Our Team

We use a project team approach and we have a highly experienced leadership team and advisors - collectively instrumental in the development of nearly twenty marketed drugs.

Leadership

Barry A. Berkowitz, PhD, Founder & Chairman
Barry is Bessor’s Founder and Chair of its Board of Directors. Barry has founded and led highly successful drug discovery and development organizations in start-up and large pharmaceutical environments for nearly 40 years. He has built value around the companies he has led through numerous strategic transactions, including alliances with major pharma companies, such as Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Wyeth and Bristol Myers Squibb as well as M&A. Companies he has co-founded and or led as CEO include: Myco/Chemgenics (acquired by Millennium Pharmaceuticals); New Chemical Entities (acquired by Albany Molecular); and Fibrogen. Earlier in his career, he held senior research positions at Smith, Kline & French, where he was a Vice President, and the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology. Barry holds a BS degree in Pharmacy from Northeastern University and a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of California San Francisco.

Allan M. Cohen, Esq, CPA, CEO
Working closely with the Founder and Chairman, Allan’s role is to prioritize key activities, manage operations, plan fundraising, and ensure that the company’s scientific vision is effectively translated into operational and product successes. He guides the strategic direction and execution of the company’s drug research and development programs. His role includes serving as a management team member in Bessor’s subsidiary, REMed Therapeutics. He previously served as Bessor’s VP Licensing and General Counsel. Allan has over 30 years of experience as a biotech management team member, corporate lawyer, and accountant. Previously, he served as VP Transactions and Legal at Novavax, headed the legal and transactions function at Auven Therapeutics and Celtic Pharma, hybrid venture capital and virtual drug development firms (AUM > $630M). Prior to joining Celtic, he was interim General Counsel of computational chemistry company Schrödinger, worked in the general counsel's offices at Goldman Sachs and American Express, served as general counsel of a publicly-traded technology incubator, worked as a corporate attorney at McDermott, Will & Emery, and served on the Audit and Advisory team at Arthur Andersen. Allan earned a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.S. in Accounting from Penn State.

Martin D Hynes III, PhD, VP Project Management and Quality Assurance
Marty joined Bessor following a more than 35-year career at Eli Lilly and Company, where he was most recently Director of Product Research and Development and Six Sigma Champion at Lilly Research Laboratories. He led multiple development teams for drugs including human growth hormone (Humatrope®), atomoxetine (Strattera®) and pergolide (Permax®). He joined Lilly Research Labs after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology. He holds a BA degree in Psychology from Providence College, and MS and PhD degrees in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Rhode Island. Marty also served as a Vice President of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs at Mapp Biopharmaceutical, a biotech developing novel pharmaceuticals for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, focusing on unmet needs in global health and biodefense for more than 6 years. Dr. Hynes teaches as an adjunct professor of Biotechnology Innovation and Regulatory Science at Purdue University.

Eliot Ohlstein, PhD, VP Pharmacologic R&D
Eliot has held senior research, and research leadership positions in drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 35 years. Previously, he led R&D teams at GlaxoSmithKline for 25 years, most recently as a Senior Vice President Drug Discovery and Development, where he was involved in cardiovascular, metabolic, renal and oncology therapeutics, with both small, large and peptide molecules. Under Eliot’s leadership GSK discovered and advanced into clinical development and to market, Coreg® (carvedilol) for heart failure, the HER2 receptor inhibitor Tykerb® (lapatinib) for metastatic breast cancer, and the tyrosine kinase angiogenesis inhibitor Votrient® (pazopanib) for advanced renal cell carcinoma. Eliot has been a founder of biotech companies Venuvics Pharmaceuticals, AltheRx Pharmaceuticals, and Velicept Pharmaceuticals. He joined Bessor Pharm as a consultant in 2016. Eliot is an author on more than 275 publications on drug discovery and development for new therapeutic targets and active in the field of Pharmacology as an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at Drexel and is a member of for several Biotech SABs. He is Editor for NC-IUPHAR, is on the Editorial Board for Pharmacological Reviews and British Journal of Pharmacology and is also Specialty Editor-in-Chief for Frontiers in Pharmacology—Cardiovascular Pharmacology & Urogenital Disorders.

