Tom Coll

Outside Counsel

Tom Coll is a partner at Cooley LLP. His practice covers a broad range of general corporate matters, including counseling public and privately held companies regarding disclosure and reporting requirements, technology licensing, equity incentives, employee compensation and benefits and the formation of new businesses. Tom also represents clients in a broad range of transactional matters, including public offerings, public and private company mergers and acquisitions, corporate partnering and licensing transactions, spin-offs and venture capital financings. He is counsel to public and private companies in a broad range of industries, including biotechnology, medical devices, information storage and wireless communications.Tom was named to the Best Lawyers in America list in the categories of Biotechnology Law and Life Sciences, Corporate Law, Leveraged Buyouts and Private Equity Law and Venture Capital Law. He was also named in the 2007 – 2014 and 2018 – 2019 editions of Southern California Super Lawyers list in the category of Business/Corporate Law. Tom is recognized as a leading lawyer in corporate M&A by Chambers USA.

Richard Daniels

Clinical Operations Advisor

Richard Daniels has 30+ years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry spanning all phases of drug development and commercialization. He is currently Managing Director at Halloran Consulting, which provides preclinical, clinical, regulatory and quality services to the life sciences industry. Prior to Halloran, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Primmune Therapeutics. Prior to joining Primmune, Mr. Daniels was Senior Vice President of R&D Planning and Clinical Operations at Intercept Pharmaceuticals. Prior to Intercept, Mr. Daniels spent 15 years at Amgen in increasing roles of responsibility, including the last five years as Executive Director, Oncology Therapeutic Area Lead and a member of the Franchise Strategy Committee responsible for developing Amgen’s oncology strategy and managing the development, registration, and life-cycle activities of Amgen’s portfolio of pipeline and marketed assets. Earlier in Mr. Daniels’ career, he held various scientific positions in discovery, preclinical, and clinical research in both oncology and infectious diseases at Agouron Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pfizer). Mr. Daniels earned a B.S. in microbiology from the UC San Diego.

Matthew W. McClure, MD

Clinical Consultant

Dr. McClure is a consulting Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Primmune Therapeutics. Dr. McClure has been a CMO at multiple companies over the past nearly seven years and has more than 20 years of clinical and drug development experience with significant expertise in the design, execution and interpretation of Phase 1-3 clinical trials across a broad range of therapeutic areas, including chronic viral hepatitis. Dr. McClure has played a central role in developing multiple drugs, including several which are currently marketed.

Previous employers include Aligos Therapeutics, Second Genome, Alio Biopharma, Portola Pharmaceuticals, and InterMune. He received his M.D. from Duke University and graduated (summa cum laude) with a B.S. in biochemistry and cell biology from the University of California, San Diego.

Melissa Palmer, MD

Clinical Consultant

Dr. Palmer is an internationally renowned hepatologist and an experienced biotech/pharma executive. She is currently CEO Liver Consulting LLC, where she provides insight to the biotech and pharmaceutical industry fostering a path forward for the development of innovative medications for liver disease with high unmet medical need. Since 1991, she has served as a consultant to more than 50 biotech and pharma companies in numerous capacities as a liver disease expert.

Dr. Palmer was in a solo practice devoted to treating and evaluating patients with MASH, viral, and cholestatic liver diseases until 2009 at which time she became a Clinical Professor at NYU Langone and Director of Hepatology at NYU Langone Medical Center at Plainview. Dr. Palmer left NYU Langone to become Senior Vice President of Clinical Research and Head of Hepatology at Kadmon Corporation, where she developed their liver disease programs. She joined Shire in 2015 as Global Development Lead of Hepatology in addition to forming and leading the liver safety group. When Shire was acquired by Takeda in 2019, Dr. Palmer was recruited by Takeda, to become Head of Liver Disease Development. After leaving Takeda, Dr. Palmer, she was CMO of Gannex/Ascletis and advanced their multiple liver disease assets.

Dr. Palmer received her B.A. in biology from Columbia University and her M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. She has been the primary or senior author of numerous manuscripts related to hepatology, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Elina Zuniga, PhD

Scientific Advisor

Dr. Elina I. Zúñiga is currently Full Professor at the Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego (UCSD), La Jolla, CA. She was honored with the highest recognition for best academic performance during her undergraduate education at the Argentinean National University of Cordoba and completed her PhD on Trypanosome cruzi infection at the same institution and via an internship at the Birmingham Medical School, United Kingdom. Her doctoral thesis work was recognized with an international award from the Belgium State Secretary for Development Co-operation. She then was awarded two prestigious post-doctoral fellowships from Antorchas Foundation and Pew Charitable Trust to perform a five-year post-doctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla CA, where she studied Dendritic Cells, T cells and anti-viral immunity. In 2007, Prof. Zúñiga joined the UCSD Faculty to initiate her independent research program and since then she has received several honors including the Leukemia and Lymphoma Scholar Award, the American Cancer Society Scholar Award, the Vilcek Finalist Prize For Creative Promise and the American Association of Immunologists Vanguard Lecture honor, among others.Prof. Zúñiga’s laboratory studies immune responses during viral infections in order to reveal general principles of immune-regulation, which are expected to have important implications for boosting anti-pathogen and anti-tumor defenses as well as treating other immune-related diseases. Her team analyzes both the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system, the multiple cells they entail and their interactions among themselves and with non-immune elements. Indeed, Prof. Zúñiga’s work has uncovered many fundamental aspects of Dendritic Cell, Interferon and T cell biology that broadened our general understanding of immune-regulation. Her laboratory research has also illuminated the pathogenesis of mammarenaviruses, which cause fatal hemorrhagic fevers and represent credible biodefense threats for which there are insufficient countermeasures. Her research work has been published in numerous scientific papers communicated in top-tier journals including Science, Cell, Nature Immunology, Immunity, Cell-Host & Microbe, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Nature Communications and Plos Pathogen, among others. Her research program has been funded by highly competitive grants from the National Institute of Health (NIH), the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Lupus Research Alliance, among others. Prof. Zúñiga’s has delivered scientific lectures at numerous conferences or research institutions worldwide, and participated in several conference scientific advisory boards and grant review committees. She is currently stable member of the Virology B Study Section at NIH.Apart from the aforementioned research activities Prof. Zúñiga is director of the core undergraduate and graduate immunology courses at UCSD, serves in (and chair) multiple university committees and actively contributes to the diversity and inclusion efforts of the university. She has trained a large number of undergraduate, master and PhD students as well as post-doctoral fellows, who have moved successfully to their preferred independent positions in academia or industry.