Xcelerate Keynote Bios

Dr. Glimcher is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Member of the National Academy of Medicine, and the former President of the American Association of Immunologists. She is a member of the Cancer Research Institute, Prix Galien, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, and Repare Therapeutics Scientific Advisory Boards, the Lasker Award Jury, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Association of American Cancer Institutes, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She is the co-founder of Quentis Therapeutics. She previously served on the Board of Directors of the Bristol Myers Squibb pharmaceutical corporation, and is currently on the Corporate Board of Directors of the GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical corporation and the Waters Corporation.

A trailblazer in cancer research, Dr. Glimcher is celebrated for her research discoveries in the fields of transcriptional regulation, lymphocyte differentiation, immunology, and osteobiology. As an immunologist, her primary research interests are elucidating the molecular pathways that regulate the immune system, critical for both the development of protective immunity and for the pathophysiologic immune responses underlying autoimmune, infectious, and malignant diseases. Dr. Glimcher speaks nationally and internationally on cancer, immunology, skeletal biology, and translational medicine, and has contributed more than 350 scholarly articles and papers to the medical literature.

Aside from her research efforts, Dr. Glimcher has been a staunch proponent of improved access to care, health policy, and medical education, while simultaneously serving as a pioneering mentor and role model for cancer research trainees and for all women in science. Notably, she was the first female to be appointed Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, and is the first female President and Chief Executive Officer of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Dr. Glimcher is a magna cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College, and holds an MD degree cum laude from Harvard Medical School.

Liu graduated first in his class at Harvard in 1994. He performed organic and bio-organic chemistry research on sterol biosynthesis under Professor E. J. Corey’s guidance as an undergraduate. During his Ph.D. research with Professor Peter Schultz at U. C. Berkeley, Liu initiated the first general effort to expand the genetic code in living cells. He earned his Ph.D. in 1999 and became assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University in the same year. He was promoted to associate professor in 2003 and to full professor in 2005. Liu became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 2005 and joined the JASONs, academic science advisors to the U.S. government, in 2009.

Liu has earned several university-wide distinctions for teaching at Harvard, including the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize, the Roslyn Abramson Award, and a Harvard College Professorship. Liu has published more than 160 papers and is the inventor on more than 60 issued U.S. patents. His research accomplishments have earned distinctions including the Ronald Breslow Award for Biomimetic Chemistry, the American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award, the Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award, and awards from the Sloan Foundation, Beckman Foundation, NSF CAREER Program, and Searle Scholars Program. In 2016 he was named one of the top 20 translational researchers in the world by Nature Biotechnology, and in 2017 was named to the Nature’s 10 researchers in world and to the Foreign Policy Leading Global Thinkers. He is the scientific founder or co-founder of six biotechnology and therapeutics companies, including Editas Medicine, Pairwise Plants, and Beam Therapeutics.

Ms. Perettie began her tenure at Genentech as a program team leader for bevacizumab, and she led several successful therapy launches in the U.S. and abroad for Roche and Genentech across the oncology portfolio, including in lung cancer, breast cancer and hematology. Since joining in 2004, she held roles of increasing responsibility at Genentech, including vice president of global regulatory operations and regional head of Europe, Middle East and Africa operations and global development.

In 2012, Ms. Perettie took a hiatus from Genentech to join Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI) as President, Global Development Innovations where she gained invaluable insights into the day-to-day care of people living with cancer. During her tenure, she was responsible for leading and growing SCRI’s contract research organization globally, driving critical oncology clinical trials to further expand options for cancer patients and access precision medicine.

Before joining Genentech, Ms. Perettie lead portfolio management at IVAX Pharmaceuticals and was the director of global program management at Élan Corporation. Her pharmaceutical experience began as a research scientist associate director role at Chiron Corporation. She started her career as a senior research associate at Johns Hopkins University following her continuing education program there.

Ms. Perettie holds an MBA in marketing and finance from St. Mary’s College of California and received her bachelor’s degree in biology, with a minor in chemistry from State University of New York College at Potsdam.

He is notable for leading the development and demonstrating human effectiveness of two first-in-class cancer drugs, an ERK kinase inhibitor (Ulixertinib; BVD-523) and a bacteriolytic immunotherapy (C. novyi-NT).

Dr. Saha is the Senior Vice President of R&D and Global Head of Translational Medicine for all disease areas at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He is also the Site Head for Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D headquarters in Cambridge MA. Dr. Saha was a Venture Partner at Atlas, a venture capital firm in Cambridge MA, and most recently served as President and Chief Executive Officer at Delinia. In 2017, he led the acquisition of Delinia by Celgene for $775 million.

Previously he was Chief Medical Officer of Synlogic and a member on the Board of Directors of BioMed Valley Discoveries, a biotech company he played a pivotal role to launch as Chief Scientific Officer and subsequently serve as President for over 6 years. In 2005, Dr. Saha was recruited from McKinsey & Company to become the global head of the New Indications Discovery Unit at Novartis Pharmaceuticals. His work on developing new medicines has been featured in TIME Magazine, the Times, FOX, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. Dr. Saha has published over 90 papers and patents (issued and pending) and his articles in the Nature and Science journals have been cited over 4000 times. He has been selected as a Harvard Medical School Global Clinical Scholar and a finalist for the White House Fellowship.

Dr. Saha holds an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology. He has graduate degrees in biophysics from Oxford and in general management from Harvard Business School. He also earned both his M.D. and a Ph.D. in cancer genetics from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.