Eliot holds a BS in Pharmacy from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and a PhD in Pharmacology from the Tulane University School of Medicine. His graduate research on the discovery of nitric oxide as an important biological mediator contributed to the Nobel Prize in 1998. He was honored with the Prix Galien Award and Special Commendation for Innovation Research for endothelin receptors. In 2008, Dr. Ohlstein received PhRMA's highest honor, the Discoverer's Award, for his work on GSK's Coreg® (carvedilol), the "standard of care" for chronic heart failure.

Mark Roffman, PhD,  VP Drug Development and Regulatory Affairs
Mark has more than 30 years of experience in drug development and project management in both large and small pharmaceutical companies. He has led numerous project teams, overseeing drug development. Prior to Bessor, he was President of ClinSearch, a clinical trial organization in which he served as PI on 45 clinical trials and a co-PI on an additional 75. He served as Vice President for Drug Development at several companies, including XTL Biopharmaceuticals and Relox Medical, and served in a number of roles at Smith, Kline & French and Ciba-Geigy. Mark holds an AB degree in Biology from Boston University's MBA degree in Management from Fairleigh Dickinson University and MS and PhD degrees in Pharmacology from the University of Rhode Island. He is a Fellow of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology.

Robert Gottlieb, Advisor
Robert, who is the Principal at the communications and strategy consulting firm, RMG Associates, has over 30 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries as a consultant on strategy and communications, in-house communications director, and journalist. He also works with government economic development agencies and life science companies in their regions to support their partnering, financing, and other commercial efforts in the U.S. Robert co-founded Feinstein Kean Healthcare (now a division of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide), a communications and business consulting firm focused exclusively on biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and related healthcare organizations. Mr. Gottlieb has served as an advisor to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council for over 15 years. He also participates as a mentor in MIT's Venture Mentoring Service and in the Boston University Business School's Health Sector mentoring program. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the New England Israel Business Council. Previously, Robert directed press relations and corporate communications at Biogen Inc. and was executive editor of F-D-C Reports, "The Pink Sheet," During his ten-years at "The Pink Sheet," he covered the FDA and drug regulation, pharmaceutical business, and the emergence of biotechnology as an industry. Robert holds a B.A. degree from Trinity College (Connecticut).

Scientific Advisors

James Abbrruzzese, MD
Professor of Medicine, D. C. I. Distinguished Professor of Medical Oncology, Chief, Division of Medical Oncology Duke Cancer Institute
https://medicine.duke.edu/faculty/james-abbruzzese-md

Mansoor M. Amiji, PhD
Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University 
https://web.northeastern.edu/amijilab/people/prof-amiji/

Anthony Barrett, FRS, FMedSci
Tony Barrett is Sir Derek Barton Professor of Synthesis, Glaxo Professor of Organic Chemistry and Director of the Wolfson Centre for Organic Chemistry in Medical Science, Imperial College London
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/agm.barrett

Gary V. Desir, MD
Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity; Chair, Department of Medicine; and Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine, Yale University
https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/gary_desir/

George Demetri, MD
Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director, Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology and Quick Family Chair, Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 
https://www.dfhcc.harvard.edu/insider/member-detail/member/george-d-demetri-md/

John Edwards, Jr, MD
Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Emeritus Chief, Division of Infectious Disease at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
http://www.harboruclaid.org/john-e--edwards--jr-.html

Arthur Felix, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry and former Director of Peptide Research at Hoffmann-La Roche

Gerald Fink, PhD
Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor; American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics; Founding Member, Whitehead Institute, MIT
https://wi.mit.edu/people/member/fink

Armand Keating, FRCPC, MD
Scientist, Krembil Research Institute (Krembil), Clinician Scientist and Cancer Clinical Research Unit (CCRU), Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
https://www.uhnresearch.ca/researcher/armand-keating

Philip Parsons, PhD, FRSC
Professor, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London. Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/p.parsons