What if...
We define cancer as a disease of evolutionary origin?
What if...
We accept that successful treatment of cancer will require dealing with ecology and evolution of tumors?
What if...
We can learn from mother Nature how it uses evolution to solve the biological problems and use this knowledge to develop entirely new class of drugs?
Aveta Biomics is pioneering a way to unlock the power of nature-inspired drugs. Our platform, powered by insights into evolutionary biology, creates the next generation of first-in-class botanical drugs intended to provide a durable response to cancer patients.
Leadership
Parag G. Mehta, PhD, Co-founder and CEO is a serial entrepreneur with a track record of commercializing novel chemistry based innovations. He has strong background in biotechnology, organic, macromolecular and biochemistry and material science. His experience encompasses product R&D, global business development, manufacturing and capitalization of companies through public and private financing. He received his PhD in Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY and MSc in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India.
Luis Z Avila, PhD, Vice President, Drug Discovery & Development, brings to Aveta Biomics more than 20 years of industrial experience spanning early startup (Focal, Inc) through biotech (Genzyme) and most recently as Distinguished Scientific Fellow at a multinational pharmaceutical company (Sanofi). He has successfully guided several product concepts through various phases of discovery, optimization, product development and CMC for clinical evaluation and/or product launch (either internally and with external company collaborators). He obtained his PhD in Bioorganic Chemistry from Stanford University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology). He holds more than twenty issued US patents and coauthored more than twenty scientific articles and book chapters on topics including bioorganic chemistry, biomaterials, drug delivery, bioconjugation and biologic+synthetic hybrid products.
Board of Directors
Guha Bala, Member of the Board of Directors, is a serial entrepreneur, the President of Velan Studios, a game discovery company, and Partner at Velan Ventures, an innovation investment company. He also serves on the Board of Directors of St. Peter’s Health Partners. Guha received his BS in Chemistry from Harvard College and MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Bharat Tewaries, MD, MBA, Member of the Board of Directors, is a C-suite executive with deep strategic and operational expertise. Trained as a medical doctor with an MBA, Dr. Tewarie held positions of increasing responsibilities at Boehringer Ingelheim, Roche, Merck Serono, and UCB in Europe and USA. His rich experience encompasses direct P&L responsibilities, executive management, business development, clinical development, medical affairs, sales & marketing including brand strategy, access & pricing. Most recently, he was the Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer and member of the Executive Committee of UCB. Prior to that he served as Senior Vice President of different functional units at Merck Serono. Since 2021 he is the CEO and Chair of the Board of ViroCarb Inc and the founder of Boston Biopharma Consultants, a strategic advisory firm for biopharma and medical devices companies.
Scientific Advisors
Eugene I. Shakhnovich, PhD, Scientific Advisor is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He is one of the leading researchers in the areas of protein folding and has carried out crucial work tying the physical chemistry of protein with the evolutionary biology. His laboratory has made fundamental contributions to understanding of the mechanisms of drug resistance by studying the mutational fitness of an organismal evolution using the biophysical principles. He is the author of more than 200 publications, serves on the editorial boards of several major journals and is a recipient of several awards and fellowships. Prof. Shakhnovich is also an entrepreneur who co-founded Vitae Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VTAE) which was recently acquired by Allergan for $639 million.
Daniel L. Hartl, PhD, Scientific Advisor is Higgins Professor of Biology and former Chair of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His laboratory studies genetics, genomics and molecular evolution. His seminal contributions to experimental evolutionary genetics have far-reaching impact on understanding the development of resistance to drugs in human diseases. An elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences of India, Prof. Hartl has been honored with the Samuel Weiner Outstanding Scholar Award and the Medal of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn. He is a Past President of the Genetics Society of America and the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution and has served on the National Institutes of Health Genetics Study Section, Genetic Basis of Disease Review Committee, and on the Editorial Boards of Genetics, Annual Review of Genetics and, Molecular Biology and Evolution. He has authored or coauthored more than 400 scientific articles and 20 books including Genetics: Analysis of Genes and Genomes, Essential Genetics: A Genomics Perspective, Principles of Population Genetics and Primer of Population Genetics.