ONE GENETIC MEDICINE, THOUSANDS OF DISEASES.

Michelle C. Werner is a seasoned pharmaceutical executive with more than 20 years in the industry spanning both commercial and research & development (R&D) responsibilities. Most recently, Michelle served as Worldwide Franchise Head, Solid Tumors at Novartis Oncology, where she was responsible for delivering the disease area strategies across multiple tumors and led business development efforts resulting in a doubling of long-term portfolio value for the franchise. 

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Previous to Novartis, Michelle was a senior leader at AstraZeneca, where she held multiple positions during her five-year tenure. As Global Franchise Head in Hematology, Michelle was critical in launching multiple indications worldwide for CALQUENCE® and was responsible for developing the mid- and long-term strategy for AstraZeneca in hematology. Prior to this role, Michelle served as Head of US Oncology, where she led the business through dramatic growth in both team and revenue through eight-plus product launches as well as Country President for the Nordics and Baltics, where she also served as an elected Board Member to Sweden’s pharmaceutical industry association.

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Previous to AstraZeneca, Michelle was with Bristol Myers Squibb for 10 years in various positions of increasing responsibility including roles in sales, marketing, and market access in the US and UK, and above-market in Europe (based in France) and global almost exclusively in oncology. Michelle started her professional career in R&D, working hands-on with patients at the Oncology Clinical Trials Unit at Harvard Medical School before moving into industry in clinical operations.

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Outside of her corporate responsibilities, Michelle is a wife and mother to three children and is a member of the rare disease community. She is currently serving a Board appointment for the non-profit organization Rare Disease Renegades, a purpose that fuels her passions both personally and professionally. 

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Michelle holds a B.A. in biology & anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the London Business School (UK). She also completed an Executive Education program for Women on Boards at Harvard Business School in 2018.

Chris Henderson, Ph.D., is the Chief Scientific Officer of Alltrna. Prior to Alltrna, as SVP, Head of Research at Biogen, Dr. Henderson led a team responsible for preclinical programs and target validation across the company’s core disease areas of neurode­gen­er­a­tive diseases, multiple sclerosis and immunology, neuromuscular and muscle diseases, ophthalmology, and genetic and neurode­vel­op­mental disorders. Prior to this, he held multiple roles of increasing responsibility at Biogen including Vice President of Neuromuscular and Movement Disorders Research and Early Development, where he worked with a team of clinicians and scientists to take programs from early research to clinical proof of concept. 

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Prior to moving to the U.S., Dr. Henderson was Co-Founder and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Trophos, which leveraged its proprietary screening platform to generate olesoxime for spinal muscular atrophy. 

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Prior to his roles in industry, Dr. Henderson co-founded the Center for Motor Neuron Biology and Disease and was the Director of the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative at Columbia University. While at Columbia, he became Director and now serves as Chief Advisor of Target ALS Foundation. 

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Dr. Henderson has more than 90 scientific research publications and has been an editor and reviewer for top-tier scientific journals. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pasteur Institute.

Joanne Protano has more than 25 years of experience in senior finance roles. Prior to Alltrna, she was Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations at Rubius Therapeutics, where she joined in 2017, led all financial aspects of the business and built the financial and operational infrastructure required for Rubius to grow substantially, advance four programs into clinical trials, establish a clinical manufacturing facility, raise nearly $800 million in capital, and evolve from a private to a public company with peak market capitalization of more than  $2.5 billion. 

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Prior to Rubius, Joanne was Senior Vice President of Finance, New Ventures at Flagship Pioneering, where she provided financial and operational oversight to multiple early-stage Flagship portfolio companies. Prior to Flagship, she served as Chief Financial Officer of Novelos Therapeutics, a publicly held biotechnology company developing small molecule drugs for the treatment of cancer.

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Previously, Joanne spent 10 years with Ascential Software and predecessor companies, serving in various senior finance roles through multiple merger, acquisition, and divestiture transactions with an aggregate consideration of more than $4 billion. 

