Team

Dr. John Lamattina, Chairman of the Board

Dr. LaMattina is the former President, Pfizer Global R &D and Senior Vice President, Pfizer Inc. During Dr. LaMattina's leadership tenure Pfizer discovered and/or developed a number of important new medicines including Tarceva, Chantix, Zoloft (PTSD), Selzentry and Lyrica along with a number of other medicines currently in late stage development for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and pain. He is the author of numerous scientific publications and U.S. patents. In addition, Dr. LaMattina is the author of "Drug Truths: Dispelling the Myths About Pharma R&D". Dr. LaMattina has received numerous awards and honors including the American Diabetes Association Award for Leadership and Commitment in the Fight Against Diabetes. Dr. LaMattina serves on the Board of Directors of PureTech Ventures, Human Genome Sciences and Neurogen and serves as Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Committee for Bilcare. He also is a member of the Board of Trustees of Boston College.

Yishai Zohar, CEO

Mr. Zohar is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gelesis Inc., a Boston-based medical technology company developing innovative technologies to treat obesity and related co-morbidities. A seasoned entrepreneur, Mr. Zohar has over 25 years experience in the launch and development of industry innovating companies. Prior to founding Gelesis, Mr. Zohar was a Co-Founder and Partner of PureTech Ventures, a Boston-based venture group focused on the translation of academic breakthroughs into commercially viable companies. In his role at PureTech he co-founded and ran several innovative companies, including Gelesis. Prior to co-founding PureTech, Mr. Zohar co-founded and was the CEO of Zeta Ltd, a market leader in the Israeli consumer/edible goods market.

Eyal S. Ron, CTO

Dr. Eyal S. Ron has over 20 years of experience in the development of devices, biomaterials, drugs and drug delivery systems. He has in-depth understanding of total development process including project management, clinical trials, regulatory, formulation, drug delivery, QC and manufacturing scale-up. He has contributed to the formation of Argolyn Biosciences, Cerebrotec, Combinent Biomedical Systems, eNOS Pharmaceuticals, Focal, GelMed/Gel Sciences, InfiMed and Palmetto Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Ron holds a PhD in chemistry from Brandeis and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT in the lab of Dr. Robert Langer. Currently he is an Adjunct Faculty at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health and Sciences and Technology.

Hassan M. Heshmati, CMO

Hassan M. Heshmati, M.D., has over 32 years of experience in clinical research in pharmaceutical companies (Essentialis, Carlsbad, CA and Sanofi-Aventis, Malvern, PA) and in academia (Mayo Foundation, Rochester, MN and university-affiliated hospitals, Paris, France). His research activity has been related to pituitary tumor, gonadal function, dyslipidemia, hyperthyroidism, thyroid cancer, osteoporosis, obesity, and diabetes. Dr. Heshmati received his M.D. Degree from the University of Paris VI, Paris, France. He is Board Certified in Endocrinology.

Alessandro Sannino, Chief Project Scientist

Alessandro Sannino, PhD, is a co-inventor of the GelesisMD technology (formerly "Attiva"), is a Professor at the Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento (Lecce, Italy), and an adjunct faculty at MIT

Nissim Bilman, VP R&D Manufacturing

Mr. Bilman brings to Gelesis over 20 years of experience in multiple R&D, Quality Assurance and manufacturing roles including complex multi-national project management, QA management, hosting of succesful FDA and European inspections and all aspects of scale-up, technology transfer, process validation and GMP production. He has previously worked with Agis (Perrigo), Sol-Gel Technologies, Finetech Ltd (Parr pharmaceuticals) and others. Mr. Bilman has a Masters Degree in Applied Chemistry from Hebrew University.

Christian Demitri, Project Scientist

Dr. Christian Demitri started his research activity at the ISBEM Institute (Euro Mediterranean Scientific and Biomedical Institute) of Brindisi and at the Clinical Physiology Institute of National Council of Research (IFC-CNR) of Lecce. Since September 2006 he has worked with the Biomaterials Laboratory at the Department of Engineering for Innovation of the University of Salento. He has been a visiting researcher at the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Brighton (UK).