Board Members
Azaya’s board of Directors is lead by Chairman of the Board John C. Kerr, a co-founder and lead investor, Michael T. Dwyer, President& CEO, and a Board member, and Ze’ev Shaked, Ph.D.
The team shares several decades of biomedical R&D and biotechnology company management experience, including founding, growing and financing early stage biopharmaceutical ventures and successfully managing the clinical development and obtaining FDA approval of cancer therapeutics.
The Company is intentionally being managed with a small number of full time employees and it supplements its founders and internal management team by leveraging the expertise of various advisors and topic area experts on a recurring basis. As additional funding is obtained by the Company it will expand its internal workforce, as needed, to manage all of its development programs.
John C. Kerr, Chairman
Mr. Kerr, who serves as Chairman of the Evestra Board, has been Interim President of SFBR since June of 2006. He served as Chairman of the SFBR Board of Trustees from 1998 until June of 2007. Since 1992, Mr. Kerr has been active in venture capital investment in the life sciences, as an early-stage investor, either personally or through a managed fund, or board member in a number of drug development ventures including BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals, Inc., ILEX Oncology, Brava Therapeutics and Azaya Therapeutics, Inc., where he also serves as chairman. In the 1980s, Mr. Kerr served as Chairman and CEO of American Century Corp., a New York Stock Exchange-listed financial services company, and previously was a partner with the Houston law firm Andrews & Kurth and the San Antonio firm Cox & Smith. Mr. Kerr received his B.A. from Stanford University and his J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law.
Michael T. Dwyer, President
Mr. Dwyer joined Azaya from Ingenix Pharmaceutical Services (i3 Research), a global contract research subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, where he served as senior vice president and chief administrative officer. I3 Research has more than 1,200 employees in 20 countries with clinical trials being conducted in more than 45 countries. Prior to i3 Research, Mr. Dwyer held a number of executive management positions with ILEX Oncology, Inc. in San Antonio. Throughout his tenure, he served as the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Business Officer and as the President and COO of ILEX’s global oncology contract research business. Mr. Dwyer was instrumental in the development and approval of Campath© (alemtuzumab).
Ze’ev Shaked, Director
Dr. Ze’ev Shaked has extensive managerial and pharmaceutical product development experience in commercializing biologics and conventional drugs. Before founding Evestra, he was President and CEO of Spherics, Inc. Prior to Spherics, Dr. Shaked was President of ILEX Products, Inc. and Chief Operating Officer of ILEX Oncology, Inc. where he helped to reshape the product pipeline and led the product development team. Dr. Shaked has held a number of senior R&D and corporate management positions at ImmuLogic Pharmaceutical Corp., Berlex Biosciences, Inc., Triton Biosciences, Inc., CODON Corp. and Chiron Corp. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic and applied biochemistry from MIT.
