Pioneers in the Field of Infectious Disease Treatment

Ankit Mahadevia, MD President and CEO

Ankit Mahadevia is the CEO of Spero Therapeutics and a member of the Board of Directors. He was formerly a Venture Partner in the life sciences group at Atlas Venture, located in Cambridge, MA. In that capacity he supported the formation of eight companies focused on novel drug discovery platforms and therapeutic products including Nimbus Therapeutics, Arteaus Therapeutics (acquired by Lilly), and Translate Bio (Nasdaq: TBIO). He led three of these as Acting CEO, including Synlogic (Nasdaq: SYBX). Prior to joining Atlas in 2008, Ankit worked on product and business development with the founding team at Arcion Therapeutics. He has also held positions in business development both at Genentech and at Vanda Pharmaceuticals. Previously, he worked in the health care groups of McKinsey & Company and Monitor Group. Ankit began his career in health care policy, with roles in the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committees, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS). He has spoken widely on entrepreneurship, including at Harvard Univesity, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and the Berkeley Forum. Ankit has also been active in the policy of life science innovation, including service on the Advisory Council at the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Studies.

Thomas Parr, PhD Chief Scientific Officer

Tom Parr, PhD, has more than 26 years drug discovery experience across both large pharmaceutical and small biotechnology companies. Prior to joining Spero, Dr. Parr was the Chief Scientific Officer at Fedora Pharmaceuticals where the company moved novel diazabicyclooctane beta-lacramase inhibitors toward development partnerships. Prior to Fedora he was the Chief Scientific Officer at Targanta Therapeutics, now part of The Medicines Company. While at Targanta, Dr. Parr was instrumental in progressing the lipoglycopeptide, oritavancin through Phase 3 trials to registration with the FDA. Dr. Parr has worked on a broad range of marketed antibiotics including beta-lactams (cefaclor, loracarbef, cefuroxime axetil, cephalexin, moxalactam, ceftazidime, cefazolin, RWJ-333441); glycopeptides (vancomycin and oritavancin); lipodepsipeptides (daptomycin); aminoglycosides (tobramycin); quinolones (cinoxacin); macrolides (dirythromycin); antimicrobial peptides (iseganins); and a variety of additional developmental candidates.

Dr. Parr earned his PhD from the University of Calgary and conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry at the University of Ottawa before beginning his drug discovery and development career.

Joel Sendek Chief Financial Officer

Joel Sendek is the Chief Financial Officer at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Mr. Sendek has more than 25 years of experience in the life sciences sector, including 18 years as a senior sell-side research analyst covering biotechnology. Prior to joining Spero, Mr. Sendek was the Chief Financial Officer at Forward Pharma A/S, where he helped lead a $235 million IPO in 2014. As an analyst, he served as a Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp. where he led the firm’s healthcare equity research group, and previously he was a Managing Director at Lazard, where he established the firm’s healthcare equity research effort. Prior to his career in equity research, Mr. Sendek worked as a Senior Director of Corporate Development at Progenics Pharmaceuticals and as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Sendek holds a B.A. in Biochemistry from Rice University.

Cristina Larkin Chief Operating Officer

Cristina Larkin is the Chief Operating Officer at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Ms. Larkin has over 22 years of experience developing strategic commercial insights for biopharmaceutical companies and their infectious disease products such as Avycaz, Dalvance, Teflaro, Levaquin and Floxin. Prior to joining Spero, she served as Assistant Vice President for Actavis, formerly Forest Laboratories. During that time, Ms. Larkin led the commercial hospital antibiotic franchise team and was responsible for the US launch and execution strategy for several antibiotics. Additionally, she was a member of the business assessments and business development team and played an integral role in the out-licensing of ceftaroline to AstraZeneca, the acquisition of Durata and more.

Ms. Larkin received a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University.

David Melnick, MD Chief Medical Officer

Dr. David Melnick is the Chief Medical Officer at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Melnick has 18 years of experience in anti-infective drug development. Prior to joining Spero Therapeutics, Dr. Melnick served as Vice President of Clinical Development for Anti-Infectives at Allergan since 2015. In that capacity, he oversaw the development and regulatory approval of Teflaro®, Avycaz®, and Dalvance® in the United States.  Prior to Allergan, Dr. Melnick served fifteen years at AstraZeneca in various levels of increasing responsibility, most recently as Vice President of Clinical Development for Anti-Infectives. In that capacity, he oversaw the late stage clinical development of Merrem®, Teflaro®, and Avycaz®. In addition, he served as the acting Vice President for early development at AstraZeneca. He received his medical training at Columbia University, followed by a Residency in Internal Medicine at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.  Following a Fellowship in Infectious Disease at Yale University, he held faculty positions at the Boston University School of Medicine and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  He subsequently joined Kaiser-Permanente as a practicing Infectious Diseases specialist and as the Director of HIV Clinical Research at Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic, with a faculty appointment at Georgetown University.

Timothy Keutzer Chief Development Officer

Tim Keutzer is the Chief Development Officer at Spero Therapeutics. Tim has over 20 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry, spanning multiple functional and therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Spero, he was Vice President of Program and Portfolio Management at Cubist Pharmaceuticals. While there, he was the program leader for ceftolozane/tazobactam, which progressed rapidly from Phase 1 to Phase 3, and was approved in the US in December of 2014. Prior to that role, he also lead several of Cubist’s in-licensed development programs, and also lead the commercial supply chain for Cubicin. His experience before Cubist spans the drug development continuum across multiple drug classes, and includes preclinical PK/PD and clinical operations at Genetics Institute, as well as global strategic marketing and program management at Wyeth. Tim began his career in contract toxicology labs.

