BioWorld Features Dr. Yousef’s and Dr. O’Connell’s founding story, showcasing Juvena’s proteomics platform to tackle chronic and age-related diseases by mining hESC-secreted proteins
Bek Madjidov
Bek Madjidov is the Head of Finance and Operations at Juvena Therapeutics, responsible for administrative and operational functions (finance, human resources, information technology, and facilities).
Bek is a transformational leader who brings strong business acumen and over 15 years of finance and operations experience in the biotech and high-tech industries. His areas of expertise are strategic planning, business analysis, management reporting, process improvement, and organizational transformation.
Bek previously served as Finance Director at Genentech (Roche), supporting Product Development and Manufacturing Operations organizations. He provided finance leadership to global product and functional teams and led transformational efforts in business and finance organizations. Prior to Genentech, Bek held a variety of finance and leadership roles at Autodesk and Bio-Rad Laboratories by successfully building and leading teams that built strong, cross-functional business partnerships in complex, matrix organizations.
Bek holds a Bachelor of Science (summa cum laude) in Business Administration from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY). Bek is pursuing a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Jeff Welch
Jeff Welch has over 30 years of CMC experience in the process development, GMP manufacturing and facilities, and regulatory documentation.
In Jeff’s most recent role as a consultant he has had responsibility for authoring and reviewing regulatory filing sections related to process development and product characterization.
Over the past decade Jeff has focused on his role as a senior director for drug substance (DS) process development and director over process engineering and operations for a specialty pharmaceutical company working in biologics and vaccines and as a CDMO organization.
Jeff has also served as a project manager for large scale manufacturing and technology transfer projects and filled the DS team leader role. After a lead role in engineering and construction, he served as a senior manager over the start up effort for a stainless steel cell culture facility (1600 L scale), where he hired and managed personnel and led a 7-day-a-week cGMP manufacturing operation for the upstream portion.
In his early career he participated in design of a multi-product manufacturing facility and after start-up performed process fit and technology transfer activities for several microbial, yeast and cell culture products.
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Ritwik Datta, PHD
Ritwik Datta joined Juvena Therapeutics as a Scientist on the Pharmacology team. Ritwik is a physiologist with over ten years of experience. His expertise lies in comprehending the molecular basis of cardiometabolic diseases. Ritwik’s approach to investigating complex biological questions involves utilizing both mouse models and cell-based methods to develop innovative therapies for cardiometabolic and pulmonary diseases.
Ritwik received his Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta under the guidance of Sagartirtha Sarkar, Ph.D. Ritwik focused on studying how two major cell types in the heart – cardiac myocytes and fibroblasts – communicated with each other through secreted molecules and how these signaling pathways impacted cardiac fibrosis.
Ritwik completed his extensive postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the lab of Kamran Atabai, MD. Ritwik’s research identified a novel integrin-mediated feedback loop of insulin receptor signaling that regulates skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity, laying the foundation for integrin-based therapy to lower daily insulin needs in diabetic patients. In his recent work, Ritwik investigated integrins’ role in regulating dietary fat metabolism in the intestine, providing insights into how intestinal lipid droplet homeostasis affects whole-body lipid metabolism and cardiovascular health.
Throughout his career, Ritwik has garnered recognition and support from prestigious organizations, including postdoctoral fellowships from the Larry L Hillblom Foundation, enabling him to pursue his research endeavors. Ritwik has 6, 1st author publications including in PNAS and Cell reports, and he is a co-author of 10 publications in leading scientific journals.
Besides his passion for science, Ritwik is a travel and photography enthusiast.
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Juvena CEO, Hanadie Yousef, PhD, discusses the market opportunity for their unique discovery platform for mapping secreted proteins to unmet medical needs leading to their growing pipeline of biologics for rare and chronic diseases to senior leaders of Mubadala’s LP.
Program Manager – Discovery, Platform, and G&A
Position Description
Juvena Therapeutics, Inc. is a regenerative medicine biotech startup inviting applicants for Program Manager – Discovery, Platform, and G&A. Applicants should be excited to join a company focused on the discovery and validation of novel disease-modifying biologics that promote tissue regeneration by inducing tissue-specific rejuvenating phenotypes.
