The Iaso Ventures team represents the diversity of modern entrepreneurship

Wasim Malik, PhD

Managing Partner

John Reynders, PhD, MBA

Chief Data Scientist & Venture Partner

Mark Currie, PhD

Venture Partner

Michael Fenn, PhD

Venture Partner

Sharon Tan

Executive in Residence

Anil Jina, MD

Executive in Residence

Sadiqa Mahmood

Entrepreneur in Residence

Ray Sanchez, MD

Advisor, Drug Development

Maurizio Fava, MD

Advisor, Clinical R&D

Steve Schachter, MD

Advisor, Medtech

Chandra Ramanathan, PhD, MBA

Advisor, Biotech

Noah Richmond, JD, PhD

Advisor, Legal & IP

Wasim Q. Malik, PhD

Managing Partner

As the Managing Partner, Wasim oversees the overall strategy, investments and partnerships at Iaso Ventures.

He previously served as the first Chief Digital Strategist at Roivant Sciences, a global biopharma company ($7.3B IPO). There he led digital health investments, strategy and partnerships to help accelerate drug development and commercialization across 15+ therapeutic areas, and contributed to incubation and early growth of various portfolio companies such as Datavant, Enzyvant, Myovant and others.

As part of his work in the healthcare provider industry, Wasim has served on the research faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital, the flagship teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, for over a decade. Affiliated with the MGH Department of Psychiatry and the Clinical Trials Network and Institute, he built a research program on tech-enabled clinical research in neurology, psychiatry and anesthesiology, with a focus on neurodegenerative and movement disorder biomarkers, and brain-computer interfaces.

He has also taught entrepreneurship, neuroscience and machine learning at MIT, most recently as faculty on the NIH-supported IMPACT Program, and is affiliated with the MIT Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences. He served as a Senior Advisor for the Count Me In program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

He currently sits on the board of directors at The Epilepsy Foundation, Prudentia Sciences, Scaffold Therapeutics, and ClexBio, with previous board roles at Saphetor, BioTrak Health, and monARC Bionetworks. He served as a Senior Advisor for Life Sciences at Health Catalyst . He is a startup mentor at NYU Stern’s Endless Frontier Labs, the neuro stream at the Creative Destruction Lab, and the health-tech stream at Dreamit Ventures. He is an angel investor at Sky Ventures, MIT Alumni Angels, and HBS Angels of Boston.

Earlier in his career, he led a team to deploy AI-based telecom fraud detection systems across major European telcos at Nortel Networks, co-developed the first ever graphical browser for a smartphone in partnership with Research In Motion and Motorola, and rolled out South Asia’s first telemedicine network.

He has published 100+ research papers, holds 7 patents, and has received numerous international awards for his research. He serves on the Steering Committee of the NIH EPPIC-Net and IEEE Brain Initiative, the grant review panels for NSF and NASA TRISH, and the national scientific research councils of 6 countries. His work has been featured in multiple media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC World, and others.

Wasim received his DPhil in electrical engineering from Oxford, postdoctoral training in neuroscience from MIT, and finance education in venture capital and private equity from Harvard Business School.

Mark G. Currie, PhD

Venture Partner

Mark G. Currie, PhD, is a dynamic biopharma leader and leading scientist who has made numerous important contributions to the understanding of hormonal regulation of the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems. Beyond these academic contributions he has led the discovery and development of drugs for the treatment of pain and improve the quality of life for patients across the globe. He is a highly recognized leader in the advancement of innovative treatments for patients and has broad expertise in the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, inflammation, and neurology.

Mark serves on the board of directors of Ironwood Pharma, Antag Therapeutics, and Sea Pharma, and chairs the scientific advisory boards of Wild Bio and Tisento Therapeutics. Outside of the biotech industry, he is on the board of directors of Science Exchange, a breakthrough technology company focused on accelerating drug discovery and development through an external research marketplace. Additionally, Mark is active in many non-profit areas of medical research and
climate crisis. He currently serves as a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute of Harvard and has served on the board of the Medical University of South Carolina’s Foundation for Research and Development, a member of the president’s council of Boston’s Museum of Science, and the president and co-founder of the Land, Marine, and Atmosphere (LAMA) foundation where he has co-created a comprehensive climate change scale (LAMA scale).

Previously, he was the President, Chief Scientific Officer, and scientific founder of Cyclerion Therapeutics. In his capacity as a co-inventor Mark led the company’s soluble guanylate cyclase platform producing multiple drug candidates currently in clinical studies, including one for Alzheimer’s disease. An industry leading and highly recognized pharmacologist and drug developer who discovered several human hormones that have served as the basis for drugs in the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal therapeutic areas. Additional basic science discoveries have served as the basis for the rationale for several market leading drugs including Celebrex, Dynastat, Lunesta and Linzess. These drugs have improved the lives of tens of millions of patients and provided over $40 billion in revenues.

Mark was a highly productive academic researcher who transitioned to the biotech industry and has held a number of leadership positions at Ironwood, Sepracor, Searle and Monsanto. At Ironwood, Mark led the transformation of the original company of Microbia from a bioengineering focused
company to the GI focused, therapeutics company of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IRWD). He built and led R&D and served as president of the therapeutic business.

Mark has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and holds numerous US and international patents, including being the primary inventor of the blockbuster drug linaclotide (Linzess). He has won several awards for his academic discoveries and contributions to drug
discovery. Mark was on the faculty of Medical University of South Carolina and a research professor at Washington University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. from Wake Forest School of Medicine and his BS from University of South Alabama.

