Board of Directors

Mr. Tomer Kariv is our Chairman of our Board and previously served as a member of the board of directors of Eloxx Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. since October 2016. For the past 14 years Mr. Kariv has been the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of The Pontifax Group, which established six funds with over $700 million under management and invested in over 65 portfolio companies. Mr. Kariv also serves on the board of directors of many of The Pontifax Group’s portfolio companies including: V-Wave Ltd., EyeYon Medical Ltd., Cathworks Ltd., Raziel Therapeutics Ltd., VBI Vaccines Inc., LogicBio, and 89Bio Ltd. He previously served as a Director of Medical Compression Systems Ltd., Insuline Medical Ltd., Headsense Medical Ltd., Macrocure Ltd., Avraham Pharmaceuticals, Arno Therapeutics, Stimatix Ltd., Applied Immune Technologies, Allium Ltd., Tucos, Inc., Therapix Biosciences Ltd., Otic Pharma Ltd., Observer in Entera Ltd., Nutrinia Ltd., Check-Cap Ltd., and CollPlant Holdings Ltd. Mr. Kariv has 14 years of experience as a seasoned venture capital industry executive and has played a key role in investing, managing and nurturing technology driven companies and startups and has held senior management positions at top Israeli financial institutions. Mr. Kariv received a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Mr. Sumit Aggarwal joined Eloxx as our President and Chief Executive Officer on April 1, 2021, and previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of Zikani since 2019. Mr. Aggarwal joined Zikani in 2018 as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer, and led the transformation of Zikani from an early stage technology company to a rare disease and oncology-focused organization. Prior to joining Zikani, from 2015 to 2018, Mr. Aggarwal served as acting President and Chief Financial Officer of Progenity, Inc., a private genetic services company offering pre-natal genetic testing to OB/GYN practices. From 2016 to 2018, Mr. Aggarwal served as a member of the board of directors of NEOSEQ, a privately-held genetic sequencing based diagnostic company. Mr. Aggarwal has also held leadership roles in healthcare and biotechnology at Adage Capital and as an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company in its healthcare practice.

Mr. Aggarwal has more than 20 years of experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology commercial operations, investment management, management consulting, and has been successful in transforming companies by reinvigorating innovation, growth and profitability, and raising capital for promising technology companies. Mr. Aggarwal holds an M.B.A. with distinction from the Johnson School, Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Technology with Honors in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Dr. Zafrira Avnur, Ph.D. has served as a member of our Board since December 2017, and previously served as a member of the board of directors of Eloxx Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. since June 2017. Dr. Avnur is the Chief Scientific Officer at Quark Venture Inc., a venture investment fund focused on life sciences investments. Prior to Quark, Dr. Avnur was the Global Head of Academic Innovation, Roche Partnering from 2009 until October 2016. Dr. Avnur was also named Global Head of Neglected Diseases Roche Partnering from 2010 until 2012. She also has created nine startup companies and serves on the board of directors of several portfolio companies. Preceding her academic innovation leadership role, Dr. Avnur assumed responsibility for scientific evaluations of partnering opportunities and started the “Finder” group for Biomarkers for all therapeutic areas at Roche. She acted as Liaison between Pharma and Diagnostic Divisions and contributed to the PHC (Personalized Health Care) initiative. Prior to her partnering roles, Dr. Avnur worked in diagnostics and pharmaceuticals research and development for nearly 20 years. She held a number of positions progressing from scientist and manager to global responsibilities. In these roles she was overseeing the advancement of compounds from the bench into the clinic, and was involved in the design and execution of early clinical studies that characterize the pharmacodynamics and clinical effects of a number of compounds. Dr. Avnur received a B.Sc. in Biology and a M.Sc. in Biology from Ben Gurion University and a Ph.D. in Immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Dr. Avnur also conducted post-doctoral work at Stanford Medical Center in the Cancer Immunology Department.

Mr. Ran Nussbaum has served as a member of our Board since December 2017, and previously served as a member of the board of directors of Eloxx Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. since September 2013. Mr. Nussbaum is a managing partner and co-founder of Pontifax. The fund runs more than 60 portfolio companies around the globe. Mr. Nussbaum’s work revolves around constant and active involvement in companies, providing them with strategic and business development oversight. He previously served as a board member for several companies, including Kite Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Gilead), cCAM Therapeutics (acquired by Merck), ArQule (acquired by Merck) and Prevail Therapeutics (acquired by Eli Lilly). Currently, Mr. Nussbaum sits on the boards of many of Pontifax’s portfolio companies, including UroGen Pharma, Inc. and Lutris Pharma Ltd. Mr. Nussbaum also serves as Chairman of the Board of Keros Therapeutics, Inc.

