Governance

Michael has more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, where he has been instrumental in the commercial planning and launch of several new medicines across multiple oncology indications.

He currently is Chief Executive Officer and Board member of AVEO Oncology which he joined in 2010 as Chief Commercial Officer, subsequently serving Chief Business Officer and then Chief Executive Officer.

He previously held a variety of leadership roles in commercial operations, sales, business development, and strategic planning across numerous biotech and pharmaceutical companies, including ImClone Systems (now Eli Lilly), Genentech, Synta Pharmaceuticals, and Smithkline Beecham. Michael holds an M.B.A. in International Marketing from the Mendoza College of Business at University of Notre Dame and a B.S. in Psychology from St. Lawrence University.

Andrew brings more than 20 years of executive experience in biopharmaceuticals and life science. He has spent his career focused on corporate and portfolio strategy, as well as business development and commercial operations with industry leaders such as Celgene, Merck, Schering-Plough and Bristol-Meyers Squibb, spearheading new product development, analytics and commercial strategy for immunology & inflammation, oncology, women's health, cardiovascular portfolios and more. In his most recent roles with Celgene, Andrew had led new product analytics and commercial strategy for the Inflammation & Immunology division and led new critical alliances across all therapeutic areas. He joined IMV as Chief Business Officer in 2020 and became the Company’s CEO in January 2021. Andrew Hall holds a Master of Science from RMIT University and a Bachelor of Medical Science with Honors from Melbourne University.

Dr. Michael Kalos is an internationally recognized expert in T cell therapy and immunotherapy, and brings over 25 years of experience and expertise in cell therapy, oncology vaccines, and immune-oncology. Prior to his career in the biopharmaceutical sector, Dr. Kalos spent 10 years in academia, where he focused on the development of integrated translational biomarker programs to support the development of cell therapy and immunotherapy programs. The laboratory he founded and directed at the University of Pennsylvania played a key role in the success of the clinical cell therapy program at Penn, including development of the CTL019 program, which was licensed to Novartis and led to Kymriah, the first approved CART cell therapy product. Dr. Kalos obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and completed post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Phil Greenberg at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He has co-authored over 85 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including multiple highly cited articles in high-impact journals that have helped define the space of CAR- and TCR- based T cell therapy, as well as book chapters in the field of cancer immunotherapy. He also has over 26 issued patents in the fields of cell therapy, immunotherapy, and vaccines. Dr. Kalos now actively serves in an advisory capacity for a number of biopharmaceutical companies as well as international immunotherapy consortia and organizations.

Shabnam Kazmi is an experienced CEO, CBO and Founder with over 30 years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, specializing in oncology.  She currently serves as CEO of Asellus Ventures, providing strategic advisory services to early stage oncology companies and investing in innovative healthcare technologies.  Shabnam holds a Harvard MBA and has deep experience with end to end product development and commercialization, business development, fundraising and go-to-market strategy for oncology compounds in both solid tumors and hematology. 

Shabnam has a track record of delivering revenue upside and leading joint ventures and complex projects. She has owned P&Ls of over $1B and consistently delivered beyond corporate expectations.  Shabnam is known for setting bold goals and vision and mobilizing teams and business partners to deliver against those goals.  She has led product launches in both solid tumors and hematology products and owned P&L responsibility for over a dozen oncology products, in tumors such as breast, colon, ovarian and lung cancers and in stem cell transplantation.

Shabnam has extensive experience in global business operations, having led a successful multi-company team across 75 countries to secure and grow an $8B business. Anticipating and managing business risk was a key element of this project and it provides Shabnam with a unique perspective on US, Europe and worldwide risk management. 

Shabnam is an Officer of the Prevent Cancer Foundation and serves on the Executive Committee. She has received numerous awards from oncology advocacy groups for corporate social responsibility and board service over the past 20 years.

