OUR TEAM

José Baselga, MD, PhD, was a prolific researcher and visionary in the world of oncology. Over his 25+ years in the field, he conducted pivotal laboratory and clinical studies that led to the approval of trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and everolimus, among other therapies. He also contributed to more than 470 peer-reviewed publications with a longstanding interest in studying strategies to overcome mechanisms of resistance. His work as founding director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain, helped build it to be one of the major oncology institutes of Europe. Throughout his career, he held executive leadership roles at AstraZeneca, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Weill Cornell Medical College and Massachusetts General Hospital.

In addition to his work, José was involved in many industry-leading groups as a way to share his knowledge and insights with others. He held leadership positions with the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), the European Society of Medical Oncology, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology at various points in his career. Additionally, José was an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians as well as a fellow of the AACR Academy. He dedicated efforts to publications as the founding editor-in-chief of Cancer Discovery, AACR’s flagship journal and editorial board member for Cancer Cell, Journal of Clinical Oncology and Clinical Cancer Research.

We had the honor of having José serve on our Board of Directors. All of us at Foghorn will continue our efforts guided by José’s fierce dedication to having a positive impact on patients.

Scott Biller, PHD, is a strategic advisor to Agios Pharmaceuticals and served as the Company’s chief scientific officer from 2010-2019. During his tenure as CSO at Agios, Scott advanced seven molecules into the clinic that resulted in two marketed therapies and multiple late-stage candidates.

Scott has more than 30 years of drug discovery and development experience with notable positions at Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Bristol Myers Squibb.

During his career, Scott contributed to the discovery and development of five approved medicines: JUXTAPID® for familial hypercholesterolemia, ONGLYZA® and FARXIGA® for Type 2 diabetes, and IDHIFA® and TIBSOVO® for acute myeloid leukemia harboring an IDH2 and IDH1 mutation, respectively, as well as two new chemical entities that are currently in pivotal trials.

Scott earned a BS in chemistry at MIT, a PhD in organic chemistry at Caltech and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University.

An entrepreneur, investor, and physician, Doug Cole, MD plays an active role as a co-founder and initial CEO of multiple Flagship companies, including Foghorn Therapeutics. Doug has a significant track record of board experience and currently serves on the board of directors of numerous public and private companies.

Included among the companies Doug has helped build are Agios Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AGIO), Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT), Hypnion (acquired by Eli Lilly), Morphotek (acquired by Eisai), Quanterix (NASDAQ: QTRX), Receptos (NASDAQ: RCPT; acquired by Celgene), and Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS).

He is trained as a neurologist and completed his post-graduate training at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and the Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, MA. Prior to joining Flagship in 2001, Doug held medical posts at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, and he has also served as an executive at Cytotherapeutics and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Doug holds an AB magna cum laude with high distinction in English from Dartmouth College and an MD from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Simba Gill, PhD, is the former president and chief executive officer of Evelo Biosciences, a Flagship VentureLabs® company leading the development of monoclonal microbials, a new modality of medicine for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

He is also a senior partner at Flagship Pioneering, where he provides strategic counsel and support to the firm’s portfolio companies. Prior to his roles at Evelo and Flagship, Simba was a partner at TPG, a major private equity investor, where he focused on global healthcare and biotech investments. He has also held leadership roles at Roche/Boehringer Manheim.

Simba has a long track record of identifying new technologies and geographies for high-growth business opportunities. He has founded and held leading roles in multiple pioneering companies in the fields of antibodies, stem cells, directed molecular evolution, gene therapy, and immunodiagnostics. Four of these companies have gone public and three were acquired through strategic trade sales.

Simba holds his MBA from INSEAD and received his PhD from King’s College, London, where he focused on developing humanized antibodies to treat cancer in collaboration with Celltech.

Adrian is president and chief executive officer of Foghorn Therapeutics. An experienced leader in biotech, Adrian is interested in solving complex issues at the intersection of science, medicine, and business on a global scale to help people and families dealing with diseases.

Prior to joining Foghorn, Adrian spent 13 years at Biogen, where he was most recently a senior vice president and the neurodegeneration therapeutic area head. In this role, he was responsible for the late-stage development and commercialization of medicines for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). During his time at Biogen, Adrian held additional roles of increasing responsibility ranging from head of corporate strategy, head of global commercial strategy, head of Japan, and head of the Japan, Australia and Emerging Markets geographies. He has also worked as a consultant for Price Waterhouse in Dallas, Texas.

He holds a BS in biochemistry from Texas A&M University and received his MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He also holds an ScM degree from the joint Harvard Medical School / MIT Biomedical Enterprise Program, where his graduate work was focused on evaluating the costs and benefits of the Prescription Drug User Fee Acts and improving the efficiency of the drug development process.

