Dominic Jaikaran, Ph.D., MBA | President & CEO
Dominic Jaikaran is the President and CEO of Bright Angel Therapeutics. He joined the company in 2018 after playing an instrumental role in the company’s formation. He has over fifteen years of experience in biotechnology and finance. Prior to Bright Angel Therapeutics, Dominic held leadership positions at MaRS Innovation and Diversa Corporation (now BASF), a NASDAQ-listed company in San Diego. He was also a Principal at BDC Venture Capital, focusing on early-stage life science investments.
Dominic holds a PhD in Biological Chemistry and a BSc in Chemistry and Biochemistry, both from the University of Toronto. He also holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.
Leah Cowen, Ph.D. | Co-founder and CSO
Leah Cowen is Vice President, Research at the University of Toronto (UofT), Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics, co-Director of the CIFAR Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities program, and co-Founder and CSO of Bright Angel Therapeutics, a company that leverages state-of-the-art technologies for development of novel antifungal therapeutics. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia, a PhD from UofT, and pursued postdoctoral studies at the Whitehead Institute. She has an outstanding track-record of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. She has published >110 high impact research articles and been recognized with many awards including a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award, Grand Challenges Canada Star in Global Health Award, Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award, E.W.R. Steacie Award, and Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics & Infectious Disease. She has been elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Luke Whitesell, MD | Co-founder and Consultant
Dr. Luke Whitesell is a co-founder of, and consultant to, Bright Angel Therapeutics and an oncologist and molecular pharmacologist within the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Board-certified in pediatric oncology (inactive status), he has over two decades prior experience in cooperative group clinical trials and the clinical management of children with invasive fungal infections, especially in the bone marrow transplant setting. He currently helps guide translational drug discovery and development efforts within the Cowen laboratory. His research has led to publication of well over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 3 issued patents and 2 pending applications. Prior to joining the Cowen lab in 2017, Luke was a principal investigator at the Whitehead Institute for over a dozen years where he led or helped lead multiple high throughput screening and pre-clinical development efforts performed in conjunction with the Broad Institute, MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Harvard ICCB and NIH NCATS program.
Malik Slassi. Ph.D. | Senior Advisor
Dr. Slassi joined Bright Angel Therapeutics in early 2020 to lead the company’s chemistry efforts. He was the Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Fluorinov Pharma Inc. acquired by Trillium in January 2016. Dr. Slassi has over 30 years of experience in the successful identification of small molecule drug candidates across multiple therapeutic areas including Oncology, Neurology, Immunology and Gastro-intestinal. Prior to founding Fluorinov, Dr. Slassi was Director and Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry and Manufacturing & Drug Development at NPS Pharmaceuticals and Cascade Therapeutics, respectively, and earlier he held management and scientific positions at Allelix Biopharmaceuticals Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim Research Inc., and Rhône Poulenc. During his career he has been involved in numerous multinational R&D collaborations including with Hoechst AG (Sanofi-Aventis), AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Forest Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, and Memory Pharmaceuticals. For seven years, he served on the steering committee for the multinational collaboration on the metabotropic Glutamate Receptors (mGluRs) program between NPS Pharma and AstraZeneca. Dr. Slassi has a strong track record of drug development with over 20 drug candidates advanced into late-stage preclinical and clinical development. Dr. Slassi has extensive experience in the areas of intellectual property management and scientific operations. He is an inventor with over 130 issued and published patents and patent applications, and author of more than 65 scientific and review articles published in international peer reviewed journals. Dr. Slassi holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Claude Bernard, Lyon, France and completed his postdoctoral work in the Chemistry Department at the University of Montreal, Canada.