Connected by our passion and commitment

Seth Ettenberg, Ph.D., is the President and CEO of BlueRock Therapeutics. Seth served as Chief Scientific Officer at BlueRock from 2020–2021. Prior to joining BlueRock, Seth was a founding member of the Unum Therapeutics team, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer. Previously, Seth headed the Cambridge Site of Novartis’ Oncology Biotherapeutics, leading strategy, innovation and implementation of drug development projects for Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR). In addition, Seth was responsible for building and leading the Novartis Cell and Gene Therapy research team in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania to develop chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapeutics. Seth received his formal scientific training at the Genetics Branch of the National Cancer Institute.

Natasha Rathee is SVP, Head of Finance at BlueRock Therapeutics where she is responsible for the Financial Planning and Analysis, Accounting and Financial Operations team playing a key role in the strategic and financial steering of the organization. Prior to BlueRock, Natasha was Head of Finance for Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Canada. Natasha has over 20 years of finance experience in the FMCPG (Fast Moving Consumer Packaged Goods Industry) working for both Kraft Foods and PepsiCo Beverages. Natasha holds her undergraduate honors degree with distinction from the University of Toronto, her CPA designation in Canada and her MBA in International Business and Marketing from the Schulich School of Business.

Rebecca Milbury leads the People & Culture team at BlueRock. Rebecca joined BlueRock in 2020 and brings over 15 years of leadership in people strategy to the role. She is an organizational builder with deep experience successfully scaling biotechnology organizations. Previously, Rebecca built and led the HR Business Partner and HR Operations functions at Foundation Medicine, providing strategic partnership as the company scaled to a multi-product organization of 1700 employees. She has held various leading roles in HR strategy, total rewards, talent management, engagement and talent acquisition in the biotech sector, Fortune 500 organizations, agencies and beyond. Rebecca is passionate about rallying BlueRockers around our mission to create cellular medicines, creating and sustaining a truly inclusive culture and motivating and engaging our teams to achieve the highest potential.

Melissa Mudrick, J.D., is SVP Quality and Compliance at BlueRock Therapeutics. With more than 25 years of experience in research and drug development, Melissa brings broad expertise supporting the path of new medicines through research, the clinic to commercialization. Prior to joining BlueRock, Melissa was Head of R&D Quality at Organon where she built and led the R&D Quality Organization in support of the spinoff of the women’s health portfolio and legacy products from Merck to Organon. Melissa has also worked as a quality consultant supporting several biopharmaceutical companies. Melissa held global leadership positions in the Pharmacovigilance, Operations, Quality and Systems functions at Biogen where she mobilized teams in support of the development, filing, inspection and global market launch of several programs including Tysabri, Fampyra, Tecfidera in MS, Spinraza in SMA and Alprolix and Eloctate in hemophilia. Melissa earned her Juris Doctorate at Suffolk University and is a member of both the New Hampshire and Massachusetts Bar.

Alan is a seasoned life sciences attorney with a breadth of legal leadership experience that spans the research, manufacturing, and commercial sectors of pharma as well as patents and specialized medicines. Most recently he served as General Counsel for Bayer’s global Oncology Strategic Business Unit from their campus in Berkeley California. Alan was one of the lead in-house lawyers at Bayer that negotiated the original Joint Venture agreement with Versant Ventures to establish BlueRock in 2016.

Amit Rakhit leads the Development and Medical teams at BlueRock. He is an experienced pharmaceutical and biotech executive and has led teams in developing medicines across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, neurology, rare diseases, and cardiovascular conditions. Prior to joining BlueRock, Amit was CEO at Flare Therapeutics where he transitioned the company from research to clinical phase and helped raise a $123M Series B round. He has also served as President and Chief Medical Officer at Ovid Therapeutics and held senior-level roles at Bristol Myers Squibb and Biogen. Amit holds a BA in molecular cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley, MD from Tufts University, and MBA from the joint program between Columbia Business School and London Business School. He completed a Harvard fellowship training in Pediatric Cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Stefan Irion, M.D., leads the Research organization at BlueRock Therapeutics. Since joining BlueRock in 2017, Stefan has taken on a number of roles in support of BlueRock’s scientific goals; developing CNS strategy, advancing the DA01 program through IND clearance, advancing multiple neurology pipeline candidates to the next stage of development to building and expanding a cross-site and cross-functional research team. Prior to BlueRock, Stefan was part of the leadership team at Memorial Sloan Kettering that developed MSK-DA01, the current lead program at BlueRock. Stefan worked as a Senior Scientist at iPierian developing iPSCs prior to joining MSK. Stefan received his M.D. from the University of Tuebingen and did Postdoctoral Fellowship work at both Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and University Health Network in Toronto.

