Our leadership, including our executive management team and Board of Directors, is made up of experts in the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare, and business management. Together, they provide extensive experience gained through years of creating and guiding successful companies.
Our Board of Directors brings a wide range of experience, knowledge, and judgment to CTI leadership. The board is made up of highly esteemed leaders in the scientific and business communities. Two members, James A. Bianco, M.D. and Jack Singer, M.D. are, members of our executive management team. The other members are from outside of CTI.
Our executive team includes oncologists with first-hand experience treating patients and bringing drugs to market.
John H. Bauer became a Director of CTI in October 2005. Mr. Bauer, a leading financial executive, was formerly EVP of Finance for Nintendo of America Inc. While at Nintendo of America Inc., he had direct responsibility for all administrative and finance functions. He is currently serving as a consultant to Nintendo of America Inc. In addition, he serves as an executive advisor and chief financial officer at DigiPen Institute of Technology, a privately-owned accredited computer science, simulation and game development school in Redmond.
For more than thirty years, Mr. Bauer was with Coopers & Lybrand (currently PricewaterhouseCoopers) where in 1979 he was appointed managing partner for the Northwest region. Mr. Bauer was a member of Coopers & Lybrand’s Firm Council, the senior policy making and governing board for the firm. In addition to management responsibilities, he served as the business assurance (audit) practice Partner. Bauer currently resides in Seattle, Washington.
James A. Bianco, M.D., is the principal founder of Cell Therapeutics, Inc. and served as the Company's President and Chief Executive Officer and Director from February 1992 to July 2008. With the addition of Craig W. Philips as President in August 2008, Dr. Bianco now serves as CTI's CEO and Director. Dr. Bianco has been responsible for securing nearly $1 billion in operating capital. He was the chief architect of the company’s portfolio strategy leading to the acquisition of its PG drug delivery technology in 1998, TRISENOX® in 2000, Novuspharma’s pixantrone in 2003, worldwide license and co-development agreement for development and commercialization of OPAXIO (formerly known as XYOTAX)™ with Novartis in 2006, and the acquisitions of Systems Medicine and worldwide rights to brostallicin in 2007. He brought CTI back into the commercial arena in late 2007 with the acquisition of Zevalin®, approved by the FDA in February 2002 as the first radioimmunotherapeutic agent for the treatment of NHL.
Prior to joining CTI, Dr. Bianco was an Assistant Member in the clinical research division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. From 1990 to 1992, Dr. Bianco was the director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Seattle. He received his B.S. in Biology and Physics from New York University and his M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Dr. Bianco received the 2005 Corporate Visionary Award from Gilda’s Club Seattle, an organization where people with cancer and their families can receive emotional and social support. “Dr. Bianco has made it his life’s mission to make cancer more treatable by pursuing less toxic, more effective chemotherapy drugs,” said Anna Gottlieb, founder and executive director of Gilda’s Club Seattle. “He also understands that people living with cancer need more than medicine. His support of Gilda’s Club Seattle is actually helping to make cancer more livable.”
And, in a region that boasts some of this nation’s leading companies, Dr. Bianco was named CEO of the Year for 2000 by Washington CEO magazine.
Vartan Gregorian, Ph.D. is the twelfth president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, a grant-making institution founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911. Prior to his current position, which he assumed in June 1997, Gregorian served for nine years as Brown University’s sixteenth president.
He was awarded a Ph.D. in history and humanities from Stanford in 1964. He was founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and four years later became its twenty-third provost. He served as president of the New York Public Library from 1981 to 1989, when he left to become president of Brown.
A Phi Beta Kappa and a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training Fellow, he is a recipient of numerous fellowships, including those from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and the American Philosophical Society. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He serves on the boards of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Human Rights Watch, McGraw Hill Inc., and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. He has been decorated by the French, Italian, Austrian, and Portuguese governments.
His numerous civic and academic honors include some fifty honorary degrees, including those from Brown, Dartmouth, Drew, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the City University of New York, Rutgers, Tufts, New York University, University of Aberdeen, The Juilliard School, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Notre Dame University, and most recently, The University of Southern California and Carnegie Mellon University. In 1986 Gregorian was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and in 1989 the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters’ Gold Medal for Service to the Arts. In 1998 President Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal, and in 2004 President Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Richard L. Love has 40 years of industry experience, with more than 27 years of leadership roles in the biosciences industry. He started two biopharmaceutical companies, Triton Biosciences Inc. (Alameda, CA) and ILEX Oncology Inc. (ILXO, San Antonio, TX) and served as CEO in both companies for periods of eight years each. In addition Love has served in senior executive positions at not-for-profit organizations, including the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio, and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix.
