our peoplemake us who we are

Jonathan is Chairman and CEO of Erasca, which he co-founded in July 2018 with a mission to erase cancer. He is a physician-turned-venturepreneur at City Hill and ARCH Venture who founds, funds and leads mission-driven for-profit and non-profit ventures. He has served as Chairman and/or CEO and founding investor of six biotechnology companies that have collectively achieved global regulatory approval and launch of seven therapeutic products in oncology, immunology and drug delivery, benefitting thousands of patients worldwide, while generating approximately $10 billion of shareholder value. Jonathan has pioneered transformative advancements in drug delivery and precision oncology.

In drug delivery, he designed and executed landmark deals for Halozyme’s ENHANZE^® drug delivery technology with Roche/Genentech and Baxter that formed the foundational business model and template for the company’s ten global alliances and five approved ENHANZE products that have enabled Halozyme to turn EBITDA positive and guide to $1 billion in royalty revenue in 2027. In precision oncology, Jonathan led Ignyta’s trailblazing pursuit of a global tissue agnostic label to transform cancer treatment with ROZLYTREK^® (entrectinib) that, in the process of securing global regulatory approvals, became the first drug in biopharmaceutical history to achieve the unprecedented triple crown of breakthrough designations with BTD (FDA), PRIME (EMA) and Sakigake (PMDA). He led the strategic process that successfully resulted in the acquisition of Ignyta to become a key personalized healthcare pillar for Roche/Genentech, the leading precision oncology company in the world. He is continuing to pursue new frontiers of precision oncology at Erasca.

Mike is the Chair of R&D, SAB Member and Board Director at Erasca. In these roles, he will help advance Erasca’s drug discovery portfolio by providing strategic input on portfolio optimization and offering in-depth scientific assessments of Erasca’s R&D activities.

Mike is a pioneer drug discoverer and biotech leader. As one of the original fifteen employees at Agouron, a biotech based in San Diego, he built a team that developed protein-structure based design, a novel approach to drug discovery that is utilized globally by drug discovery teams today. In 1997, the Agouron team launched Viracept^®, an HIV protease inhibitor that achieved the highest first year launch sales of any biotech product at the time. His leadership at Agouron resulted in the discovery of multiple currently marketed anti-cancer agents, including Xalkori^® and Inlyta^®, a drug that won the American Chemical Society’s Heroes of Chemistry Award in 2018.

In 2005, Mike was recruited to Genentech to expand the organization’s drug discovery capabilities to include small molecules. Focused on agility and pioneering science, Mike built a team-based organization that today produces more than 40% of Genentech’s development portfolio, including the marketed anti-cancer agents Erivedge^® and Cotellic^®.

In 2015, Mike was appointed Executive Vice President and Head of Genentech’s Research and Early Development (gRED) and a member of the Roche Corporate Executive Committee. In this role, he was responsible for all aspects of gRED innovation, drug discovery and development. Mike also focused on building a team-based culture empowered to clear the path to patients. Under his leadership, gRED teams discovered and developed successful medicines that include Venclexta^® with AbbVie, the first BCL-2 inhibitor, and Polivy™, an antibody drug conjugate for the treatment of DLBCL. Pioneering molecules in clinical development include mosunetuzumab, a bispecific antibody targeting CD20, and GDC-9545, a next-generation estrogen receptor degrader. Mike retired from Genentech in July 2020, leaving a diversity of drug platform types that includes personalized therapeutic vaccines and cellular therapies.

Mike holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, and was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University.

David is Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer of Erasca, where he leads finance, investor relations, corporate and business development, and other functions. Bringing deep experience in strategy, finance, business development, and operations, he joined the company in 2019 as Chief Business Officer with oversight of its corporate and business development efforts and became Chief Financial Officer in 2020. Prior to Erasca, he was a Principal at Versant Ventures, where he held a dual investing/operating role, helping lead investment opportunities across multiple therapeutic areas. Operationally, he was intimately involved in advancing several Versant portfolio companies through company formation, fundraising, business development, and clinical and regulatory activities. David joined Versant from Alcon, where, as Chief of Staff to the CEO, he worked alongside the executive leadership team to develop and implement high priority corporate initiatives to accelerate growth and innovation. Prior to Alcon, David was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey, leading multiple teams serving pharmaceutical and medical device clients, across sales and marketing, R&D, finance, and other functions. Previously, David worked at SR One, the venture capital arm of GSK. He also worked at Amgen in commercial operations and at Morgan Stanley in investment banking.