Dr. Rajesh Parekh joined our Board on April 1, 2021 and previously served as a director of Zikani Therapeutics, Inc. Dr. Parekh is a General Partner at Advent Life Sciences LLP, which he joined in 2006. During an academic career at Oxford University, he co-founded Oxford GlycoSciences PLC, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Executive Officer from 1988 until its sale to Celltech Group PLC (now UCB SA) in 2003. He has founded or served on the boards of several life sciences companies in the United States and Europe including Avila Therapeutics, Inc., EUSA Pharma (Europe) Limited, Biocartis NV, Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics (AMT) Holding NV (now uniQure), Aura, Inc., Itara Ltd., Cellnovo SA, Artax, Inc., and Project Paradise Limited. He was also a member of the Supervisory Board of the Novartis Venture Fund and is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of Galapagos nv, (a public biotech company). Dr. Parekh also currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Advent Venture Partners LLP, Advent Life Sciences LLP, Aleta, Inc., Alpha Anomeric SA, Amphista Therapeutics Ltd., Arrakis, Inc., Aura Biosciences, Capella BioSciences Ltd., Levicept Limited, PE Limited, Pheno Therapeutics Ltd., and Tridek-One Therapeutics SAS. Mr. Parekh also served as a director of Zikani prior to its acquisition by the Company. He received his MA in Biochemistry and DPhil in Molecular Medicine from the University of Oxford, where he has also been a Senior Research Fellow and Professor.

Mr. Steven Rubin has served as a member of our Board since December 2017, and previously served as a member of the Sevion Therapeutics, Inc. Board of Directors since May 2014. Mr. Rubin is the Executive Vice President —Administration and a Director of OPKO Health, Inc. Mr. Rubin is currently a Director of VBI Vaccines, Inc., Red Violet, Inc., Kidville, Inc., Non-Invasive Monitoring Systems, Inc., Cocrystal Pharma, Inc., Castle Brands, Inc., Neovasc, Inc. and ChromaDex Corp. Mr. Rubin previously served as a Director of Cogint, Inc. prior to the spinoff of Red Violet from Cogint in March 2018, Dreams, Inc., Safestitch Medical, Inc. prior to its merger with TransEnterix, Inc., SciVac Therapeutics, Inc. prior to its merger with VBI Vaccines, Inc., Tiger X Medical, Inc. prior to its merger with BioCardia, Inc., and PROLOR Biotech, Inc. prior to its acquisition by OPKO Health, Inc. Mr. Rubin received a B.A. in Economics from Tulane University and a J.D. from the University of Florida.

Dr. Jasbir Seehra has served as a member of our Board since February 2018. Dr. Seehra has served as Chief Executive Officer of Keros Therapeutics since December 2015. Before that, he worked for Third Rock Ventures and helped establish Decibel (where he still serves on their Scientific Advisory Board) and Ember Therapeutics (as Chief Scientific Officer). Before joining Ember, Dr. Seehra was part of a team of scientific advisors for many companies. He has served as an advisor on Ember’s Scientific Advisory Board since the company’s launch. With greater than 25 years of experience developing innovative small molecule and biologic drugs, Dr. Seehra served as Chief Scientific Officer of Acceleron Pharma, Inc., which he co-founded in 2003. He has also served as Vice President of Biological Chemistry at Wyeth and led the small molecule lead discovery effort at Genetics Institute, Inc., where he successfully built the institute’s small molecule drug discovery capabilities, including medicinal chemistry, high throughput screening and structural biology. Dr. Seehra has authored numerous publications and is an inventor on 78 patents. Dr. Seehra received a B.S. and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Southampton in England. He completed his postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. Gadi Veinrib has served as a member of our Board since 2017. Mr. Veinrib previously served as a member of the board of directors of Eloxx Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. since November 2014. Mr. Veinrib serves as the Chairman of the Board of Aqua Maof Aquaculture Technologies Ltd., a world leader in indoor aquaculture technology, as well as other companies in the Aqua Maof Global Aquaculture Group. Mr. Veinrib serves as a board member in Israeli based Meteo-Logic Ltd. and Minute Ltd. Mr. Veinrib served as Vice President of Elron Electronic Industries Ltd., as well as a director of companies within Discount Investment Corporation Ltd. (a member of the IDB Group), including Netvision Ltd., RDSeed Ltd., Cloudyn Software Ltd. and Nana10 Ltd. Mr. Veinrib holds a B.A. in Economics from Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Alan Walts joined our Board on April 1, 2021 and previously served as Executive Chairman of Zikani since May 2020. Dr. Walts is a US-based Venture Partner with Advent Life Sciences, a position he has held since January 2014. Dr. Walts serves as Executive Chairman and Director of PIC Therapeutics (since 2016) and Artax Biopharma (since 2017). Dr. Walts is also a founder, Director and Treasurer of The Termeer Foundation, a public 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2019. Dr. Walts is currently an independent Director of Neuroelectrics Corp, and a business advisor and board observer of several private companies including Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, Arrakis Therapeutics, Alpha Anomeric and Amphista Therapeutics. Dr. Walts’ previous board experience includes X4 Pharmaceuticals (Director and co-founder, audit and nominating/governance committee member, 2013-2019), Aura Biosciences (Executive Chairman, Director, audit committee member, 2013-2019), and Arrakis Therapeutics (co-founder, Executive Chairman and Director, 2015-2019). Dr. Walts has over 25 years of industry experience at Genzyme in business development, business strategy, research and development, general management, and venture capital. Prior to leaving Genzyme in 2013, Dr. Walts most recently managed Genzyme’s corporate venture fund, Genzyme Ventures (now Sanofi Ventures).