Shabnam has a Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry and Economics from Smith College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Kyle Kuvalanka brings over 20 years of experience as a senior leader in the biopharmaceutical industry. Currently, Mr. Kuvalanka serves as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Goldfinch Bio, a kidney precision medicines company. Prior to joining Goldfinch Bio, Mr. Kuvalanka advised private biopharmaceutical and portfolio companies of venture capital firms, including Third Rock Ventures, on their corporate and financial strategies and helped to build several investor syndicates. Previously, he served as Chief Operating Officer and Principal Financial and Accounting Officer at Syros Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SYRS) and Chief Business Officer and Principal Financial and Accounting Officer at Blueprint Medicines (Nasdaq; BPMC). In these roles, Mr. Kuvalanka helped to transition the companies from early-stage start-ups to publicly traded, clinical-stage organizations. In particular, he built the business and finance functions, led the execution of several financings, including the companies’ initial public offerings, and led the negotiations of the companies’ early strategic collaborations. Earlier in his career, Mr. Kuvalanka worked in roles of increasing responsibility over twelve years at Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company, including as Vice President of Business Development and Corporate Strategy. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA with Honors from Wesleyan University.

Dr. Maleki is a Translational Immuno-Oncology Scientist with an extensive training background in Immunology, Cancer Biology, and Microbiology. Dr. Maleki also has extensive experience with clinical research in cancer immunotherapy and oncology. Dr. Maleki has pioneered phase I clinical trials in Canada that combine fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) plus immunotherapy in melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, non-small cell lung cancer, and pancreatic cancer patients.

Dr. Maleki is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Oncology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Medical Biophysics at Western University. He is also a Translational Immuno-Oncology Scientist at Lawson Health Research Institute and a scientist at the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research (OICR).

Dr. Maleki’s academic research focuses on sensitizing hard-to-treat cancers to immunotherapy via tumor vaccine strategies targeting DNA repair pathways in cancer cells or modifying the gut microbiome in the host. As a tumor immunologist, Dr. Maleki is tumor agnostic and brings many years of experience working on various cancers, including neuroblastoma (childhood cancer), melanoma, lung cancer, kidney cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and head and neck cancer, to IMV.

Dr. Maleki regularly collaborates with biotech companies in the Immuno-Oncology space and has helped move oncology and Immuno-Oncology drug candidates from pre-clinical to phase I clinical trials in patients. In addition, as an advocate of better academia and industry collaborations, Dr. Maleki is involved with several professional societies that aim to increase collaboration between academia and industry and facilitate continuous training and education for scientists and clinicians involved in immunotherapy research and clinical use in both sectors.

Dr. Tilley is a Managing Partner at CTI Life Sciences Fund (CTI LSF), a Montreal-based venture capital fund investing across Canada as well as in the United States. CTI LSF currently has $245M under management, comprised of 2014 vintage Fund II that is open for investment as well as a 2006 vintage Fund I. Since joining CTI LSF at its inception in 2006, Shermaine has played a critical role in each of the investments made by the Fund, but particularly by leading investments in Medicago–acquired by Mitsubishi Tanabe in 2013–as well as those in Phemi, Xagenic and Zymeworks. She was also a board observer in Enobia that was acquired by Alexion in 2012 in the largest takeout of a private development-stage biotech for $1.1B, assuming all milestones are received. Prior to joining CTI LSF in 2006, Shermain was Senior Vice President at Drug Royalty Corporation, the world’s first private equity firm doing royalty transactions in the biotech/pharma space. At DRC (now DRI), she played a leading role in closing 12 transactions totaling over $200M in investments. Before DRC, Shermaine managed a research laboratory, holding faculty positions at the NYU School of Medicine and Public Health Research Institute, NY, and on the PHRI Board of Directors. Concomitantly with her tenure at NYU School of Medicine and PHRI, she consulted for the NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program in immunology and infectious disease for 10 years. Shermaine holds a PhD in biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, an MBA from the University of Toronto and is a member of the CFA Society of Toronto. She currently sits on the boards of Phemi, Phenomic AI and Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP).

As a long-time advocate for industry collaboration and data-driven drug discovery, Markus brings over 20 years of immuno-oncology and precision medicine drug development expertise to IMV. He currently serves as a Venture Partner at Versant Ventures and Chief Executive Officer of Monte Rosa Therapeutics. He had joined Versant from Third Rock Ventures, where he worked as an EIR and played an integral role in the venture capital firm’s formation of new biotech companies. Prior to his role at Third Rock, Markus spent seven years as the Chief Executive Officer of H3 Biomedicine, a biopharmaceutical company that specializes in the discovery and development of genomics-based precision oncology treatments. Markus has also previously served in multiple roles at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF), including as the Director of Kinase Biology, Head of Oncology Pharmacology. He earned his MD from Ludwig Maximilian University, in Munich, Germany. He currently resides with his family in Boston, MA.