David holds an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Gamble Scholar and President of the medical student body, and an MBA from the Wharton School. He earned an MPhil from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, as well as undergraduate degrees in biology and business from the University of Southern California, where he graduated as the University Valedictorian.

As Chief Operating Officer, Nik brings over 20 years of experience in drug development to Erasca, where he works with our talented scientists and staff in the pharmaceutical development and operations (CMC), information technology, operations and facilities, quality assurance, and portfolio and program leadership groups. Nik has worked at several major pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Genentech, spanning technical development from discovery to new drug application (NDA) filings (Wellbutrin^®, Erivedge^® and Cotellic^®) and transfer to commercial groups. Upon joining Genentech in 2006, he helped build the small molecule drug development organization and drive the significant expansion of technical and drug manufacturing capabilities. During his Genentech tenure, Nik served on multiple governance committees, was a technical development team leader, and represented Genentech on the board of directors for the Allotrope Foundation. Prior to joining Erasca, he was the Co-founder and President of MindScienceConnection, Inc., a strategy and leadership development company that focused on partnering with biopharmaceutical companies to navigate the unique challenges of building and maintaining thriving research cultures while developing the scientific leaders of the future.

Nik earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Kansas and his B.Sc. in chemical and pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Sunderland.

Ebun is Erasca’s General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. He has represented publicly traded life science companies for over 20 years and has served as an in-house counsel since 2005. During his career, Ebun has been General Counsel or Assistant General Counsel at early stage biopharmaceutical companies and a medical device company, including Imbria Pharmaceuticals, Neurocrine Biosciences, Acadia Pharmaceuticals and Alphatec Spine. At each company, he provided legal support with respect to product development, business development, corporate finance and public company reporting. Prior to his in-house positions, he was a corporate associate at the New York office of the law firm of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo.

Ebun earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Chandra is Erasca’s Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer, bringing 20 years of global drug development experience, ranging from pre-investigational new drug activities through new drug application (NDA) submission and post-approval. Her career has focused on oncology and has included drug/diagnostic development and novel trial designs and endpoints. She joined Erasca from G1 Therapeutics, where she was Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and led health authority negotiations resulting in US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) breakthrough therapy designation and NDA approval for Cosela^™. Chandra previously served as Senior Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs and Head of Quality at Sierra Oncology and Vice President of Global Regulatory Affairs at Endocyte. Earlier in her career, she held roles of increasing responsibility at Genentech, including as regulatory lead for Avastin^®, and previously was at Avi BioPharma.

Chandra has an M.S. in regulatory affairs from San Diego State University and a B.S. in organizational behavior from the University of San Francisco.

Shannon brings over 20 years of experience in the life sciences with a focus in oncology. She joined Erasca from Istari Oncology, where she was Vice President, Head of Clinical Development, and a member of the executive committee. Prior to joining Istari, she was Vice President of Clinical Development at G1 Therapeutics where she led the development of Cosela^™, achieving breakthrough therapy designation as well as a successful NDA. As a senior director at MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, she supported the successful biologics license application (BLA) for Imfinzi^® and led the development of multiple early phase immuno-oncology assets. At GlaxoSmithKline, she held roles of increasing responsibility where her efforts focused on the early phase development of small molecule inhibitors of AKT, PI3K, and MEK, including the approved MEK inhibitor Mekinist^®. During her time at GlaxoSmithKline and MedImmune, Shannon maintained an adjunct appointment at the University of North Carolina where her practice focused on the clinical care of patients with breast and gastrointestinal cancers.

Shannon completed her internal medicine residency and oncology fellowship at the University of North Carolina, earned an M.D. and Ph.D. in molecular virology from Case Western Reserve University, and holds a B.S. in biological sciences from Stanford University.

