Our Leadership

Nancy is fascinated by how the brain works. “Of all parts of the body, to me it is the most interesting and the most complex,” she explains. “I think the brain is the final frontier.”

Nancy has always been driven by her love of science and medicine, receiving a PhD in neuroscience, and degrees in both biomedical and electrical engineering, followed by a postdoc at Harvard Medical School. She holds numerous patents and published works in respected journals.

During her career, Nancy has been CEO of three successful companies—True North Therapeutics, iPierian, and CytomX Therapeutics. Nancy is passionate about building high performing teams dedicated to finding new therapies that make a difference for patients. “Success to me is defined by getting a therapeutic to patients,” she says. “I think my crowning career achievement to-date is the work I did with True North.” True North’s drug, Enjaymo (Sutimlimab), now in the hands of Sanofi, recently won FDA approval for the treatment of cold agglutinin disease, a rare condition in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys its own red blood cells.

As the CEO and chair at Neuron23, Nancy takes a hands-on approach to building the company, following the science, and mentoring the team. In addition to her commitment to Neuron23, Nancy serves as chair of the board of a number of biotechnology companies, including Star Therapeutics, Electra Therapeutics and Latigo Biosciences. Nancy is active in philanthropy and is a board member of the not-for-profit organization PanCAN, having lost her mother and uncle to pancreatic cancer.

Nancy was previously involved as an advisor to Westlake Village BioPartners and New Leaf Venture Partners.

Sam Jackson joined Neuron23 in 2022. A strategic leader and clinical development expert, Sam is a board-certified emergency physician with fellowship training in medical toxicology. He has a long history of successful leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Before joining Neuron23, Sam served as Senior Vice President of Clinical Development at Alector, where he oversaw clinical development and operations while leading programs in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. Sam led the clinical due-diligence discussions that resulted in a transformational alliance with GlaxoSmithKline in one of the largest deals in the neurodegeneration space. He also served as interim Chief Medical Officer of Alector for seven months.

Prior to Alector, Sam held roles of increasing responsibility at Amgen, Genentech, Dynavax and Alkahest. At Dynavax, Sam ran a pivotal Phase 3 trial and was part of the small team that filed the BLA resulting in approval of a novel vaccine for Hepatitis B. At Alkahest, he served as Chief Medical Officer, where he helped build the clinical organization and designed and initiated four phase 2 trials in neurologic and ophthalmologic diseases.

Sam graduated from Stanford University and received his MD and MBA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.

Andrew Yost joined Neuron23 in 2023 as the company’s Chief Business Officer (CBO). Prior to joining Neuron23, Andrew served as CBO at TenSixteen Bio, where he oversaw the business development, finance, legal and operations functions. He also served as the Senior Vice President of corporate development at REGENXBIO, where he led all business development, strategic transactions, alliance management and long-range planning, as well as playing a significant role in the company’s IPO.

Earlier in his career, Andrew served on the healthcare investment banking team at JP Morgan where he advised on over $25 billion in M&A and equity/equity-linked transactions and was a management consultant in the healthcare group at PRTM (now Strategy&, a part of PwC). Andrew holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BS in biological engineering from Cornell University.

Steve Wood is a pharmaceutical industry veteran with over 30 years of drug discovery experience. He currently serves as EVP of Drug Discovery at Neuron23 where he oversees the preclinical portfolio from target discovery and validation through to development candidate nomination. Prior to joining Neuron23, Steve spent over 20 years at Amgen in the Neuroscience department where he led Amgen’s neurodegeneration discovery research efforts with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS. Early in his career, Steve worked at SmithKline Beecham where he and colleagues helped elucidate the mechanisms of abnormal protein aggregation, a common pathology across numerous neurodegenerative disorders.

Arash Rassoulpour serves as Vice President of Research Operations Prior to Neuron23. In this role he is responsible for multiple aspects of the business and has contributed to the company’s expansion and to the growth of the pipeline. Arash is an experienced drug developer and operational leader with over 15 year’s industry experience. Prior to Neuron23 he served as Executive Director and General Manager at Charles River Laboratories (CRL) where he served as the South San Francisco Site Head, was responsible for the companies CNS strategy, and served as a member of the Discovery leadership team.

