Our team

Bob Tepper, M.D., is a partner of Third Rock Ventures, which he co‑founded in 2007, and focuses on the formation, development, and scientific strategy of Third Rock’s portfolio companies, as well as actively identifying and evaluating new investments. Prior to joining Third Rock, he served as president of research and development at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., (or Millennium). Before that, he served as principal investigator in the laboratory of tumor biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. Bob is also a founder and former member of the scientific advisory board of Cell Genesys/Abgenix Inc. Bob serves as an adjunct faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and is an advisory board member of several health care institutions, including the research advisory council of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the external advisory board of the School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts Medical School. Bob is a board member of Jounce Therapeutics, Inc., Allena Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Kala Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Constellation Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Neon Therapeutics, Inc. He was previously a board member at bluebird bio, Inc. Bob received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and A.B. in biochemistry from Princeton University.

Cary Pfeffer, M.D., has over 25 years of business development and transaction experience, along with a broad array of biotech product development experience. Cary leads Third Rock’s partner development efforts, including building and maintaining strong relationships to work with large biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Cary supports and advises on business development efforts across the Third Rock portfolio and has assumed active leadership roles in its portfolio companies, functioning as chief executive officer and chief business officer through the first 12-18 months after launch. Companies he has led and advised include: Rheos Medicines, Faze Medicines, Tango Therapeutics, Ablexis, Edimer, Neon Therapeutics, Jounce Therapeutics, Agios Pharmaceuticals, Eleven Biotherapeutics and Taris Biomedical. Before Third Rock, Cary founded The Pfeffer Group, a boutique consulting firm that provided business development and strategy advisory services, completing multiple transactions for leading biotechnology and life sciences companies. Prior to that, he spent more than a decade at Biogen, where he held several senior and executive level U.S. and global management roles focused on business and market development, product development and commercial operations. Previously, Cary spent several years in corporate finance in the health care investment banking group of Lehman Brothers. Cary earned his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a B.A. in biochemistry from Columbia University.

Finny Kuruvilla, M.D., Ph.D., serves as the chief investment officer for Eventide Funds, lead portfolio manager on the Eventide Gilead Fund, and portfolio manager on the Eventide Healthcare & Life Sciences Fund. Dr. Kuruvilla has a unique background in healthcare, statistics, and investing. Concurrent with Eventide, he was a principal at Clarus Ventures, a leading healthcare and life sciences venture capital firm. Before that, he was a research fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a clinical fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital Boston, and a postdoctoral scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Kuruvilla holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, a Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University, a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree from California Institute of Technology in chemistry.

Gladys Nunez serves as Director of Business Development at Amgen. Gladys is responsible for venture investments activities including leading investment diligence, deal execution and board observer roles for several portfolio companies including Celsius, Kernal Bio, DJS Antibodies, Ribometrix, and Obsidian. Gladys joined Amgen in 1997. Gladys has over 25 years’ experience in pharma/biotech experience including 8 years in Amgen Ventures and 12 years in the business development group. Prior to joining business development Gladys worked 7 years in in R&D, concurrent between Amgen and AstraZeneca. During her time in R&D Gladys worked on oncology and inflammation programs and Aranesp /Epogen assay release protocols. Based in Amgen’s Cambridge, Ma site she is a member of the external outreach committee and a member of the cross-site leadership team. Gladys holds an MSc in Biochemical Pharmacology from the University of Southampton in England, and BSc from Marist College in Pre-Med. She also serves as board member for Latinos in Bio and is a member of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA), Bioscience & Investor Inclusion Group and mentor for VC University promoting career development for underrepresented people in the life sciences.