At Triton and ILEX, Love led teams that were responsible for the clinical development of four important therapeutic products that are currently in the practice of medicine: Betaseron® for patients with multiple sclerosis, Fludara® and CAMPATH® both for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and Clolar® for acute leukemias. In 2004 ILEX was acquired by Genzyme Corporation for approximately $1B.
Currently Love is a managing partner in Translational Accelerator LLC, an Arizona-based venture capital investment firm, and also serves on the Boards of PAREXEL International (PRXL), ImaRx Therapeutics (IMRX), and MedTrust, LLC.
Mary O’Neil Mundinger, DrPH, RN, has been a CTI Director since April 1997. Dr. Mundinger is the Centennial Professor in Health Policy and Dean of the Columbia University School of Nursing. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science, the American Academy of Nursing, and the New York Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Mundinger is the founder of Columbia Advanced Practice Nurse Associates (CAPNA), the first nursing school faculty practice where nurse practitioners hold commercial managed care contracts and are compensated at the same rate as primary care physicians. Recently she established at Columbia the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, the first clinical nursing doctorate in the nation. In 1998 she was named Nurse Practitioner of the Year by The Nurse Practitioner: The American Journal of Primary Health Care.
Dr. Mundinger holds a BS cum laude from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in public health from Columbia University School of Public Health. In 1984-85, she served as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in the office of Senator Edward Kennedy. In 1996, she was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honorary) from Hamilton College. In 1995, she was the first nurse to be honored and profiled by the University of Michigan as a distinguished alumna. She is a noted health policy expert, primarily known for her work on workforce issues and primary care. Author of Home Care Controversy: Too Little, Too Late, Too Costly (1983) and Autonomy in Nursing (1980), she has led Columbia’s nursing school since 1986.
Phillip M. Nudelman, Ph.D., has been a director of CTI since March 1994 and Board Chairman since 2005.
Dr. Nudelman served as President and CEO of Group Health Cooperative, the nation’s largest consumer owned health care system, and as chairman and president of Kaiser/Group Health. He retired in January 2000 as CEO Emeritus. In April 2000 Dr. Nudelman was named President and CEO of the Hope Heart Institute, Seattle’s leading nonprofit cardiovascular research and education center.
A noted leader in improving healthcare in the country, Nudelman has served on the White House Task Force for Health Care Reform and the President’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in Health Care. He has served on the Pew Health Professions Commission and on the American Medical Association’s Task Force on Ethics, the Woodstock Ethics Commission, and as chairman of the American Association of Health Plans. Dr. Nudelman has served as a director on several corporate boards including Spacelabs Medical, Inc., Personalpath Systems, Inc., Advanced Technology Ultrasound, First Medic, Cytran, and Franklin Health. He currently serves on the boards of CTI (chairman), Optistor, and Zynchros.
Jack W. Singer, M.D., is a founder and Director of CTI and was appointed Chief Medical Officer in January 2004. Dr. Singer was formerly Executive Vice President, Research Program Chair. As Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Singer is the primary thought leader for CTI clinical and medical strategy. He is a noted expert in hematologic cancers, having developed the clonal theory of leukemia. He has authored more than 240 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 13 chapters in textbooks on cell biology and clinical drug development and holds 14 patents. He has been an invited speaker at numerous medical conferences, including, the 6th International Symposium on Polymer Therapeutics, and he is a member of the Society for Clinical Investigation.
Prior to joining CTI, Dr. Singer was Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and full Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. From 1975 to 1992, he was the Chief of Medical Oncology at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Seattle. In addition, Dr. Singer served as an advisor to the National Cancer Institute and was a consultant to several pharmaceutical companies prior to joining CTI.
Frederick W. Telling, Ph.D. joined CTI’s Board in December 2006. He also is a Director for Eisai N.A. Inc. based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
Prior to retiring from Pfizer in June 2007 after 30 years, Dr. Telling was elected a Corporate Vice President of Pfizer Inc and its Vice President of Corporate Strategic Planning and Policy in October 1994. He oversaw the company’s realignment and focus on its human and animal health business, divesting its Food Science and Medical Technology groups, while acquiring Warner Lambert and various consumer product brands. Concurrently, he was responsible for the company’s policy development regarding the Prescription Drug User Fee Act’s original passage and all of its subsequent reauthorizations, health care reform, pricing and indigent access programs, intellectual property, Medicare prescription benefit expansion and other business related policy matters. He represented the company in many industry related outside Boards, including BIO where he served for more than ten years.
