BPGbio Announces Appointments to its Leadership Team

BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–After acquiring substantially all assets of BERG, LLC at the beginning of 2023, BPGbio, Inc, a leading AI-powered biopharma with a mission to reimagine biology for humanity, announced today the appointment of four key executives: 

Anjan Thakurta Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer
James Toone, Chief Financial Officer
C. Robert Pedraza, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development
John Shishido, Executive Vice President, Corporate Strategy

“We are thrilled to welcome these exceptional leaders to the BPGbio team as we sharpen our focus on unlocking the value of BPGbio’s clinical-stage pipeline and Interrogative Biology® Platform,” said Niven R. Narain, Ph.D., President and CEO of BPGbio. “These appointments demonstrate our commitment to not only research and development, but also accelerating the advancement of our clinical-stage assets through strategic investments and partnerships.”

Anjan Thakurta Ph.D.Chief Scientific Officer

As CSO, Dr. Thakurta will lead the scientific, technological, and research operations of BPGbio to advance the internal pipeline, while working with strategic partners in external innovation. Dr. Thakurta’s leadership and scientific contributions have led to six approved cancer drugs in multiple indications.

Prior to BPGbio, Dr. Thakurta was the Vice President, Translational Medicine at Bristol Myers Squibb where he oversaw the hematological malignancy group. Before BMS, Dr. Thakurta served several leadership roles at Celgene, AstraZeneca and Biogen Idec and the United States National Cancer Institute (NCI) earlier in his career. Dr. Thakurta received his MSc and MTech from Jawaharlal Nehru University and IIT Delhi, India, followed by a doctorate from Cambridge University in Genetics. He received his post-doctoral training at Harvard University in molecular and cellular biology. He is a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, UK.

James TooneChief Financial Officer

James will be responsible for all the company’s financial functions, including accounting, audit, treasury, corporate finance, investor relations, and strategic capital market relations.

Prior to joining BPGbio in 2023, James served as CFO at Ethos Risk Services, a global risk management firm wherein he helped drive corporate strategy growing the company from a Southeast US regional competitor to a global brand recognized as one of the industry’s top 3 firms. From 2012-2015, James led finance teams at Life Technologies (acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2013), where he managed the company’s global financial consolidation efforts. Early in his career, James advised and transacted on healthcare and tech deals across N America and Asia at JPMorgan and Credit Suisse, culminating in NASDAQ listings, private placements, and M&A transactions for the bank’s clients.

James received his MBA in Finance from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business, where he was named an Eccles Scholar.

C. Robert PedrazaExecutive Vice President, Corporate Development

In this new role, Robert will be leading the effort in attracting strategic capital investments to BPGbio and international distribution alliances to help accelerate growth of the company.

Robert has been a C-Level executive of public and private industrial technology companies for over 8 years. He successfully introduced disruptive technology solutions in China, India and LATAM markets, led corporate financings from institutional investors in the US and Middle East, and M&A transactions in China. Earlier in his career, Robert served in senior sales roles with Fidelity Investment Institutional Services, Alliance Capital and Prudential-Bache Securities. He was also Founder of Tigré Trading – an institutional equity trading boutique serving long/short hedge funds. Robert earned his B.S. in Finance from Lehigh University.

John Shishido, Executive Vice President, Corporate Strategy

In this new role John will be responsible for developing and executing corporate strategy, identifying new business models, and building commercial partnerships to accelerate the advancement of BPGbio’s clinical-stage assets.

Prior to BPGbio he led strategy and investments for Innova Medical Group and was a Principal at Pasaca Capital. Before joining Pasaca he advised clients in the Technology and Precision Biology sectors on M&A and capital formation at Citigroup. He began his career as an aerospace engineer. John received his MBA from UCLA and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from USC.

About BPGbio Inc.

BPGbio Inc, is a leading AI-powered, human biology focused biopharmaceutical company headquartered in the greater Boston area, Mass. With its intelligent Interrogative Biology platform, BPGbio is reimagining how patient biology can be modeled using unbiased AI algorithms, to accelerate and de-risk the process of drug discovery across oncology, neurology, and rare diseases. Learn more at bpgbio.com