Alison Lawton is an executive leader with more than 30 years of biopharma experience, having most recently served as president and CEO of Kaleido Biosciences. Previously, she served as chief operating officer (COO) of Aura Biosciences and OvaScience. From 2014 to 2017, Ms. Lawton served as a biotech consultant for various companies including as COO consultant at X4 Pharmaceuticals. Prior to that, Ms. Lawton spent more than 20 years at Genzyme, and subsequently Sanofi-Aventis, following the 2011 acquisition of Genzyme by Sanofi. Her roles included head of Genzyme Biosurgery and senior vice president of Global Market Access & Regulatory Affairs.

Alison currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for Magenta Therapeutics (MGTA) and as an independent director for the public companies ProQR Therapeutics (PRQR), Aeglea Biotherapeutics (AGLE), X4 Pharmaceuticals (XFOR), as well as on the board of SwanBio and AgBiome. She previously served on the board of directors of Kaleido Biosciences, Verastem, CoLucid until its acquisition by Eli Lilly, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals until its acquisition by Merck & Co. She is past president and chair of the Board of Regulatory Affairs Professional Society and past FDA Advisory Committee member for Cell and Gene Therapy Committee. She earned her BSc in Pharmacology, with honors, from King’s College, London University.

Christian Rommel became EVP, Global Head of Research & Development and a member of the executive committee of Bayer Pharmaceuticals in February 2021. He joined Bayer from Roche, where he was most recently Senior VP, Global Head of Oncology, Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED). Rommel also served at Amgen as Vice President of External Research and Development. Before that role, he was Amgen’s Vice President, Research Oncology. Previously, Christian Rommel served as Chief Scientific Officer of Intellikine, a private biotech company based in San Diego, from its inception to acquisition by Takeda. Earlier in his career, Rommel was Head of Target Research at Merck-Serono in Geneva, Switzerland. He also worked as a scientist in the team of George Yancopoulos at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, New York. Christian Rommel received his Ph.D. in molecular oncology from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany and the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a lecturer of biotechnology at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He has authored more than 70 publications, including papers in Science and Nature, and is an inventor or co-inventor of 18 patents.

Stefan Oelrich has been a member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG and head of the Pharmaceuticals Division, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, since November 1, 2018.
After graduating from high school in Paris, France, he joined Bayer AG as a commercial trainee in 1989 and qualified as a commercial assistant in 1991. Over the next 20 years, he held a number of positions of increasing responsibility in the health care business in Latin America, Europe and the United States. In 2011, he joined Sanofi as General Manager in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In 2015, Oelrich became head of Sanofi’s Diabetes and Cardiovascular business unit in Europe. In 2017, was appointed Executive Vice President Diabetes & Cardiovascular on the Executive Committee of Sanofi. Since 2016, Oelrich has been a member of the Supervisory Board of the Berlin Institute of Health.

Wolfram Carius is Executive Vice President at Bayer’s Pharmaceutical Division. He was appointed to his current role in October of 2020. Wolfram has also served as Executive Vice President of Pharmaceuticals Product Supply at Bayer. Prior to joining the company, Wolfram was a Senior Vice President at Sanofi, where he was accountable for the technical development and manufacturing of Biologics.
Before that, he worked for Boehringer Ingelheim from 1987 until the end of 2013, eventually becoming responsible for its worldwide chemical, pharmaceutical and biopharma production network. In 2009, he was appointed to the company‘s Board of Management, with responsibility for Human Resources and Technical Operations. Wolfram has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and has worked in Asia, South America, North America and Europe.