Dr. Telling is a member of the Board of CED, IBM’s Healthcare & Life Sciences Advisory Council, the National March of Dimes Foundation, EAA, ORBIS, the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, the T-6 Race Association and the United Hospital Fund. He is a member of The Metropolitan Club of Washington, DC.
Dr. Telling received his BA from Hamilton College and his Master’s of Industrial and Labor Relations and Ph.D. in Economics and Public Policy from Cornell University.
He was actively involved in the Council of Competitiveness and the Institute of Medicine, where he was a contributing author to the IOM’s series on Technology Innovation in Medicine. Telling’s principal hobby is flying and he is qualified to fly helicopters, airplanes and jets; each September he can be found at the Reno National Air Race Championships, racing his T-6.
Dr. Telling resides in Daytona Beach, Florida with his wife Barbara.
James A. Bianco, M.D., is the principal founder of Cell Therapeutics, Inc. and served as the Company's President and Chief Executive Officer and Director from February 1992 to July 2008. With the addition of Craig W. Philips as President in August 2008, Dr. Bianco now serves as CTI’s CEO and Director. Dr. Bianco has been responsible for securing nearly $1 billion in operating capital. He was the chief architect of the company’s portfolio strategy leading to the acquisition of its PG drug delivery technology in 1998, TRISENOX® in 2000, Novuspharma’s pixantrone in 2003, worldwide license and co-development agreement for development and commercialization of XYOTAX™ with Novartis in 2006, and the acquisitions of Systems Medicine and worldwide rights to brostallicin in 2007. He brought CTI back into the commercial arena in late 2007 with the acquisition of Zevalin®, approved by the FDA in February 2002 as the first radioimmunotherapeutic agent for the treatment of NHL.
Prior to joining CTI, Dr. Bianco was an Assistant Member in the clinical research division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. From 1990 to 1992, Dr. Bianco was the director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Seattle. He received his B.S. in Biology and Physics from New York University and his M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Dr. Bianco received the 2005 Corporate Visionary Award from Gilda’s Club Seattle, an organization where people with cancer and their families can receive emotional and social support. “Dr. Bianco has made it his life’s mission to make cancer more treatable by pursuing less toxic, more effective chemotherapy drugs,” said Anna Gottlieb, founder and executive director of Gilda’s Club Seattle. “He also understands that people living with cancer need more than medicine. His support of Gilda’s Club Seattle is actually helping to make cancer more livable.”
And, in a region that boasts some of this nation’s leading companies, Dr. Bianco was named CEO of the Year for 2000 by Washington CEO magazine.
Louis A. Bianco is a founder of CTI and has been CTI’s Executive Vice President, Finance and Administration since February 1, 1992. He was a Director of CTI from the Company’s inception in September 1991 to April 1992 and from April 1993 to April 1995. From January 1989 through January 1992, Mr. Bianco was a Vice President at Deutsche Bank Capital Corporation in charge of risk management. Mr. Bianco is a Certified Public Accountant and received his M.B.A. from New York University.
Dan Eramian joined CTI as Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications in March 2006. Mr. Eramian is responsible for developing and implementing the internal and external communications strategy. He brings nearly 13 years of experience in the biotechnology industry to the position—most recently as Vice President of Communications at BIO, a Washington, DC-based industry organization representing more than 1,200 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers, and related organizations. Prior to BIO, Mr. Eramian was Assistant Administrator of Communications at the Small Business Administration and Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice and Chief Spokesman for the Attorney General of the United States. Previously, Mr. Eramian served as Chief of Staff to the Senate Leader in the Massachusetts Legislature, and was also Executive Editor of Suburban World Newspapers in the Boston area. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from UMass/Amherst and an M.P.A. from Suffolk University.
Gabriella Pezzoni, Ph.D. was named Scientific Director of CTI’s Italian branch in September 2006 with responsibility for preclinical research and development. She was a founding member of the Italian pharmaceutical company Novuspharma with responsibility as Director of Biology prior to its merger with CTI. Before joining Novuspharma, Dr. Pezzoni was head of oncology research at Boehringer Mannheim Italia SpA., where she was responsible for New Drug Applications and Investigational New Drug applications. Before joining Boehringer Mannheim Italia she worked at Farmitalia Carlo Erba Research Centre in Nerviano, Milano (ex Pfizer Inc.) coordinating in vivo anti-tumor activity studies. Dr. Pezzoni has also worked at the Tumour Institute in Milan and holds a degree in biological sciences from the University of Pavia.