Tim studied English and microbiology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY.

Troy Lister, PhD Vice President of Research

Troy Lister, PhD, is the Vice President of Research at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Lister previously held roles as Team Leader of Infection Chemistry at AstraZeneca and Investigator III in Global Discovery Chemistry at the Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research. He has lead numerous discovery programs searching for novel agents targeting bacterial and viral pathogens including multidrug resistant Gram negative and Gram positive bacteria, hepatitis C virus, human rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, ebola virus and human enterovirus. Dr. Lister has led programs from the earliest stages of target selection and high throughput screening, through lead identification and optimization, to candidate selection and IND enablement. He is an author of 15 peer review publications, has extensive experience in natural product chemistry and is a member of the American Chemical Society.

Dr. Lister received his B.Tech, B.S. and PhD degrees from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California with Professoer K.C. Nicolaou.

Ian A. Critchley, PhD Head of Clinical Microbiology

Ian A. Critchley, Ph.D. is Head of Clinical Microbiology at Spero Therapeutics.  Prior to joining Spero Therapeutics, Dr. Critchley served as Vice President of Clinical Microbiology at Allergan plc since 2015, where he managed pre-clinical and clinical microbiology studies on anti-infective compounds.  Prior to Allergan plc, Dr. Critchley served six years at Cerexa, Inc., a subsidiary of Forest Laboratories, Inc., as the Vice President of Clinical Microbiology overseeing microbiology studies for its anti-bacterial programs. Prior to Cerexa, Inc., Dr. Critchley served as the Executive Director of Microbiology at Replidyne, Inc. for six years and held earlier positions at Focus Technologies, Inc. and SmithKline Beecham plc. He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Susannah Walpole, PhD Head of Clinical Operations

Dr. Susannah Walpole is the Head of Clinical Operations at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. In her role, Dr. Walpole provides leadership for all strategic and logistical operations supporting early and late stage human clinical trials. Dr. Walpole has 18 years of applied Phase I-IV trial experience within multiple therapeutic areas including anti-infectives, rare diseases, oncology, and metabolic disease.  Prior to joining Spero, Dr. Walpole was the Senior Director of Clinical Operations at Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals and Sirtris, a GSK Company.  She also has experience managing Clinical Operations at Shire Pharmaceuticals and Transkaryotic Therapies.  Dr. Walpole received her BS in Biology with a focus in Vertebrate Physiology from the Pennsylvania State University and her PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Jay Blackington Head of People Strategy and Culture

Jay has over 30 years as a Human Resource executive with a variety of organizations such as information technology, life sciences, and financial services.  His most recent healthcare experience was as Human Resources leader at InVivo Therapeutics.  Prior to InVivo Therapeutics, Jay held executive positions at Avid Technology, EMC, State Street, and Monsanto.  He brings to Spero global leadership experiences living and working in Asia, Australia and Japan, EMEA and North America, and has a proven track record of building trusted partnerships with employees, the board of directors and shareholders.  He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts and his graduate degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

Michael Pucci, PhD Executive Director – Early Drug Discovery

Michael J. Pucci, PhD, is Executive Director, Early Drug Discovery, at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. He has previously held positions in antibacterial drug discovery at Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., and in R&D at Microlife Technics/Unilever. In addition to drug discovery, his research interests include microbial genomics, antibiotic resistance mechanisms, and novel antibacterial agents. He is an author on more than 80 publications and 17 patents. He is a member of the American Society for Microbiology and currently serves on the ASM ICAAC Program Committee. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Microbial Drug Resistance, and the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. He has served on several NIH review panels including the Drug Discovery and Resistance (DDR) Study Section. Dr. Pucci received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Connecticut, his PhD in Microbiology from Temple University, and had post-doctoral training at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Melissa Stundick, PhD Executive Director of Strategic Alliances

Melissa Stundick, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Strategic Alliances for Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Previously, she was the Anti-infectives Program Chief within the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for over 5 years. During that time, she oversaw a portfolio of contracts that supported the procurement or research and development novel antibacterials, smallpox antivirals, antitoxins and ebola therapeutics. Prior to HHS, she was a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton where she provided scientific consultation to the Department of Defense, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other organizations.

Dr. Stundick received a B.S. in Chemistry from Bates College and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She also holds a Certificate of Intelligence Analysis from the University of Maryland.

Angela Talley, MD Vice President of Clinical Development

Dr. Angela Talley is the Vice President of Clinical Development at Spero Therapeutics and clinical lead for the NTM program. Dr. Talley is an Infectious Disease physician with over 12 years of experience in anti-infective clinical research and drug development in both academia and industry. Prior to joining Spero Therapeutics, Dr. Talley served as Executive Director of Clinical Development for Anti-Infectives at Allergan, plc, where she led clinical development activities for multiple anti-infective programs in Phase I-IV development since 2015 and prior to this held similar roles for related clinical development programs at Cerexa, Inc (a subsidiary of Forest Laboratories, later acquired by Actavis, plc). During her time in industry, she has and established a successful track record for clinical development and regulatory strategy, including multiple successful NDA/sNDA approvals. She received her M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine with research honors, and subsequently completed internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Infectious Disease Fellowship training at the University of Washington. Early in her career she was appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute Research Scholar and received a Fellowship award for her work in the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, NIAID. She held clinical faculty appointments at Columbia University (HIV Vaccines Trial Unit) and later at University of Washington and the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, where her research focus was on clinical trials of novel malaria therapeutics and malaria vaccine development before transitioning to Industry.