Cigall Kadoch, PhD, is an associate professor of pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular biology at Harvard Medical School, and Institute member and co-director of the epigenomics program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Cigall established her independent laboratory in 2014 at the age of 27, immediately following completion of her PhD studies in cancer biology at Stanford University. She is one of the youngest scientists ever appointed to the Harvard Medical School faculty. She has quickly become a leading expert in chromatin and gene regulation and is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking studies in these areas.

In addition to receiving numerous prestigious awards and research grants to support her academic laboratory at Harvard—including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Pew Scholar Award, and the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award—Cigall was named to the Forbes 2014 30 Under 30 list, MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35, Popular Science Brilliant 10 of 2016, and Business Insider’s Top 30 Young Leaders in Biopharma.

Cigall holds a BA in molecular and cellular biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in cancer biology from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Adam Koppel rejoined Bain Capital in 2016 as managing director of the Bain Capital Life Sciences Fund. He had initially joined Bain Capital Public Equity in 2003, where he was a leader within the healthcare sector until mid-2014. During the period mid-2014 to mid-2016, Adam was at Biogen, where he served as executive vice president of corporate development and chief strategy officer.

He sits on the board of directors of Solid Biosciences (NASDAQ: SLDB), Dicerna Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: DRNA), Trevena (NASDAQ: TRVN), Aptinyx Inc., and Foghorn Therapeutics. He is a former director of PTC Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTCT).

Prior to joining Bain Capital in 2003, Adam was an associate principal at McKinsey & Company in New Jersey, where he served a variety of healthcare companies.

Adam sits on the Newton-Wellesley Hospital Board of Trustees, the Partners Healthcare Innovation Advisory Board, and the Society for Neuroscience Investment Committee.

Adam graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an AB and AM in history and science. He received his MD and PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He also received an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Palmer Scholar.

Dr. Thomas J. Lynch Jr. is a world-renowned scientist, highly respected oncologist, and successful NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center leader.

As the President and Director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and holder of the Raisbeck Endowed Chair, Dr. Lynch brings more than three decades of experience at highly regarded U.S. cancer centers. He has expertise in solid tumor research, precision medicine and discoveries in fundamental biology. Before joining Fred Hutch, Dr. Lynch held leadership roles as CSO at Bristol-Myers Squibb, CEO of Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, director of Yale Cancer Center, physician-in-chief at Yale’s Smilow Cancer Hospital, as well as chief of hematology-oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Lynch is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.

Michael Mendelsohn, MD, is a physician-scientist, research leader, and industry executive with broad experience in healthcare.

From 2010 through 2013, Michael served as the senior vice president and head of cardiovascular research at Merck Research Laboratories, with overall responsibility for the scientific direction of cardiovascular research from drug discovery through late development. He served as a venture partner at SV Life Sciences from 2014 to 2017. In 2016, he became executive chairman of Cardurion Pharmaceuticals, a cardiovascular biotechnology company.

Prior to joining Merck, Michael spent 1993 to 2010 at Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine, where he served as the first chief scientific officer and was founder and executive director of the Molecular Cardiology Research Institute. From 1988 to 1993, he served on the cardiovascular faculty of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Michael completed an internal medicine internship and residency followed by a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Mendelsohn has studied signal transduction pathways regulating vascular and cardiac function and has published more than 150 papers.

Michael received his BA in chemistry and English from Amherst College, in Massachusetts, and his MD from Harvard Medical School.

Ms. Parshall is a seasoned biotechnology leader with over 35 years in industry. An attorney by training, she spent over 30 years as the founding Chief Operating Officer of Ionis Pharmaceuticals and subsequently as a Strategic Advisor to the CEO, overseeing legal, finance, business development, portfolio management, strategic planning, manufacturing, regulatory, alliance management and other functions.

While at Ionis she was responsible for raising over $6 billion in financing from equity-based securities and corporate partner transactions. Ms. Parshall has sat on numerous public and private company Boards of Directors including, currently, Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Cytokinetics, two public biotechnology companies, and Ring Therapeutics and Repertoire Therapeutics, two private biotechnology companies. She was Chair of the Board of Akcea Therapeutics prior to its acquisition. Ms. Parshall has extensive Audit Committee and corporate governance experience. Prior to working in industry, she was a partner at the Cooley law firm with a practice focusing on securities law and biotechnology corporate partnering.

Ms. Parshall received her BA manga cum laude from Harvard College and JD from Stanford University. She is a Certified Corporate Director by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD).

Ian Smith is a biotechnology leader with more than 20 years of finance and operations experience. In addition to serving as an advisor and member of the Board of Directors of Foghorn Therapeutics, Ian serves as a senior advisor to Bain Capital Life Sciences, chair of the board of Solid Biosciences and chairman of the board of Rivus Pharmaceuticals. He is also on the boards of Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, Stoke Therapeutics and iVexSol. Ian provides advisory and consulting services to these and other biotechnology companies.

Prior to his current roles he was executive vice president and chief operating officer of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. as well as chief financial officer between 2001 and 2019. Prior to 2001, Mr. Smith was a partner in the Life Science and Technology Practice of the accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP.