Craig W. Philips assumed his role as CTI's President in August 2008. In that role, he manages the company’s day-to-day drug development and commercial operations. Prior to joining CTI, Philips was Vice President and General Manager of Bayer Healthcare Oncology. Since 2006, Philips has been leading Bayer's U.S. oncology operations following the integration of the U.S. oncology businesses from Berlex and Bayer. In this capacity, he oversaw the U.S. oncology operations with sales of $350 million and a staff of more than 150. Philips was also either a member or chair of alliance executive committees which included Onyx, Novartis, Genzyme, and Favrille.
Prior to Bayer Healthcare, Philips was the head of Berlex Oncology since 2004. He was responsible for the U.S. oncology operations with sales of more than $160 million. Before Berlex, Philips was with Schering Plough in U.S., and international roles. He began his career with Bristol Myers, where he worked in a variety of therapy areas including oncology, cardiology, and CNS.
Mauro G. Premi joined CTI in April 2006 as Finance and Administration Director. He now holds the position of General Manager for the European branch leading the Bresso Senior Management Team. Before joining CTI, Mr. Premi covered interim Finance Director positions for special projects at several Italian subsidiaries of major US Corporations, where he gained a strong background in finance, controlling and general management functions. Previously he worked at Pall Corp. and Demag (former Mannesmann Group, later Siemens). Mr. Premi was with the latter company and its Italian subsidiaries for twelve years, including a long stay in Germany, and was later promoted to the position of Finance and Controlling Director for the Italian Group. He had full responsibility for Finance, Planning and Controlling, as well as General Administration. During the course of his career he has been directly responsible for various special operations such as start-ups, acquisitions, spin-offs, and internal reorganizations of companies and business units.
Mr. Premi, graduated in Business Administration from L. Bocconi University, Milano, Italy , has taken part in many business management courses in the UK, Germany, and the US.
Jack W. Singer, M.D., is a founder and Director of CTI and was appointed Chief Medical Officer in January 2004. Dr. Singer was formerly Executive Vice President, Research Program Chair. As Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Singer is the primary thought leader for CTI clinical and medical strategy. He is a noted expert in hematologic cancers, having developed the clonal theory of leukemia. He has authored more than 240 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 13 chapters in textbooks on cell biology and clinical drug development and holds 14 patents. He has been an invited speaker at numerous medical conferences, including, the 6th International Symposium on Polymer Therapeutics, and he is a member of the Society for Clinical Investigation.
Prior to joining CTI, Dr. Singer was Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and full Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. From 1975 to 1992, he was the Chief of Medical Oncology at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Seattle. In addition, Dr. Singer served as an advisor to the National Cancer Institute and was a consultant to several pharmaceutical companies prior to joining CTI.
Christina Waters, Ph.D. joined CTI’s management team in October 2008. Dr. Waters holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis and a M.B.A. from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Dr. Waters has been involved in biotechnology research since 1988 and has recently served as the Director of Scientific Development at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation an institute that is focused on applying integrated state-of-the-art technologies in chemistry, biology, automation, and information sciences in order to pursue new approaches towards the understanding of complex biomedical problems in cancer biology, immunology, neuroscience, and metabolic as well as infectious diseases. Most recently she was President and COO of A Tyr Pharma, a company involved in the development of protein therapeutics across a broad range of diseases.
Tim Williamson joined CTI’s management team with our acquisition of Systems Medicine in July 2007. He is a founder of System Medicine and serves as its Chief Business Officer. Mr. Williamson’s career spans 30+ years in large-cap pharma (Merck and Boehringer Mannheim), large-cap biotech (Genentech), start-up biotech (ILEX and DirectGene) and consulting. He has experience building the links and infrastructure necessary to bring innovative biotech products to market through his thorough understanding of pharmaceutical company needs and capabilities, including experience marketing new products, negotiating international product licensing agreements, building sales and marketing organizations, and building a successful start-up company from scratch (i.e., ILEX Oncology where he was one of the first three employees).
Mr. Williamson has played key roles in the development and launch of such products as Merck’s first recombinant vaccine, Genentech’s recombinant human growth hormone (rHGH) and recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rTPA), and ILEX’s humanized monoclonal antibody, CAMPATH. Prior to joining Systems Medicine, Williamson negotiated numerous product deals and alliances including ILEX’s agreement giving Schering AG worldwide distribution rights to CAMPATH in return for $30.0 million in fees and milestones, 60% of the profit in the U.S. and a royalty comparable to 60% profit in the rest of the territory (The Pink Sheet, 08/30/99, p. 21).