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Joanne started her career in the assurance practice of the Boston office of Deloitte & Touche LLP. She holds a B.S. in business administration from Bryant University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

Nerissa has decades of expertise in rare disease drug development, including extensive experience in clinical development, medical affairs, and regulatory strategy across both early- and late-stage programs. She is an accomplished physician executive and pediatric endocrinologist with a distinguished career in biotechnology, spanning leadership roles in both private and public biotech companies. Nerissa has been instrumental in the development and commercialization of therapies for rare diseases across therapeutic areas, including neuromuscular, metabolic, and lysosomal storage disorders.

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Prior to Alltrna, Nerissa served as CMO at Entrada Therapeutics, where she led clinical and regulatory strategy, medical affairs, and patient advocacy efforts. She has also held CMO roles at Tiburio Therapeutics and AVROBIO, where she oversaw clinical development for multiple gene therapy programs. Earlier in her career, she served as Global Head (VP) of Clinical and Medical Affairs at Zafgen and held key roles at Shire and Enobia Pharma. She also played a pivotal role in Alexion’s $1B+ acquisition of Enobia Pharma.

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Nerissa currently serves as an independent board member of Rezolute Bio and holds an M.D. from East Carolina University School of Medicine, an M.S. in Clinical Research from Indiana University, and an Executive MBA from Northeastern University. She is certified in Pediatric Endocrinology by the American Board of Pediatrics.

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William Kiesman, Ph.D., has more than two decades of experience in the design, development, and manufacturing of small molecule and oligonucleotide therapeutics. Prior to joining Alltrna, Will served as the Vice President and Head of Oligonucleotide and Small Molecule Development at Biogen. During his 24 years with the company, he was responsible for a wide range of activities from medicinal chemistry research and automated parallel synthesis to building both the chemical development and the end-to-end oligonucleotide development and manufacturing teams. 

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Will and his teams have supported dozens of small molecule and oligonucleotide clinical programs and played pivotal roles in the successful worldwide regulatory CMC approvals of Tecfidera® (dimethyl fumarate) in multiple sclerosis and Spinraza® (nusinersen) for spinal muscular atrophy.

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Will earned his B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Connecticut and pursued his postdoctoral research at Duke University. He is co-author on more than 40 publications and patents and has contributed to five book chapters.

Caroline Kӧhrer, Ph.D., is an RNA biology professional with more than 25 years of experience in both academic and industrial research & development (R&D). She leads Alltrna’s Discovery Platform, utilizing high-throughput screening infrastructure and machine learning tools, to create tRNA therapeutics to treat thousands of diseases. Prior to Alltrna, Caroline served as the Director of RNA Science at Moderna, where she led the RNA Science Department within Moderna’s R&D Platform, developing mRNA-based technology for application as a new drug modality in infectious disease, personalized cancer medicine, oncology, autoimmune, and rare disease. Under her leadership, Moderna expanded the mechanistic understanding of mRNA design principles underlying current and future mRNA therapeutics, including Moderna’s Spikevax^Ⓡ mRNA vaccine for COVID-19.

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Previous to Moderna, Caroline spent 20 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology performing research focused on protein synthesis across all kingdoms of life, with a particular emphasis on the role of transfer RNA (tRNA) and RNA modifications in translation, rules of mRNA decoding, genetic code expansion, and ribosome biogenesis.

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She has co-authored more than 40 publications, book chapters, and patents. Her peer-reviewed publications include PNAS, Nature Communications, Cell Metabolism, and Nucleic Acid Therapeutics. She has co-edited a book on ‘Protein Engineering’ published by Springer and contributed a chapter entitled, ‘Specialized Components of the Translational Machinery for Unnatural Amino Acid Mutagenesis: tRNAs, Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases, and Ribosomes.’ Caroline earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Sandra Visser, Ph.D., brings over two decades of extensive experience in quantitative medicine and strategic drug discovery and development with a passion to accelerate the development of novel therapies and improve patient outcomes.

