following his internal medicine training at Yale University.

Laura Brege serves as a member of our board of directors and is a Senior Advisor at BridgeBio Pharma (NASDAQ: BBIO), a clinical stage biotechnology company developing novel, genetically targeted therapies. Prior to joining BridgeBio Pharma, Ms. Brege served as Managing Director of Cervantes Life Science Partners, LLC., a health care advisory and consulting company. From 2012 to 2015, Ms. Brege served as Chief Executive Officer and President of Nodality, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company focused in oncology and immunology. Previously, Ms. Brege held several senior-level positions at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (acquired by Amgen) from 2006 to 2011 including Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Before joining Onyx, Ms. Brege was a general partner at Red Rock Capital Management, a venture capital firm specializing in early-stage financing for technology companies. Prior to Red Rock, she was Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at COR Therapeutics. Earlier in her career, Ms. Brege served as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Flextronics and Vice President and Treasurer of The Cooper Companies. Ms. Brege serves on the boards of Acadia Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Mirum Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Pacira Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and HLS Therapeutics, Inc. Ms. Brege earned her undergraduate degree from Ohio University and has an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Badreddin Edris, Ph.D., is a co-founder of Edgewise Therapeutics and serves as a member of our board of directors after having served as our strategic advisor and in an operational role. Dr. Edris is currently the Chief Operating Officer of SpringWorks Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SWTX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on rare diseases and cancer. At SpringWorks, Dr. Edris leads the company’s strategic planning, business development, capital formation, investor relations, and competitive intelligence efforts. Prior to joining SpringWorks, Dr. Edris was an investment and operating professional on the private equity team at OrbiMed where he was involved in deal sourcing, evaluation and execution, as well as post-investment strategic and operational support for biotechnology companies across a range of therapeutic areas and stages of development. In addition to Edgewise, Dr. Edris also co-founded Silverback Therapeutics while at OrbiMed and served as the company’s Chief Business Officer. Before OrbiMed, Dr. Edris was a management consultant at Bain & Company, where he collaborated with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on a range of strategic and operational projects. Dr. Edris received his Ph.D. in genetics from Stanford University School of Medicine, where he was an NSF research fellow.

Jonathan C. Fox, M.D., Ph.D., FACC, serves as a member of our board of directors and is the president and chief medical officer for cardiovascular and renal diseases at BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: BBIO), a clinical stage biotechnology company developing novel, genetically targeted therapies. Prior to that, Dr. Fox served as the chief medical officer of MyoKardia, Inc. Additionally, he worked as a consultant at Nigel-Montgomery, LLC, and held various senior R&D positions successively at SmithKline Beecham, Merck Research Laboratories and AstraZeneca. He was also on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Fox serves on the board at ML BioSolutions and is a trustee of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research. He is currently an adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Stanford University Cardiovascular Institute. He received his A.B. in biology, his Ph.D. in experimental pathology and his M.D. from the University of Chicago, and completed his training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at Duke University. Dr. Fox is ABIM Certified in Cardiovascular Diseases and is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology.

Kenneth Harrison, Ph.D., serves as a member of our board of directors and joined Novo Ventures (US) Inc. in San Francisco, California in 2015. Dr. Harrison currently serves on the boards of Glycomine and Aristea Therapeutics, and while at Novo, he has been involved with investments in Bolt Biotherapeutics, Mirum Pharma (NASDAQ: MIRM) and ViewPoint Therapeutics. Prior to joining Novo Ventures, Dr. Harrison worked in strategic planning at Genentech as a life sciences management consultant at L.E.K. Consulting and as a seed-stage investor at QB3/Mission Bay Capital where he also helped create programs to launch and build life sciences companies in the Bay Area. Dr. Harrison studied cellular lipid storage and metabolism as an A.P. Giannini Foundation Fellow at the J. David Gladstone Institutes and earned a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Yale University.

Kevin Koch, Ph.D., has served as our President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of our board of directors since 2017 and has been in the life science industry for over 30 years with a focus on drug discovery, translational medicine and clinical development. Since 2016, he has also served as a Venture Partner with OrbiMed. Dr. Koch previously served as the Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery, Chemical and Molecular Therapeutics at Biogen where he managed global drug discovery and biomarker development. Dr. Koch was a co-founder of Array BioPharma, serving as President, Chief Scientific Officer and board member from the company’s inception in 1998 to 2013. While there, he built a fully integrated research and development team that oversaw the invention of over 20 clinical development candidates across multiple therapeutic areas, several of which are now marketed medicines. Prior to Array, Dr. Koch held senior positions at Amgen and Pfizer Central Research. Dr. Koch received a B.S. in Chemistry and Biochemistry from State University of New York, Stony Brook, and his Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from University of Rochester.

Jon Root, M.D., serves as a member of our board of directors and is a General Partner at U.S. Venture Partners, having joined the firm in 1995 as a Ewing Marion Kauffman Fellow in venture capital. Before USVP, Dr. Root was Assistant Professor of Neurology and Director of the Neurology-Neurosurgery Special Care Unit at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City. He is board certified in neurology. In addition to Edgewise, Dr. Root is currently on the boards of USVP portfolio companies Cleave Biosciences, eFFECTOR Therapeutics, HealthJoy, Inari Medical, Nuvaira, Okami Medical, Omada Health, Ribon Therapeutics, Route 92 Medical and Swoop. Dr. Root is a former board member for the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Dr. Root holds an A.B. in Economics from Dartmouth College, an M.D. from the University of Florida College of Medicine, and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

Alan Russell, Ph.D., serves as our Co-Founder, Chief Scientific Officer and a member of our board of directors. Previously, Dr. Russell served at GlaxoSmithKline as VP and Head of the Muscle Metabolism Discovery Performance Unit, leading a broad discovery and development effort focused on patients for whom muscle function is compromised. Prior to this, he worked at Cytokinetics Inc, and is the co-inventor of Tirasemtiv and Reldesemtiv, direct muscle sensitizers in clinical trials for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Dr. Russell received a BPharm in Pharmacy and Pharmacology and Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Gene Therapy from the University of Bath in the UK and Postdoctoral training at the Stanford University School of Medicine.