Seth Ettenberg, Ph.D., is the President and CEO of BlueRock Therapeutics. Seth served as Chief Scientific Officer at BlueRock from 2020 – 2021. Prior to joining BlueRock, Seth was a founding member of the Unum Therapeutics team, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer. Previously, Seth headed the Cambridge Site of Novartis’ Oncology Biotherapeutics, leading strategy, innovation, and implementation of drug development projects of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR). In addition, Seth was responsible for building and leading the Novartis Cell and Gene Therapy research team in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania to develop chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapeutics. Seth received his formal scientific training at the Genetics Branch of the National Cancer Institute.

Juergen Eckhardt is EVP and Head of Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm, and Head of Business Development, Licensing & Open Innovation (BDLOI) for the Pharmaceuticals division. He is a medical doctor and venture investor in healthcare, biotech, and agriculture with more than 20 years of experience. He is a strong believer that scientific breakthroughs can help us overcome some of humanity’s biggest challenges, including to cure and prevent chronic disease and to feed an ever-growing world population in a sustainable way – in short: science for a better life. He holds an MD from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Doug is a neurologist and neuroscientist with over 130 publications in medical journals many of which involved stem cell transplantation for preclinical models of neurologic disorders. He has led the development of several therapies for neurologic and rare genetic diseases while working in the biotechnology industry, including Biogen and Shire. He has participated on the boards and SABs of several non-profit organizations, including the Transverse Myelitis Association, CureSMA and the ALS Association as well as several biotechnology companies including Disarm Therapeutics, Triplet Therapeutics and FAZE Medicines. Doug has been actively involved in gene and cell therapy programs and is on the Scientific Review Panel of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. Doug holds a degree in molecular biology from Princeton university and completed an M.D./Ph.D. program from Jefferson Medical College with his research dissertation in molecular neurovirology. He completed a neurology residency at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore Maryland, and served on the faculty Johns Hopkins for 10 years. In 2017, Doug founded and joined Generation Bio-a biotech company focused on non-viral gene therapy- as the head of R&D/CSO and then the Chief Medical Officer. In 2023, Doug became a Venture Partner at Atlas Venture where he is working on creating new biotech startups.

Dr. Studer is a scientific co-founder of BlueRock Therapeutics and is director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and member of the Developmental Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. He is currently leading a multidisciplinary consortium to pursue the clinical application of human stem cell-derived dopamine neurons for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Studer’s work has been recognized by numerous awards including the Boyer Young Investigator award, the Annemarie Opprecht Award and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Dr. Laflamme is a founding investigator of BlueRock Therapeutics and is a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. Dr. Laflamme is a leader in the field of cardiac physiology, stem cell-derived cardiac tissues and cardiac pacemaker cells. Dr. Laflamme earned an M.D., Ph.D. degree in physiology and pharmacology from Emory University School of Medicine. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Georgetown University.

Dr. Keller is a scientific co-founder of BlueRock Therapeutics and the director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. He is best known for his research in lineage specific differentiation of mouse and human embryonic stem cells. Prior to this role, Dr. Keller was the director of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York where he previously was a professor in the Department of Gene and Cell Medicine. Dr. Keller earned his Ph.D. in immunology at the University of Alberta.

Dr. Bruce Blazar is a Regents Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Associate Vice President in the Office of Academic and Clinical Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He is the founding Director of the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and the founding Director of the Center for Translational Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Blazar’s lab specializes in inflammatory responses associated with hematopoietic stem cell transplants. Over the past 30+ years, his laboratory has focused on transplantation immunobiology in order to develop new therapies to improve patient health. Dr. Blazar is the author of more than 760 manuscripts, which have appeared in premier peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Blazar received his M.D. from Albany Medical College. He is board certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology/Bone Marrow Transplantation after completing a residency and fellowship, respectively at the University of Minnesota.