Dr. Walts received a Ph.D. in chemistry from MIT in 1985, carried out post-doctoral research in biochemistry at MIT with Professor Christopher Walsh, and completed the executive Program for Management Development at Harvard Business School. Our Board believes Dr. Walts’ drug development and leadership experience qualifies him to serve on our Board.

Scientific Advisory Board

Timor Baasov, Ph.D., Irving and Jeanette Benveniste Chair in Life Sciences and Professor of Chemistry at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. Dr. Baasov is a recipient of the 2016 Israel Chemical Society Prize for Technological Innovation for developing new chemicals as therapeutic agents for the treatment of genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations. Eloxx’s technology is originated from the Technion and results from research led by Professor Baasov.

David Bedwell, PhD, Professor and Chairman, James C. and Elizabeth T. Lee Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. Dr. Bedwell also currently serves as Associate Director of the Cystic Fibrosis Research Center and Co-Director of the UAB Structural Biology Program. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2011. Dr. Bedwell’s lab studies the mechanistic details of translation termination and Nonsense-Mediated mRNA Decay (NMD).

Rachel Green, PhD, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Green’s work has focused on diverse aspects of translation and its regulation in bacteria, yeast, and higher eukaryotic systems using primarily biochemistry and high throughput sequencing approaches. Recent work on mRNA surveillance mechanisms in yeast has synergized with interests in ribosome homeostasis and translational control in various tissue types. She is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2012), and the National Academy of Medicine (2017).

Sudhir Kumar, PhD, Laurel H. Carnel Professor, and the founding Director of the Institute of Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine, Department of Biology, College of Science and Technology, Temple University. Dr. Kumar was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for exemplary contributions in evolutionary bioinformatics, particularly in developing high-impact comparative analysis software for biologists and in illuminating the evolutionary dynamics of mutations and species through comparative genomics.

Lynne Elizabeth Maquat, PhD, J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics in the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Director of the Center for RNA Biology, and Chair of Graduate Women in Science at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA. After obtaining her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undertaking post-doctoral work at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, she joined Roswell Park Cancer Institute before moving to the University of Rochester. Professor Maquat discovered nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in 1981 and, subsequently while elucidating the mechanism of NMD, the exon-junction complex (EJC) and how the EJC marks mRNAs for a quality-control “pioneer” round of protein synthesis. She also discovered Staufen-mediated mRNA decay, which mechanistically competes with NMD and, by so doing, new roles for short interspersed elements and long non-coding RNAs. Additional current interests include microRNA decay and functional links between transcription factors and RNA-binding proteins. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2006), and an elected Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2006), the National Academy of Sciences (2011), and the National Academy of Medicine (2017). Dr. Maquat was a Batsheva de Rothschild Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences & Humanities (2012-3) and has received the William C. Rose Award from the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (2014), a Canada Gairdner International Award (2015), the international RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award in Service (2010) and in Science (2017), the Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science (2017), the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Excellence in Science Award (2018), and the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2018).