This position (“the PM”) will report to the VP of Program Management and work closely with other Senior Leaders at Juvena daily. The PM will serve as the hands-on project manager of a broad portfolio of Discovery and Platform projects that are core to Juvena’s mission and strategy. Working with Leadership and other stakeholders, the successful candidate will work with the VP Program Management in the planning, execution, and control of integrated KPIs, Research, Discovery (R&D), and G&A program plans, and portfolio management processes that provide a foundation for driving operational objectives. The PM will train, coach, and mentor Staff and Leaders on project management best practices and proactively manage weekly project objectives, identify and analyze dependencies, perform resource planning, develop alternative scenarios based on priority changes and/or pivots on KPIs or objectives, liaise with key stakeholders, and provide regular status updates and recommendations to Leadership on projects within their portfolio.
The position is temporary with the option to convert to a regular full-time position with health benefits. This is the perfect opportunity for someone interested in the exciting and fast-paced environment of a startup company and looking to make a difference in improving people’s lives through science.
*Title commensurate with experience
Company Summary
Juvena Therapeutics is a venture backed biotechnology startup discovering and developing disease-modifying biologics by leveraging their computationally-driven discovery platform to rapidly identify and validate secreted proteins with regenerative potential for multiple rare and chronic diseases.
At Juvena Therapeutics, we are on a mission to discover and develop biologics for rare and chronic degenerative diseases by mapping secreted proteins to unmet medical needs through a machine learning (ML)-enhanced platform. Juvena’s approach integrates proteomics, transcriptomics and imaging with phenotypic human in vitro disease model screening and extensive preclinical validation to mine the therapeutic potential of human stem cell secretomes as a rich source of new medicines that promote tissue regeneration and repair. We are advancing lead drug candidates for muscular dystrophies, atrophy, injury, and osteopathies, and establishing new programs targeting tissue-specific degenerative diseases across multiple therapeutic areas. Since our launch in mid-2018, Juvena has discovered and validated several hits for neuromuscular, skeletal, and metabolic diseases. Juvena’ preclinical programs are supported by funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Juvena is advancing a lead program for Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1, a rare autosomal dominant, progressive muscle-wasting disease.
At Juvena we embrace a diversity of backgrounds, experience and approaches that all combine to lead us to world-class scientific results in an inclusive environment.
Position Location and work permit requirement
640 Galveston Dr. Redwood City, 94063
Candidate must be legally authorized to work in the US.
Position Requirements and Duties
- Collaborate with the VP of Program Management to develop, promote, and support a foundation of project management best practices across Juvena by training, coaching, and mentoring Staff and Leaders in its adoption.
- Work with Leadership and other stakeholders to lead the establishment of integrated KPIs, R&D program plans, and portfolio management processes that provide a basis for driving operational objectives, deliverables, execution, and timelines.
- Drive program and project management processes and activities such as managing priorities, scope definition, schedules, budgets, risk, quality, and changes while ensuring key company milestones and KPIs are defined and met.
- Manage meetings in alignment with Juvena’s best practices (e.g., agenda and pre-read information provided, meeting outcomes pre-defined, logging of risks, action items, issues, and decisions [RAID log], etc.).
- Develop and manage portfolios for Platform and Discovery through pre-clinical readiness and Corporate G&A projects.
- Monitor ongoing projects for potential risks and develop proactive mitigation strategies with Leadership and the relevant R&D teams. Identify, track, and support resolution efforts for all program-related issues and effectively communicate to relevant internal and external contractor teams via regular and ad hoc status updates.
- For projects within their program, drive resource planning and impact analysis of priority change/pivot scenarios. Manage changes to project scope, ensuring that all impacts and changes are approved through Governance and appropriately communicated.
- Liaise with external partners such as pharmaceutical companies and critical suppliers.
- Support the development of TCPs (Target Candidate Profile) and initial TPPs (Target Product Profile).
- Develop and maintain project/portfolio dashboards, reports, and metrics including GANTT charts and status summaries.
- Other tasks as assigned.
