Co-Founder & CEO
Chief Technology Officer
Chief Data Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. King (Drew) is the Chief Financial Officer and leads the financial and operational functions at Tasca Therapeutics Corp. Drew has over 15+ years of experience in finance and operations supporting both private and capital market funds. He is currently a Partner and Chief Financial Officer at Cure Ventures focusing on supporting early-stage portfolio companies.
He most recently was the Vice President of Finance at Bain Capital, helping launch the Life Sciences and Double Impact business units in 2016. Prior to that he was a Finance Manager at Absolute Return Capital, a global macro hedge fund, assisting in the day-to-day oversight for all post-trade activities. He spent 7 years in public accounting at Ernst & Young within the Financial Services Office focusing on venture capital, private equity, and hedge fund clients.
Drew received a M.S.A. from the University of Virginia, McIntire School of Commerce and a B.S. in Corporate Finance and Accounting from Bentley University and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Dr. Cicmil (Milenko) has over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development, leading multi-disciplinary scientific/project teams, portfolio strategy, and business development. His deep understanding of biology, especially in inflammation/autoimmunity and oncology matched with his drug development experience across small molecules, biologics and peptides enables him to find creative solutions for challenges faced by early-stage biotechnology startups. He spent much of his career in R&D positions of increasing responsibility within companies such as Ipsen, Fog Pharma, Merck & Co., AstraZeneca, and GE Healthcare contributing to development of multiple drugs such as: Brilinta, Symbicort, and Keytruda.
Milenko is Co-founder of Tasca Therapeutics Corp., one of the Cure Ventures portfolio companies where he currently serves as the CEO and Board member. Most recently Milenko was Vice President and Head of Global External Innovation at Ipsen, responsible for developing and leading effort generating a high-value pipeline. Prior to joining Ipsen, Milenko was Vice President, Biology at Fog Pharma, where he was responsible for scientific, strategic, and operational leadership of the Biology Department as well as contributing efforts towards the company’s financing. During his career at Merck & Co., in addition to his R&D role Milenko also served as a Director at Merck’s Innovation Hub where he led search & evaluation efforts for in-licensing/partnership opportunities in Immuno-Oncology, Immunology and Ophthalmology. Milenko’s early R&D career at AstraZeneca spanned a variety of roles including managing teams of scientists and projects within immunology and inflammation therapy areas delivering over 20 clinical development candidate drugs.
Milenko is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at University of Reading, UK where he completed a PhD. in Molecular Pharmacology. Milenko received BSc in Molecular Biology from Kings College, London, UK. Prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry, Milenko was a postdoctoral fellow at the Cancer Research UK.
Dr. Vath brings a 30 plus year history of success launching and running new programs in organizations ranging from early-stage start-ups through commercial-stage public biotechnology companies. He has been a Venture Partner at Cure Ventures since 2021. Prior to that Dr. Vath was managing partner for Pharmup Solutions which is a consultancy which serves early-stage startups and established companies to take projects from an idea or research stage to a clinical stage of development. He has also been served as CEO of Response Therapeutics he founded which is an early-stage start-up looking to leverage the integrated stress response for metabolic and inflammatory diseases.
From 2006-2019 Dr. Vath served in several roles at Zafgen, Inc., a company he founded where he led the aspects of the discovery and development organization. Dr. Vath ran Zafgen for the first seven years as a virtual company through clinical proof-of-concept and a public offering and was responsible taking the company’s lead asset through clinical proof-of-concept and discovering three additional novel molecules that were taken to IND stage and crafting Zafgen’s IP portfolio of over 75 patents.
From 2004-2006 Dr. Vath was involved in several early-stage start-up companies as consultant, employee, or founder. These include a stem-cell company focused on oncology called Zhealix which merged with Fate Therapeutics and Phylogix which was a venture-backed start-up developing a plant derived lectin for oncology supportive care as senior VP of Development.
Prior to his work with early-stage start-ups, Dr. Vath was a key contributor at three public biotechnology companies in the Boston area. From 1999-2004 at Praecis Pharmaceuticals, a small molecule and peptide mimetic company, he was the Head of Research where he led an 80 person R&D organization through three INDs and an approved NDA for Plenaxis. From 1996-1999 Dr. Vath was Head of Protein Technologies for Millennium Pharmaceuticals, a pioneer in genomics, where he founded the first proteomics platform in the pharmaceutical industry and contributed to target validation and screening efforts. From 1989 to 1996 Dr. Vath was at Genetics Institute as a Lab Head where he pioneered the application of mass spectrometry for characterizing protein structure-function. In this role he took multiple projects from a candidate stage into development and provided critical information for the market approval of five different therapeutic protein drugs.
Dr. Vath’s academic background includes a PhD. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied under Prof. Klaus Biemann, and a BS in chemistry from Northeastern University where he graduated with highest honors. He is author on over 30 scientific papers and the inventor on over 25 issued patents.
Dr. MacIsaac is a Chief Data Officer of Tasca Therapeutics Corp. Kenzie’s career spans over 13 years in drug discovery working at the cutting edge of genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics to solve pressing problems in human health.
Prior to joining Tasca Therapeutics Corp, Dr. MacIsaac served as a Senior Director at Bristol Myers Squibb where he built out the oncology precision medicine and bioinformatics capability at their Kendall Square discovery site, played a central role in genetically driven new target identification efforts, and made key contributions to the understanding of drug resistance, including Opdivo and Yervoy combinations. Prior to BMS, Kenzie led Translational Bioinformatics at Fog Pharma with responsibility for their computational biology platform.
From 2014-2018 Dr. MacIsaac was a group leader at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. While at NIBR Oncology he helped develop their strategy for using genomic data to immunophenotype cancer and drive patient selection and translational research efforts for oncology assets.
From 2009-2014 Dr. MacIsaac was a scientist at Merck Research Laboratories in their Genetics and Pharmacogenomics department, focused on the identification of genetically validated targets in immunology and respiratory disease.
Dr. MacIsaac’s academic background includes a PhD. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied under Dr. Ernest Fraenkel, a M.A.Sc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and a B.Eng in Electrical Engineering from Carleton University where he graduated with highest honors.
Dr. Paul Secrist is Chief Scientific Officer of Tasca Therapeutics where he brings over 25 years of cancer drug discovery and development experience. Prior to joining Tasca Therapeutics, Paul served as the Chief Scientific Officer at Cyteir Therapeutics, a clinical stage drug development company focused on developing therapeutics that target DNA damage response and cancer metabolism pathways.
Paul received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Mayo Graduate School where he explored T-cell biology and IL-2 receptor signalling in the laboratory of Robert T. Abraham. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Jewish Hospital in cancer biology and growth factor signal transduction, Paul moved to industry and has worked in the preclinical drug discovery and early clinical drug development research space at both early startup biotechnology companies and big pharma.
Leading multiple preclinical stage projects, Paul has participated in the discovery and early development of several oncology programs. While at Aton Pharma, and later after its acquisition by Merck, Paul and his team were instrumental in the successful launch of the first-in-class HDAC inhibitor, Zolinza. As Director of Oncology Biosciences at AstraZeneca, Paul led the research team that discovered and successfully brought AZD5991, a first-in-class Mcl-1 inhibitor, to the clinic.
Teams working under Paul’s leadership have taken several additional oncology drug discovery projects from initiation through the clinical candidate selection process and IND-enabling studies.