Before becoming part of CRL Arash served as Head of US operations/Partner of Brains On-Line where he was responsible for the expansion and eventual acquisition by CRL. Arash started his industry career as Senior Scientist in Neuroscience group at Amgen where led several neuroscience programs in psychiatry including a program that eventually entered clinical trials. Arash holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Maryland.

Zhonghua Pei serves as VP of Chemistry at Neuron23. Zhonghua has rich and extensive drug discovery experience in oncology, inflammatory diseases, metabolic disease (diabetes & obesity) and now neuroinflammatory diseases. Zhonghua started his industrial career at Abbott Laboratories, then joined Genentech in 2007 and later Ideaya Biosciences in 2017. He has made significant impact and contributions to the discovery of multiple drug development candidates at Abbott, Genentech and Ideaya, either as an individual contributor or as a team leader. He has authored or co-authored more than 45 peer-reviewed papers, reviews and book chapters and over 40 patents.

Zhonghua obtained his BS degree from University of Science and Technology in China (USTC), MS degree from Rensselaer Polytech Institute (RPI) and his Ph D. in chemistry from MIT.

Luc Desnoyers serves as the Vice President of Translational Research and Discovery at Neuron23. His focus is on leading the biomarker and diagnostics efforts to move programs from the late-stage research through to clinical proof of concept. He is passionate about innovation and the development of novel strategies to define the right dose and identify the right patients.

Dr. Desnoyers has spent more than two decades in the biopharmaceutical industry, with a proven track record in platforms innovation, fundamental research and therapeutics development with companion diagnostics.

Prior to joining Neuron23, Dr. Desnoyers spent 9 years at CytomX Therapeutics, where he held roles of increasing responsibility. Most recently, Dr. Desnoyers served as Vice-President of Translational Sciences, during which he established and led the biomarker group accountable for biomarker and diagnostics strategies for all clinical programs. Dr. Desnoyers was instrumental in the development of the Probody and drug conjugate platforms, the initiation of multiple discovery initiatives and their transition into clinical programs. He has 1669 patents and 21 top-tier publications to his name.

Before joining CytomX, Dr. Desnoyers spent 14 years at Genentech working in multiple therapeutic areas and occupying different roles from early discovery to oncology biomarker for clinical development. Dr. Desnoyers completed his post-doctoral fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center with Drs Brown and Goldstein and holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of Montreal.

Suresh Dheerendra serves as the Vice President of Clinical Operations at Neuron23. Suresh is a seasoned clinical operations leader with over 20 years of global clinical development experience across several established biotech and pharmaceutical companies, including: Genentech, Lundbeck, Takeda, and Abbott/AbbVie. He has led programs across a variety of therapeutic areas in all phases of development.

Prior to joining Neuron23, Suresh was a Clinical Program Director at Genentech leading multiple programs from entry into the clinic to late stage development. Suresh holds a BS degree in Biology, (Plant Genetics), from Northern Illinois University and a MS degree in Health Care Administration from DePaul University.

Karen joined Neuron23 in March 2021, bringing over 20 years of financial and leadership experience, from privately held and publicly held companies within the healthcare sector. Most recently, she served as Vice President, Finance and Chief Accounting Officer of RAPT Therapeutics, Inc., where she managed finance, IT and facilities and played a key role in transforming RAPT from a private, preclinical company to a publicly-held clinical stage biotech company.

Previously, she served as Senior Director, Controller of True North Therapeutics, Inc and Director, Controller at iPierian Inc., a development stage biotechnology company where she played a critical role in building both company’s financial operations. She started her career at Ernst & Young LLP and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from San Francisco State University. Ms. Lam is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive).

Ryan serves as the Senior Director, Human Resources at Neuron23. He is passionate about innovation in HR practices and developing ways to expand access and equity to growth and development opportunities at work. Ryan has spent two decades in the field of HR with a proven track record of designing and scaling a wide range of HR programs.

Prior to joining Neuron23, Ryan led Global Talent Management at Moderna. Ryan started in biotech leading the Talent Management, Organization Effectiveness, and Culture function at Biogen. Ryan worked as a management consultant for 15 years serving a wide range of organizations around the world. He played a key role in developing methodologies and tools in organization design, performance management, and talent management. He began his career consulting on employee pay and executive compensation. Ryan earned a bachelor’s degree in management from Providence College and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.