Seema P. Rogers, M.S., has served as Head of Clinical Operations of Nurix since August 2019, first as Executive Director from August 2019 to June 2021 and currently as Vice President since June 2021. Ms. Rogers has over 20 years of experience in clinical drug development, primarily in oncology. Before joining Nurix, Ms. Rogers served in a consulting capacity at IGM Biosciences, Stemcentrx (acquired by AbbVie) and Reflexion Medical. Prior to consulting, she worked at FivePrime Therapeutics where she built the company’s clinical operations organization, was responsible for defining operational strategy and managed the development of concurrent assets in oncology. Early in her career, Ms. Rogers served in positions of increasing responsibility at organizations including Cell Genesys, Geron, Genentech and Stanford University, where she managed global clinical trials in all phases of development. Ms. Rogers holds a B.S. from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and an M.S. from The Johns Hopkins University.
Raf Lambrecht, Ph.D.
Raf Lambrecht, Ph.D., has served as Head of Regulatory Affairs at Nurix since April 2020. Dr. Lambrecht is a Regulatory Affairs professional with over 25 years of experience in global regulatory strategy and execution. Prior to Nurix, he held regulatory positions with increasing responsibilities at Baxter, Bayer, and FibroGen. He has successfully filed and obtained approvals for INDs, CTAs, NDAs, and BLAs for high profile lead compounds in therapeutic areas of hemophilia, anemia, oncology, respiratory, autoimmune, and neuromuscular degenerative diseases. He brings to Nurix broad international regulatory expertise across the CMC, nonclinical and clinical regulatory areas, and broad experience solving complex regulatory issues in biologics and small molecules. In his early career, Dr. Lambrecht authored expert position papers and participated in pioneering Industry-Agency working groups for guideline development in Europe. He earned a master’s degree in Pharmacology and Ph.D. in Radiopharmaceuticals from the University of Gent, Belgium, and an MBA from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Marine Champsaur, Ph.D.
Marine Champsaur, Ph.D., has served as Vice President and Head of Medical Affairs since August 2022. Prior to joining Nurix, Dr. Champsaur provided scientific strategy and communications consulting services to early-stage biotech companies across a range of treatment modalities spanning the autoimmune and inflammatory disease, vaccine, and oncology space. Before that, Dr. Champsaur played a pivotal role in building the medical affairs function at Dermira, Inc., where she led the medical strategy and communications team. Early in her career, she held roles of increasing responsibility at UCB Pharma within immunology global medical affairs. Dr. Champsaur holds a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of California, San Francisco.
Janine Powers, Ph.D.
Janine Powers, Ph.D., has served as Head of Translational Medicine at Nurix since September 2018. Dr. Powers has over 20 years of experience in drug development spanning multiple indications. Prior to joining Nurix, Dr. Powers worked in positions of increasing responsibility at FivePrime Therapeutics and was one of the founding members of the Clinical Biomarkers and Companion Diagnostics organization. During this time, Dr. Powers managed biomarker strategy and execution on multiple global oncology trials evaluating both targeted therapeutics and cancer immunotherapies. Dr. Powers holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego, a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology and Physiology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine.
George W. Cole, Jr., M.D.
George W. Cole, Jr., M.D., has served as Vice President, Clinical Development of Nurix since April 2023. Dr. Cole completed his general surgery residency at Baylor College of Medicine and a surgical oncology fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. Dr. Cole previously served as Assistant Regimental Surgeon in the US Marine Corps, General Surgeon in the US Air Force, Senior Medical Director at AbbVie, Executive Medical Director at Nektar Therapeutics, and Vice President of Clinical Development at Nuvation Bio. Dr. Cole holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.D. from Yale University.
Frederick Cohen, Ph.D.
Frederick Cohen, Ph.D., joined Nurix in 2017 and has served as Head of Medicinal Chemistry since April 2020. He has more than 20 years of experience in small molecule drug discovery, spanning multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, neurodegeneration and antibiotics. Prior to joining Nurix, he served at Achaogen, Genentech, and Tularik. Dr. Cohen earned his B.A. in Chemistry from Occidental College and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine.
John Kuriyan, Ph.D.
John Kuriyan, Ph.D., is an expert in the structural dynamics of ubiquitin ligases and other signaling complexes. Dr. Kuriyan is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley. Prior to that, he served as Assistant Professor and then Professor at Rockefeller University for 14 years. Dr. Kuriyan serves as a member of the Advisory Board at Carmot Therapeutics Inc. and is a Senior Editor at eLife, a new enterprise in high profile and open access scientific publishing. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, which awarded him the 2005 Richard Lounsbery Award. He holds a B.S. in chemistry from Juniata College, Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Michael Rapé, Ph.D.
Michael Rapé, Ph.D., is a leader in the biology of ubiquitin-dependent cell cycle progression and carcinogenesis. He is a Howard Hughes Investigator and a Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He started his own lab at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 2006, where he has developed novel screening tools to identify the ubiquitylation enzymes that are important for cell division and differentiation and pair them with the proteins they target. Prior to that, he completed his postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School in the lab of Marc Kirschner. In recognition of his creativity and productivity, Dr. Rapé was named a Pew Scholar and received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award in 2007. He has also won prestigious fellowships from the Human Frontier Science Program and the European Molecular Biology Organization. Dr. Rapé studied Biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth in Germany and received his Ph.D. at the MPI in Martinsried, Germany in the lab of Stefan Jentsch.
Eren Demirhan, Ph.D.
Eren Demirhan, Ph.D., has served as Vice President and Head of Biometrics at Nurix since March 2021, leading the Company’s Biostatistics and Clinical Data Science efforts. Dr. Demirhan brings over 17 years of experience in drug pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, championing data-driven drug development ideology and implementation. Prior to joining Nurix, Dr. Demirhan served in a variety of roles at Allogene Therapeutics, Medivation, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Biogen, and GSK. Dr. Demirhan holds a B.A. in Statistics from Middle East Technical University, a Ph.D. in Statistics from North Carolina State University and an M.B.A from Kenan Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
Ena Wang, M.D., M.S.
Ena Wang, M.D., M.S., has served as Vice President of Cell Therapy and Product Development since June 2021. Prior to joining Nurix, Dr. Wang was Executive Director of Translational Sciences at Allogene Therapeutics and Senior Director of Translational Sciences at AbbVie Corp. Before joining the biopharma industry, Dr. Wang had a distinguished academic career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she served in a variety of roles including Director of the Center for Human Immunology, Director of Molecular Science in the Department of Transfusion Medicine, and Acting Chief of the Infectious Disease and Immunogenetics Section. She has also worked at Sidra Medicine in Qatar, where she served as Chief Research Officer and built state-of-art translational medicine infrastructures and research programs. Dr. Wang has dedicated more than 26-years to translational medicine with a primary focus on cancer immunotherapy and biomarker discovery and has pioneered real-time transcriptional analysis for cancer immune biology and antigen specific T cell monitoring. She has published more than 250 peer-reviewed research articles and is a Co-Founder and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Translational Medicine. Dr. Wang completed her medical degree at Shijiazhuang Medical University and her Master of Medicine degree at the Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University.