Lisa brings more than 20 years of experience as a strategic leadership consultant, with expertise in organizational development, culture, and talent management. She has partnered with diverse leaders and teams in the life sciences industries of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and contract research organizations as well as across a multitude of other industries including hospitals, technology, energy, financial services, telecommunications, and law enforcement, and she has served as a volunteer coach to former U.S. Navy SEALs. Prior to joining Erasca, she was founder and president of Inspire True Leadership, an organizational advisory company focused on enabling business growth through leadership excellence and a strong people agenda. She also was a director at Mellon Financial and a director in the global human resources practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Lisa holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in industrial/organizational psychology from Tulane University and a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Brian joined Erasca as Senior Vice president of Finance. With more than 25 years of industry experience, he has provided executive level financial expertise to both public and private biotechnology companies, including Turning Point Therapeutics (TPTX), Cleave Biosciences and Phenomix Corporation. Prior to Erasca, Brian most recently served as Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration at TPTX, where he led all corporate accounting, finance and planning activities. He played a key role in TPTX’s growth from a small private company into a multibillion-dollar public company and helped complete five financings with combined proceeds in excess of $1.3 billion, including a $191 million initial public offering in April 2019.

Brian earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees from San Diego State University and is an active certified public accountant in the state of California.

Les serves as Senior Vice President of Early Clinical Development of Erasca, bringing more than 20 years of experience as a scientifically driven oncology drug developer in early phase clinical development and translational medicine. Les joined Erasca from Neon Therapeutics, where he led the clinical development of the personalized neoantigen vaccine program. He also led the clinical development of their shared neoantigen vaccine program resulting in the recent filing of the IND for this program. Prior to this, he served as the Program Team Leader of IPI-549, a PI3K-gamma inhibitor, at Infinity Pharmaceuticals. At Infinity, Les was responsible for the strategic and operational aspects of the molecule including the first-in-human study, IND filing and development of the overall clinical strategy. He began his career at Eli Lilly and Company in their early phase Oncology drug development group where he was the clinical lead on multiple programs, responsible for Phase I and II development. Les worked closely with the pre-clinical development teams to optimize the characteristics of the drug development candidates with a focus on clinically relevant biomarkers.

Les earned his Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto.

Combining over a decade of experience in business development with a strong science background, Rachel is Erasca’s Vice President of Business Development. She joined Erasca from GW Pharmaceuticals where she was responsible for developing the company’s external innovation strategy and leading its partnering activities from opportunity identification through agreement execution. Prior to GW, Rachel held similar roles at Synthetic Genomics, Egalet Corporation and Inovio Pharmaceuticals. In these roles she negotiated buy-side and sell-side R&D deals, led cross-functional teams in developing and implementing therapeutic area strategy and established key commercial partnerships. Rachel began her career at Merck, where she held roles of increasing responsibility within project and portfolio management, marketing and business development.

Rachel earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Cincinnati, an MBA from the Wharton School and a B.A. from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Tim joins Erasca with over 20 years of providing effective project and program management, portfolio prioritization and planning, and alliance management in the life sciences. Tim has a diverse career spanning academic research, clinical trial program management, project management, and as an entrepreneur. He has worked for or served as a consultant for a wide gamut of large and small pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, and diagnostics companies. Most recently, Tim was Vice President of Program Management at Nektar Therapeutics where he served as the global program management lead for the bempegaldesleukin (NKTR-214) program, an immuno-oncology therapy of recombinant human interleukin-2 for multiple solid tumors. Tim brings a deep knowledge of our business, leadership to drive programs in a complex multidisciplinary environment, a passion for our science, and a keen sense of how to navigate the inevitable challenges faced by drug development teams.

Tim holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard University (thesis research on PI3K/mTOR and Ras/Raf/MEK/MAPK), an M.S. in medicine from Harvard, and a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Illinois. Tim also earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a certified project management professional (PMP).

Amy joins Erasca with more than 20 years of biopharmaceutical industry experience and nine years of academic research. Her work in the industry has run the spectrum from large companies such as Pfizer to medium and small companies such as CancerVax, FibroGen, and Medivation. In positions ranging from Clinical Research Associate to Vice President of Clinical Operations, she has worked across all clinical phases with an emphasis in oncology. She joins Erasca from Oncternal Therapeutics where she served as Vice President of Clinical Pperations. Her career highlights include being part of the successful NDA for Sutent^® as well as being the clinical operations lead on the Talzenna^® NDA team. Amy has expertise in planning and execution of clinical studies, clinical budgeting, process improvement, vendor partnerships, and oversight. Prior to joining industry, Amy worked at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Stanford Medical Center as a study coordinator.