Hiromichi Kimura, Ph.D., has more than 20 years R&D experience. Dr Kimura serves multi-dimensional R&D activities, especially Oncology as a PhD Scientist and Investor, Board Director/DEM Biopharma (Don’t Eat Me/Eat Me signals), Casma (Autophagic degradation), NeoPhore (DNA Mismatch Repair), Stealth mode company (Spliceosome), and Board Observer (7 companies), Investor advisory board member of many venture capital funds across US, EU/UK and Asia, Academic appointments (The University of Tokyo).
Dr Kimura reviews, supervises and executes each equity investment to private company in life science BioVenture world, and leads many strategic LP investments in a corporate-wise with creative initiatives, resulting in highly competitive accomplishment last couple years. Before joining Astellas Venture Management in 2018, he served as Head of Alliance & Management Group in Drug discovery research at Astellas Pharma Inc. including Research leadership of post-merger integration of Biotech and Venture (Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, Ogeda, SA, Quethera, Ltd.). Dr Kimura co-founded Kyoto University-Astellas incubator research station in Kyoto University. Dr Kimura conducted drug discovery as Research Manager, Oncology research unit, Astellas Pharma Inc. and also led many global research collaborations with CRUK, Crick institute and Beatson Institute, and MDACC etc. since he joined Astellas in 2014. Prior to Astellas, Dr Kimura served as Research head, Head of Pharmacology in Oncology Drug Discovery Unit, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, and Drug Discovery department in Millennium: Takeda Oncology Company. In this capacity of an officer with high responsibility, Dr Kimura was responsible for drug discovery from early to late stage including innovative platform technologies at Japan facility as well as global drug discovery initiatives and generated first-in-class projects and programs. Dr Kimura also served the number of academic lectures with academic appointments. Prior to his tenure at Takeda, Dr Kimura was dedicated to conducting basic research and developing Drug Discovery and Translational Research as a Senior Postdoc Research leader in St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (led by Dr Tom Curran, FRS, currently Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer of the Children’s Research Institute, Children’s Mercy Hospital), collaborated with Genentech (Dr Fred de Savage, Vice President) and Curis (Dr Lee Rubin, CSO, currently Professor at Harvard University). Achievements published are designated as the first invention of live animal pharmacokinetics/dynamics imaging system. The activity contributed the project to launching as Hedgehog antagonist, Vismodegib®. Dr Kimura is appointed a unique academic position in Japan top-tier graduate school program in the University of Tokyo since 2018. Dr Kimura received a Ph.D. with distinction in Epigenetics, Cellular Molecular Biology/Veterinary Medical Sciences from the University of Tokyo.

Keith Dionne, Ph.D., is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience leading U.S. and international biotechnology companies. Prior to joining Casma, he was president and chief executive officer of Constellation Pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Constellation, Keith was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Third Rock Ventures. Before that, he served as the chief executive at Surface Logix, Inc. (which was acquired by Nano Terra, Inc). Keith was the president and chief executive of Alantos Pharmaceuticals, leading the company’s acquisition by Amgen for more than $300 million in 2007. Prior to that, Keith was with Millennium Pharmaceuticals (now Takeda) holding positions of increasing responsibility as vice president of business development and general manager of technology business. Before that, Keith led implantable drug delivery research at ALZA Pharmaceuticals spearheading the development of Viadur™, a 12-month implantable treatment for prostate cancer. He has also served as an adjunct professor in the biomedical department at Brown University. Keith received both his Ph.D. in chemical engineering and his M.S. in technology policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Millie Ray, Ph.D., is a principal on the investment team at The Column Group. At The Column Group, Millie is active in all elements of company formation including sourcing new ideas, recruiting key scientific talent and founders, developing scientific, business, and operating plans, and taking on interim scientific and operational roles. Before that, she helped develop and launch Foghorn Therapeutics working in business development and scientific strategy. Millie also serves as a director on the board of Hexagon Bio. Millie was instrumental in establishing one of the first onsite next-generation sequencers for Ebola viral surveillance via Harvard University and the Broad Institute in West Africa. She also traveled to Kenya with Seeding Labs and Harvard University to facilitate the transfer of surplus lab equipment to universities adopting research. Concurrently, Millie completed her doctoral studies on the effects of long non-coding RNAs on chromatin regulation and has studied epigenetic regulation in embryonic stem cells. Millie received her Ph.D. in genetics and genomics from Harvard University and holds an S.B. in mathematics and in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Nagesh Mahanthappa Ph.D., M.B.A., is a distinguished entrepreneur with extensive executive experience, most recently the founding president and chief executive officer of Scholar Rock, Inc.. During his initial ​eight-year tenure, Nagesh took the company public and lead two distinct drug candidates into clinical testing; he subsequently served as interim CEO guiding the company’s lead program into pivotal trials. His previous experiences include being the founding employee and vice president of corporate development at Avila Therapeutics, Inc. (acquired by Celgene), and previously a founding employee of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals where he rose to the position of vice president of scientific & strategic development. Before that, he served as manager of business development at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and had several positions with scientific and strategic responsibility at Ontogeny (now a part of Curis, Inc.). Nagesh started in the biotechnology industry as a staff scientist at Cambridge NeuroScience, and was a founder of TwistDx, a DNA diagnostics company acquired by Inverness Medical Innovations (now a part of Abbott Laboratories). Nagesh currently serves on the boards of Abata Therapeutics, Exo Therapeutics, and Kojin Therapeutics.  Nagesh completed his post-doctoral training at E.K. Shriver Center for Mental Retardation (then an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital) and Harvard Medical School after receiving his Ph.D. in neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology. Nagesh received his B.A. in biology and chemistry from the University of Colorado, and his M.B.A. from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Management at Babson College.

Tomotaka Okino, Ph.D., is an Investment Director of OVI since May 2020. Prior to joining OVI, he has been responsible for planning and managing research collaborations with biotech companies and academia to accelerate and/or complement research activities at Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. for more than 10 years. He planned and managed numerous collaborations in the US, Europe and Japan for variety of indications and modalities. Dr. Okino has earned a PhD degree in pharmaceutical sciences in 2005 from Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan.