Dr. Hachigian is a co-founder and vice president, strategy and operations at Be Biopharma. Prior to joining Be Bio, she was a principal at Longwood Fund where she co-founded ImmuneID (founding CEO and current director), TScan Therapeutics (founding president and director) and Immunitas Therapeutics (founding president and director). Lea has driven all aspects of company creation, including private financings, scientific strategy, business development, team building and early operations. Together, companies she has co-founded at Longwood Fund have raised over $250 million in venture financing and entered collaborations with leading industry partners. Additionally, Lea served as a member of the Longwood Fund investment team, leading diligence and deal efforts across all areas of early-stage platform and therapeutics companies.

Lea received her Ph.D. from MIT in molecular and cellular neuroscience where she was a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. As a graduate student in the Heiman Lab at the Broad Institute, she studied the determinants of neuronal identity and vulnerability in disease. Prior to her doctorate, Lea received an A.B. from Harvard University where she graduated magna cum laude with highest honors in neurobiology and received a certificate in mind brain and behavior. While at Harvard, Lea researched genetic models of developmental disorders in the Fagiolini/Hensch lab at Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She has received numerous fellowships for her research and multiple teaching awards for her work with both undergraduate and graduate students. Lea was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for healthcare for her work as a co-founder of TScan Therapeutics.

The bulk of Dr. Morgan’s career was at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he led a series of laboratories in the field of cell and gene therapy. He was a member of the team that published the first approved human gene transfer experiment in 1990 (N. Engl. J. Med. 323:570, 1990). Early in his career, he focused on the first-in-human applications of gene therapy for genetic diseases such as severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and research into gene therapy for hemophilia. He also led major research efforts into the application of gene therapy for infectious disease, specifically on HIV/AIDS, including one of the first clinical trials testing anti-HIV gene therapy in humans. He later switched focus to concentrate on cancer immunotherapy. Rick has extensively published on T-cell receptor (TCR) gene therapy and was the lead author on the first report where this technology was shown to mediate cancer regression in patients (Science 314:126, 2006).

In 2013, Rick made the switch from academia to industry to lead the immunotherapy efforts at bluebird bio where he was vice president of immunotherapy. Major accomplishments at bluebird include driving all pre-clinical activities for bluebird’s first oncology asset for the treatment of multiple myeloma, an anti-BCMA CAR. The successful clinical application of this technology was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med. 2019 May 2;380(18):1726-1737), culminating in the approval of this approach as medicine (Abecma) in 2021. In 2018, Rick moved to Editas Medicine as senior vice president of immunogenetics where he focused on gene editing applications in immunotherapy. At Editas, he led the development of off-the-shelf cellular treatments for cancer immunotherapy using gene edited NK cells. Externally, Rick served as a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT), and he is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Keystone symposia.

Rick is an author of more than 200 scientific publications including papers with Nobel laureates EJ Corey, Harold Varmus and Andrew Fire. Rick holds a B.A. in biochemistry from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in genetics from The Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Wong is an experienced physician, clinical scientist and drug developer with over 20 years of successful product development across early to late-stage development and medical affairs.  She is a treating physician with direct experience in the treatment and management of people with hemophilia, sickle cell disease and pediatric hematology/oncology. She has played pivotal roles in the development and approval of various therapies including:  the first gene therapy for Hemophilia A (Roctavian), FEIBA, Advate, Adynovate, Eloctate, Alprolix, Rixubis, Obizur, and the first recombinant von Willebrand factor (Vonvendi).

Most recently, Dr. Wong was Group Vice-President of Global Medical Affairs and Scientific Strategy at BioMarin and led the development and approval of Roctavian for Hemophilia A. Dr. Wong provided ground-breaking leadership in the design and oversight of over six years of the AAV5 clinical trials reported in NEJM publications including the largest Phase 3 clinical trial in gene therapy for Hemophilia to date.  Prior to BioMarin, Dr. Wong was Vice President of Global Medical and Head of Clinical Research of Hemophilia at Biogen and Baxter respectively and has supported the development, approval and life cycle extension of multiple therapies in hemophilia. 

Prior to her work in industry, Dr. Wong spent over 15 years as a practicing clinician and professor at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County (LAC) and University of Southern California (USC) Medical Center. As a clinician, Dr. Wong presented and published numerous studies and papers on her research in hemophilia and hematology and has served as a reviewer for medical journals including the American Journal of Hematology, Hemophilia and the Lancet. In 2003, Dr. Wong was appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services as a member of the Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability. 

Dr. Wong earned her M.D. at the USC, Keck School of Medicine and a BA at Occidental College. She served a Fellowship at the LAC and USC Medical Center in pediatric hematology-oncology and is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California.

Mr. Smith joined Be Biopharma from Affimed N.V., where he served as Chief Financial Officer from July 2020 to December 2023. During his time at Affimed, Mr. Smith led over $350 million of equity and debt financings for the company. He brings more than 18 years of experience in finance and investment banking within the life sciences and health care industries. His expertise lies in corporate and financial strategy, U.S. capital markets, business development and operations.

Before joining Affimed, Mr. Smith was the Chief Financial Officer at Rockwell Medical, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the development and commercialization of anemia therapies. At Rockwell, Mr. Smith elevated his proven track record of financial execution, overseeing the financing of Rockwell’s flagship commercial drug launch and a revamp of the company’s internal controls.

Previously, Mr. Smith held several leadership positions at Pernix Therapeutics, including Senior Vice President, Chief Business Officer and Principal Financial Officer, overseeing Pernix’s financial, M&A and business development strategy. During his tenure at Pernix, Mr. Smith led the execution of several financing transactions and the acquisition of two commercial prescription drugs, aggregating over $500 million in total value.

Mr. Smith began his career in healthcare investment banking, serving most recently as a Director in the Healthcare Investment Banking Group at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York. During his nearly decade-long investment banking career, Mr. Smith specialized in spearheading growth strategies for life sciences and health care companies, resulting in an aggregate transaction value of more than $15 billion. Mr. Smith received a Bachelor of Arts in mathematical economics from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

Dr. Liu has broad experience and a deep understanding of pharmaceutical R&D process based on more than 20 years of nonclinical research and development responsibilities in large pharma and biotech organizations. Hanlan’s career has been driven by her passion to lead and support the development of rare disease therapies that can help save patient lives.

Prior to joining Be Bio, Hanlan was Chief Scientific Officer/Chief Development Officer at Sperogenix Therapeutics, a leading rare disease company dedicated to developing and commercializing rare disease therapeutics in China. Hanlan also served as vice president of nonclinical development at KSQ Therapeutics, where she co-led the development of two leading assets including a novel USP1 inhibitor, for the treatment of BRCA-deficient cancers and an anti-NKG2A monoclonal antibody as immune-oncology combination therapy. Before KSQ, Hanlan was Executive Director and Head of DMPK and Clinical Pharmacology at Catabasis Pharmaceuticals where she led the clinical pharmacology efforts for edasalonexent that advanced into a Phase 3 clinical trial for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, as well as execution of DMPK strategy and the work plan for IND filing for a novel therapy for the treatment of patients with cystic fibrosis.  Prior to Catabasis, Hanlan spent 14 years at Genzyme and then Sanofi, where she built and led multiple collaborative and science-driven function groups associated with more than 30 drug discovery projects in multiple disease areas, contributed to 6 INDs and several product submissions and/or post market drug life cycle dossiers including those for Clofarabin®, Hectorol®, Mozobil®, Mipomerson® and Cerdelga®.

In 2022, Hanlan joined Be Bio as Senior Vice President, Rare Disease and Early Pipeline Research, where she is responsible for building Be Bio’s portfolio in rare disease and oncology in the science organization and leads the nonclinical development team to advance the first program to clinic.

Hanlan earned her PhD of Analytical Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and conducted postdoctoral work at Purdue University prior to completing her MBA in Corporate Finance with distinction New York University’s Stern School of Business. She received a BS in Biochemistry with honor from Wuhan University. Hanlan is the co-inventor on 7 patents including C.O.M. for Cerdelga® and venglustat and is the co-author of 34 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Rashmi Kshirsagar has relevant industrial experience in pharmaceutical Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) development based on more than 20 years of CMC development responsibilities in biologics, focused on proteins and cell therapy. Rashmi Kshirsagar joined Be Biopharma as Senior Vice President and will be part of the Operations Leadership Team. Rashmi will be responsible for leading and managing our technical teams. The focus areas for the teams are process, product and analytical development and innovation to advance the B Cell Platform as well as enabling Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) development for our portfolio candidates as they transition from Discovery and move through various phases of clinical development, preclinical to commercialization.

Previously, Rashmi was the VP for Technical Development and CMC Strategy at Rubius Therapeutics, where her responsibilities included leading teams within Rubius that focused on process, product and analytical development and innovation to advance the RED PLATFORM® as well as overseeing CMC strategy and project management for Rubius’ Red Cell Therapeutic™ product candidates that transition from the discovery phase through clinical development. Before that, she was Senior Director for Protein Development in Pharmaceutical Operations & Technology at Biogen. Her group was responsible for developing and supporting manufacturing processes to produce protein drug substance for internal and partnered early and late stage (preclinical to post BLA) biopharmaceutical programs in a compliant manner using industry leading technologies.

She joined Biogen with a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of Minnesota where she worked with Professor Wei-Shou Hu and prior experience in Technical Development at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Her graduate work involved application of genomic and proteomic approaches to mammalian process development.

Rashmi has been active for more than 25 years in the scientific community by presenting at conferences, publishing scientific papers and book chapters, planning conferences, conference sessions and workshops and participating in industrial forums and consortia. She has gone through various internal and external leadership development programs and is passionate about people development, organizational effectiveness and diversity and inclusion programs.