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Prior to Alltrna, Sandra has held leadership roles in leading pharmaceutical companies, including GSK, Merck, and AstraZeneca, where she and her teams successfully advanced preclinical and clinical drug projects and supported several successful marketing applications, using clinical and quantitative translational pharmacology concepts across diverse therapeutic areas, including oncology, cardiometabolic, and neuroscience. Through her career, she has been recognized for her pivotal contributions to model-informed drug discovery and development (MID3) and the integration of biomarker data into mathematical models to optimize dose selection, accelerate clinical trial design, and enhance regulatory submissions. She currently serves as President-Elect of the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

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Sandra earned her M.Sc. in Bio Pharmaceutical Sciences and Ph.D. in Quantitative Pharmacology from Leiden University in the Netherlands. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed scientific articles and has been an editor and reviewer for several scientific journals.

Gale Cohen brings more than 20 years of strategic and broad experience in Human Resources (HR) in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Prior to joining Alltrna, Gale was the Head of HR for Cyteir Therapeutics. At Cyteir, she provided strategic human resources leadership to the development and implementation of HR strategy to support the growth of the company from a private to a publicly traded company.

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Prior to Cyteir, Gale was at BMS, where she held two roles of Global Talent Management Lead and Head of HR as part of the Devens Biologics Manufacturing Campus. At BMS, she provided strategic human resources leadership to develop and implement transformative talent practices including strategic workforce planning, talent management & succession planning, organizational development, and leadership development. Her leadership contributed the successful achievement of strategic business objectives, growing the organization at both the local and global levels.

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Gale spent over 10 years at AstraZeneca before joining BMS. She was the HR Lead at the company’s R&D facility in Waltham, Massachusetts. At AstraZeneca, Gale was instrumental in the growth and expansion of the R&D site, through strategic talent management, talent acquisition, leadership development, organizational development, and performance management.

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Gale holds a B.S. in Management from Bentley University and a Master of Science in Human Resources Development from Villanova University.

Shiva Krupa, Ph.D., is an experienced leader in R&D strategy, program management, and portfolio oversight within the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, bringing expertise across oncology, autoimmune, cardiovascular, CNS, and rare disease indications. Shiva's multidisciplinary expertise spans gene therapy, small molecules, and biologics, underpinned by a commitment to advancing science through strategic partnerships and effective resource management.

Prior to Alltrna, she was Vice President and Head of Portfolio and Program Management at Orna Therapeutics, where she spearheaded strategic initiatives for LNP circular RNA therapies, particularly in oncology and autoimmune therapeutics. Her achievements include leading the in vivo CD19 panCAR program through pre-IND submission and developing a robust clinical strategy for first-in-human trials.

Previous to Orna, Shiva held a similar executive role at Asklepios Bio (a Bayer company), where she directed portfolio governance, aligning pipeline strategies with organizational goals and overseeing IND submissions and trial initiations in gene therapy for rare diseases. She built and led a global team of program managers, standardizing practices across programs to enhance operational efficiency.

At Homology Medicines, Shiva served as Senior Director, leading the CNS portfolio and the MLD-HMI-202 program, while also driving strategic alliances and governance forums to align internal efforts with broader R&D objectives. Her earlier career includes pivotal roles at Biogen and Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where she specialized in R&D sourcing strategies, strategic sourcing, and external collaborations.Shiva has a Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology from Jawaharlal Nehru University and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts.

Taleen Afeyan brings experience in early-stage biotech investing and operations to her Strategy & Operations role at Alltrna. In her role, she works across the organization on fundraising, business development, and program management. 

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Prior to Alltrna, Taleen worked for Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc., investing in early-stage biotech companies as part of their strategic investment arm, which collectively managed a $1.6B portfolio. Additionally, she helped open their coworking lab space in Kendall Square, Alexandria LaunchLabs, which provides biotech founders with the environment and resources to build companies. Her previous roles included Associate, Science & Technology and Head of Proprietary Products.

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Taleen received an MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management and a B.S. in Biological Engineering at MIT.