Amy holds a master of public health in epidemiology from San Diego State University and B.A. in political science and psychology from UCSD.

Robert is Erasca’s SVP of Research, having previously served as Erasca’s Vice President of Biology since helping launch the company in July 2018. Bringing over 20 years of experience and education in computational biology, he has deep biology, bioinformatics, and drug development experience. Prior to Erasca, Robert led the computational biology group at Ignyta, where he worked since the company’s inception in 2011 until its acquisition by Roche in 2018. He contributed to the successful development of lead drug candidate entrectinib by developing a patient selection strategy. He also led biomarker development for other preclinical and clinical candidates and developed a novel prototype blood-based next generation sequencing (NGS) assay for detecting autoimmune diseases. Before working at Ignyta, he was a scientist at Illumina, where he helped develop new products and investigate product quality via NGS data analysis.

Robert earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego.

Jean-Michel is Erasca’s Vice President of Chemistry and brings more than 25 years of experience in drug discovery and development to help fuel the company’s mission of erasing cancer. At Erasca, he is leading a talented group of medicinal, computational, development and analytical scientists dedicated to discovering and advancing new medicines to treat patients with cancer. Jean-Michel joined Erasca from Ignyta, where he led the chemistry department managing all of Ignyta’s drug substance GMP production as well as early stage internal drug discovery programs. During his time at Ignyta, Jean-Michel accumulated a strong knowledge in drug discovery, GMP production, IND and NDA filings. Before working at Ignyta, he held positions of increasing responsibilities at several companies, including Ardea Biosciences, Merck Research Laboratories and SIBIA neurosciences. Jean-Michel has co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor on more than 50 U.S. patents.

Jean-Michel earned his Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France and was a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University.

Minli is Erasca’s Senior Vice President of Pharmaceutical Development and Operations bringing more than 20 years of experience in drug development from discovery candidate selection through registration and launch. Prior to Erasca, she was one of the first 20 employees at Myovant Sciences, serving as Vice President of Pharmaceutical Operations and Development, where she built the CMC organization and oversaw the CMC activities that helped support the successful development and approval of Orgovyx^® and the combination product, Myfembree^®, for multiple indications. Previously, Minli was Head of Small Molecule Technical Operations at Medivation, and her team’s work enabled the registration and approval of Talzenna^®. She also built and led the small molecule pharmaceutics team at Genentech, supporting the small molecule research and development projects, including Erivedge^® and Cotellic^®. She also worked at Bristol Myers Squibb and DuPont Merck in roles of increasing responsibility.

Minli has a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry and a B.S. in chemistry, both from the University of Kansas.

Dawei serves as Erasca’s Senior Vice President of Clinical Pharmacology, bringing over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development. He joined Erasca from Turning Point Therapeutics (TPTX), where he was Vice President of Clinical Pharmacology and a member of the leadership team. He was responsible for overall strategy and execution of clinical pharmacology plans to support the pipeline at TPTX, where he helped advance repotrectinib into a registrational trial and achieve FDA breakthrough therapy designation for the treatment of patients with TKI-naïve ROS1-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. Prior to TPTX, Dawei worked at Pfizer for 17 years where he held roles of increasing responsibility, most recently as Senior Director of Clinical Pharmacology in the Early Oncology Development and Clinical Research (EODCR) organization. During his tenure at Pfizer, he worked on numerous investigational drugs across small molecules, large molecules, antibody drug conjugates and bispecific antibodies. He contributed to the discovery and development of three marketed medicines, including Eliquis^®, Inspra^® and Ibrance^®. Earlier in his career, he worked for nine years in clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of antimicrobial agents at the Center for Anti-infective Research and Development at Hartford Hospital.

Dawei earned his Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Connecticut and his B.S. in pharmaceutical sciences from Peking University Health Science Center.