Raymond Sanchez, MD

Raymond Sanchez, MD, is currently a Senior Advisor at Bain Capital Life Sciences. He was previously the Chief Medical Officer of Cerevel Therapeutics (acquired by AbbVie) focused on the global development of novel and innovative treatments in CNS/Neuro-Psychiatry. He is a psychiatrist with over twenty years of academic, medical and pharmaceutical industry experience (CNS, sleep/circadian rhythms, analgesia and digital health).

Ray has a proven history of global asset development resulting in regulatory approvals in multiple indications and formulations in compounds such as Abilify® , Abilify Maintena® and Rexulti®, including the first FDA approved small molecule/digital combination therapy to monitor ingestion, Abilify MyCite®.

Ray has provided transformative executive medical leadership overseeing global development portfolios from early phase to late-stage programs with specific innovative study designs having significant business impact in CNS, pain management, hyponatremia and polycystic kidney disease, among others. He has been involved in the execution of effective interactions and negotiations with FDA (US), EMA (EU), Health Canada, PMDA (Japan) and TGA (Australia) on several regulatory submissions. Additionally, he provided strategic oversight of the Rexulti dual-indication launch in the US as well as medical affairs leadership with life-cycle management development and execution in the US, EU and Japan. He has a strong global network of academic and regulatory experts as well as clinical investigators with a history of effective collaboration and outcomes. He has extensive business development experience with due diligence of potential assets and alliance acquisitions and management as well as leveraging new technological approaches to pharmaceutical development.

In 2019, Ray partnered with Bain Capital Life Sciences in building Cerevel Therapeutics with other seasoned executives, that included building the medical organizations, including capital formation and infrastructure build that led to a strong investor syndicate and an IPO in 2020.

Ray was inducted as a member of the Neuroscience Forum of the Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Additionally, Ray was the Northeast Representative of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) as well as an active member of the APA’s Legislative Institute in Washington, D.C. advocating for mental health parity on Capitol Hill. He was also one of six selected nationally to participate in the program in addiction psychiatry at the Betty Ford Center at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, CA. He is the recipient of the prestigious “Top 100 Leaders in Healthcare” award by the International Forum on Advancements in Healthcare (IFAH) as well as one of the Pharma Leaders by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine. In 2023, Ray was named to the PharmaVoice 100, acknowledging his significant contributions to the life sciences as a clinical innovator. He has also served as Executive Chairman of the International Society for CNS Drug Development (ISCDD). He is on Board of Directors, Connecticut Mental Health Center Foundation-Yale School of Medicine, Board Director of the Life Re-Entry Foundation as well as other non-for-profit organizations. He is well-published and has participated in numerous scientific presentations. Ray received an A.B. in Psychology from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University with Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa Honors, a M.D. from the Feinberg Medical School at Northwestern and trained in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine where he also was appointed as Chief Resident and an Instructor before joining the life sciences Industry.

Maurizio Fava, MD

Dr. Maurizio Fava is Psychiatrist-in-Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); director of the Division of Clinical Research of the MGH Research Institute; executive director of the MGH Clinical Trials Network and Institute (CTNI); associate dean for clinical and translational research, and the Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Fava is a world leader in the field of depression. He has edited eight books and authored or co-authored more than 800 original articles published in medical journals with international circulation, articles which have been cited more than 75,000 times in the literature and with an h index of over 135.

Dr. Fava obtained his medical degree from the University of Padova School of Medicine and completed residency training in endocrinology at the same university. He then moved to the United States and completed residency training in psychiatry at MGH. He founded and was director of the hospital’s Depression Clinical and Research Program from 1990 until 2014. In 2007, he also founded and is now the executive director of the MGH Psychiatry Clinical Trials Network and Institute, the first academic CRO specialized in the coordination of multi-center clinical trials in psychiatry.

Under Dr. Fava’s direction, the Depression Clinical and Research Program became one of the most highly regarded depression programs in the country, a model for academic programs that link, in a bi-directional fashion, clinical and research work.

Dr. Fava has been successful in obtaining funding as principal or co-principal investigator from both the National Institutes of Health and other sources for a total of more than $120 million. Dr. Fava’s prominence in the field is reflected in his role as the co-principal investigator of STAR*D, the largest research study ever conducted in the area of depression, and of the RAPID Network, the NIMH-funded series of studies of novel, rapidly-acting antidepressant therapies.

Dr. Fava has received several awards during his career and is on the editorial board of five international medical journals. Since 1990, Dr. Fava has also mentored more than 50 trainees who have gone on to become lead investigators in the area of psychiatry. He has developed with Dr. David Schoenfeld a novel design (with over five patents) to address the problem of excessive placebo response in drug trials and to markedly reduce sample size requirements for these trials. In 2009, Dr. Fava received the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard Medical School, and in 2013 the John T. Potts, Jr., MD Faculty Mentoring Award from Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also the former President of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Dr. Fava is a well-known national and international lecturer, having given more than 300 presentations at national and international meetings.

The Iaso Ventures team represents the diversity of modern entrepreneurship

Wasim Malik, PhD

John Reynders, PhD, MBA

Mark Currie, PhD

Michael Fenn, PhD

Sharon Tan

Anil Jina, MD

Sadiqa Mahmood

Ray Sanchez, MD

Maurizio Fava, MD

Steve Schachter, MD

Chandra Ramanathan, PhD, MBA

Noah Richmond, JD, PhD

Wasim Q. Malik, PhD

Managing Partner

John Reynders, PhD, MBA

Chief Data Scientist & Venture Partner

Mark G. Currie, PhD

Venture Partner

Michael Fenn, PhD

Venture Partner

Sharon Tan

Executive in Residence

Anil S. Jina, MD

Executive in Residence

Sadiqa Mahmood

Entrepreneur in Residence

Raymond Sanchez, MD

Maurizio Fava, MD

Steve Schachter, MD

Chandra Ramanathan, PhD, MBA

Noah Richmond, JD, PhD

Executive in Residence