Ian received a B.A. with honors in accounting and finance from Manchester Metropolitan (UK).

A founder of Ariad Pharmaceuticals and Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, Gerald Crabtree, MD, is the David Korn Professor at Stanford University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. With more than 30 years of experience, Gerald has pioneered multiple key insights into mammalian developmental biology, including the discovery that one gene can produce different functional proteins by alternative splicing of mRNA transcripts.

In the 1980s and 1990s, his work with Stuart Schreiber to define the Ca2+/calcineurin/ NFAT signaling pathways resulted in the first understanding of how commonly used immunosuppressant drugs function. Later Gerald’s laboratory and others determined that these signals play essential roles in the development of the heart, immune, skeletonal, and nervous systems, even causing several phenotypes of Down syndrome. More recently, Gerald’s research into epigenetics, genetics, and chromatin remodeling complexes has a connection to several human neurologic diseases and cancers.

Gerald holds a B.S. in chemistry and mathematics from West Liberty State College, in West Virginia, and an M.D. from Temple University, in Philadelphia.

Cigall Kadoch, PhD, is an associate professor of pediatric oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular biology at Harvard Medical School, Institute member and co-director of the epigenomics program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Cigall established her independent laboratory in 2014 at the age of 27, immediately following completion of her PhD studies in cancer biology at Stanford University. She is one of the youngest scientists ever appointed to the Harvard Medical School faculty. She has quickly become a leading expert in chromatin and gene regulation and is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking studies in these areas.

In addition to receiving numerous prestigious awards and research grants to support her academic laboratory at Harvard—including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Pew Scholar Award, and the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award—Cigall was named to the Forbes 2014 30 Under 30 list, MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35, Popular Science Brilliant 10 of 2016, and Business Insider’s Top 30 Young Leaders in Biopharma.

Cigall holds a BA in molecular and cellular biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in cancer biology from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

A prize-winning scientist, executive, professor, and founder, Tony Kouzarides, PhD, has made significant scientific discoveries and co-founded multiple companies including Abcam plc, Chroma Therapeutics, and STORM Therapeutics.

He currently serves as professor of cancer biology at the University of Cambridge, in the U.K., and as director of the university’s Milner Therapeutics Institute. He is also deputy director of the university’s Gurdon Institute, where he leads a research group focused on epigenetic modifications on chromatin, RNA, and DNA and their involvement in cancer. Tony’s work has demonstrated many links between epigenetic modifications and cancer. His laboratory was one of the first to identify a specific enzyme that can modify chromatin and to show that such genes are damaged in cancer cells.

Prior to his work at the Gurdon Institute, Tony completed postdoctoral work at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology on the cancer-inducing potential of human cytomegalovirus. He followed his postdoctoral studies with research at New York University Medical Center, where he worked on the c-Fos onco-protein and characterized the leucine zipper dimerization interface.

Tony is the founder of a cancer charity in Spain called “Vencer el Cancer” and the founder of Cambridge Gravity, where he also serves as director. Tony is a member of the executive board of the Cambridge Cancer Centre and is on the scientific advisory board of two institutes on Spain: CRG in Barcelona and CABIMER in Seville.

Tony holds a BS in genetics from the University of Leeds and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Charles L. Sawyers, MD, became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 2002 and currently serves as the chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Charles studies mechanisms of cancer drug resistance with an eye toward developing novel therapies. He co-discovered the anti-androgen drug enzalutamide, which was approved by the FDA in 2012 for treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Charles shared the 2009 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for the development of the ABL kinase inhibitor imatinib for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia and the second-generation ABL inhibitor dasatinib to overcome imatinib resistance. He received the 2013 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the 2013 Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Science, and the 2015 BBVA Knowledge Award in Biomedicine. Charles is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is past president of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Investigation, was appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board by President Obama and has served on the board of directors of Novartis since 2013. He also serves as steering committee chair of AACR Project GENIE, an international consortium of cancer centers who share genomic and clinical data from patients treated at their respective clinical sites.

Charles holds a BA from Princeton University. He received his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, followed by an internal medicine residency at UCSF.

David Schenkein, MD, is general partner and co-leader of Google Ventures’ life science team. He has been a hematologist and medical oncologist for more than 20 years and was the chief executive officer of Agios.

He currently serves as an adjunct attending physician in hematology at Tufts Medical Center. Prior to joining Agios, David was the senior vice president of clinical hematology/oncology at Genentech, where he was responsible for numerous successful oncology drug approvals and led the medical and scientific strategies for the BioOncology portfolio. While at Genentech, he also served as an adjunct clinical professor of medical oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Prior to joining Genentech, he served as the senior vice president of clinical research at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Takeda Pharmaceuticals, overseeing the clinical development and worldwide approval of VELCADE®, a first-in-class cancer therapy now approved to treat multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He currently serves on the board of directors of bluebird bio and Denali Therapeutics.

David holds a BA in chemistry from Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, and an MD from the State University of New York Upstate Medical School.