Qualifications
You may be a great fit if you have the following qualifications:
- Basic Qualifications (required)
- Undergraduate degree,
- PMP certification,
- Strong working knowledge of common project management best practices & tools (RAID logs, Gantt charts, Risk registers, etc.),
- 2+ years project management experience in pharmaceutical drug discovery, development, or healthcare related R&D,
- Ability to operate in a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary scientific environment that is often required to be adaptive and agile to respond to new discoveries and industry changes,
- Strong oral and written communication, meeting facilitation, and organizational skills,
- Ability to motivate, collaborate, and innovate to achieve objectives,
- Ability to wear many hats with a team-first attitude.
- Bonus Qualifications (preferred)
- Graduate degree, especially in a scientific or computational area,
- 4+ years relevant experience in in pharmaceutical drug discovery, development, or healthcare related R&D,
- Experience with biologics development,
- Track record of advancing R&D projects through discovery to successful candidate nomination,
- Experience advancing R&D projects through preclinical to successful IND or CTA regulatory filings,
- Agile project management certification (CSM, PMI-ACP, etc.),
- Industry and startup R&D experience.
Compensation
- Hourly rate: $70-$80 per hour, based on experience.
Apply Now
Please email your CV and Cover Letter to apply@juvenatherapeutics.com with “Program Manager – Discovery & Platform” as the subject line.
Horizon Ventures Techcracker conference spotlights Juvena Co-Founder, Hanadie Yousef, PhD as one of 70 founders of innovative new companies developing disruptive technologies that improve lives Oct. 2022
At the Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation Annual conference Juvena Therapeutics joins a community of advocates, people who suffer from this most common muscular dystrophy, their families, caregivers, clinical leaders and experts, and Industry leaders developing therapeutics for this major unmet medical need Sept. 2022
Rohit Jadhav, PHD
Dr. Rohit Jadhav brings more than 12 years of cross disciplinary experience encompassing the fields of oncology, immune aging and auto-immune diseases. He has extensive experience in algorithm development for diagnostic and prognostic biomarker discovery dealing with diverse datasets investigating the Transcriptome, Epigenome and DNA mutations in clinical cohorts.
Dr. Jadhav earned his B.Tech. in Bioinformatics from India, a M.S. in Bioinformatics from Indiana University, Indianapolis, a PhD in Molecular Medicine from UT Health, San Antonio as a CPRIT pre-doctoral fellow, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology at Stanford School of Medicine and Mayo Clinic.
Masters & PhD (2009-2016)
Dr. Jadhav worked on identifying epigenetic biomarkers investigating alterations in DNA methylation across different cancer types including breast, ovarian, endometrial, oral and prostate. He was awarded a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Predoctoral Fellowship, which enabled him to be involved in collaborative projects focusing on non-invasive approaches for biomarker discovery. One such project involved use of single-cell RNA sequencing to study circulating tumor cells and another involved studying DNA methylation in cell free DNA, both from peripheral blood. As a lead bioinformatician for these studies, he implemented classification-based prediction methods to enable identification of a panel of biomarkers to be used in determining treatment approaches for prostate cancer patients belonging to different subtypes. These studies have led to 3 approved patents from his mentor Dr. Tim Huang. During this time, Dr. Jadhav was also a lead author on the study that identified DNA methylation biomarkers capable of identifying predisposition to breast cancer after prenatal exposure to the compound bisphenol A and preventive effects of genistein.
Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017-2022)
Dr. Jadhav’s work at Stanford University and Mayo Clinic with Dr. Jorg Goronzy who is a leading expert in immune aging and auto-immunity, focused on epigenetics in the context of chromatin accessibility and specifically alterations in the immune cell types like CD4 and CD8 T cells during aging and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. He was also a lead author studying epigenetic alterations in exhausted T-cells post checkpoint blockade therapies in collaboration with Dr. Rafi Ahmed from Emory University. During this time Dr. Jadhav built pipelines deployed in on-prem clusters and in the cloud for analyzing and visualizing data from RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, TCR-seq, single cell multiome (RNA+ATAC), single cell Cite-seq (RNA+Protein) among others.
Dr. Jadhav has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers with over a thousand citations.
Learn more about Rohit
