Abizer Gaslightwala, Director, President and CEO
Mr. Gaslightwala serves as President and CEO of Akari Therapeutics since April 21, 2025 and as Director since December 2024. He is a well-established leader in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. He has a successful track record spanning over 25 years in the development and commercialization of novel medicines across a range of companies and therapeutic areas, and in particular the Oncology therapeutic area over the last 10 years. Mr. Gaslightwala most recently served as the Senior Vice President and Franchise Head for Oncology at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, where he managed a portfolio of products spanning both solid tumors and hematological malignancies generating up to $1B in annual sales.
Mr. Gaslightwala has also been in several leadership roles at Amgen, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, where he has led development, launch, and growth of several products within Oncology and other therapeutics areas. His experiences at these leading companies spanned business unit leadership, brand marketing, sales leadership, commercial pipeline planning, advanced analytics and insights, and business development. Prior to these roles, Mr. Gaslightwala advised several life science companies through his time at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Mr. Gaslightwala holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management, and a MS in Chemical Engineering from MIT.
Contact: Abizer.Gaslightwala@akaritx.com
Torsten Hombeck, Ph.D., Chief Financial Officer
Dr. Torsten Hombeck was appointed as Chief Financial Officer, effective December 16, 2024. Dr. Hombeck has more than 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, finance, capital markets and M&A transactions.
Prior to joining Akari, Dr. Hombeck served as the CFO, Corporate Secretary and SVP at Aspira Women’s Health (AWH). Prior to that, Dr. Hombeck served as the CFO of Akari Therapeutics from June 2020 – June 2023. Additionally, his previous positions include Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer and Managing Director at Promethera Biosciences, and Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Business Officer at Cytonet where he played an integral role in its acquisition by Promethera. Dr. Hombeck also served as Chief Financial Officer at both Agennix and GPC Biotech. Dr. Hombeck holds a Masters in Business Administration and a Ph.D. in Finance from the EBS University of Business and Law, Ostrich-Winkel, Germany.
Contact: Torsten.Hombeck@akaritx.com
Satyajit Mitra Ph.D., Executive Director, Head of Oncology
Dr. Mitra was appointed as Executive Director, Head of Oncology, in November 2022. As the Head of Oncology, Dr. Mitra has been responsible for our preclinical research activities at our California research sites since January 2021. Dr. Mitra heads up a team of consultants, CROs and CDMOs and has been instrumental in advancing our novel toxin platform and ADC pipeline.
Dr. Mitra joined the Company in March 2019 as Associate Director, Cancer Biology and was responsible for in vivo and pharmacology functions that led to the nomination of the current Peak Bio lead toxin (PH1), which then led to Peak Bio’s initial proof-of-concept (POC) efforts for an ADC. These POC efforts led to the nomination of Peak Bio’s first ADC pipeline candidate targeting Trop2. He previously served as a Senior Scientist, at VasGene Therapeutics, and was involved with IND-enabling studies for novel antibody targets. Dr. Mitra’s initial corporate scientific experience was at OncoMed Pharmaceuticals for five years where he worked on Target Validation. He was instrumental in identifying the first-in-class Wnt-pathway biologics, advancing these projects from early stage to an IND.
In addition to Dr. Mitra’s oncology company experiences, he also previously worked as a research scientist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Immunology at Scripps Research Institute at La Jolla, California. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology at Hyderabad, India an institute affiliated with the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India.
Contact: Satya.Mitra@akaritx.com
Mark F. Kubik, Head of Business Development – Oncology
Mr. Kubik serves as Head of Business Development – Oncology of Akari Therapeutics since April 2025. He is a well-established industry leader whose oncology expertise and transactions record have led to multiple approved therapeutic products and advanced clinical product candidates. Across his 25+ years career, Mr. Kubik has established a successful track record of transformative deal creation and productive alliances including ADCs, empowered antibody therapies, and biologics for companies such as SeaGen (now Pfizer), Abgenix (now Amgen), MacroGenics, and OncoImmune among others.
Prior to joining Akari, Mr. Kubik served as Senior Vice President, U.S and EU Business Development at I-MAB Biopharma where he was responsible for business development, alliance management and product / portfolio planning directed toward the U.S. and EU business and operating spheres. Prior to that, he held leadership positions at Genor Biopharma and Actinium Pharmaceuticals, respectively, as Chief Business Officer. Prior to his role at Actinium, Mr. Kubik served as CBO at OncoImmune, where he headed its business development function and led a process and transaction whereby the company was sold to Merck for $425M upfront with potential additional contingent regulatory and sales milestones and royalties. Prior to OncoImmune, he held positions in business development and led transformative and award-winning deal making including an ex-US strategic alliance on behalf of SeaGen (now Pfizer) with Takeda for Adcetris® (brentuximab vedotin) (nominated by Recombinant Capital / Allicense for consideration as 2009 “Alliance of the Year”) and a multi-program bispecific mAb discovery collaboration on behalf of MacroGenics with Gilead (won Licensing Executives Society (LES) Alliance of the Year in Life Sciences Award in 2013), and a global co-development agreement on behalf of Abgenix (now Amgen) with Immunex for Vectibix® (panitumumab). Mr. Kubik also held roles at Protein Design Labs (PDL), XOMA, AvantGen, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, i2 Pharmaceuticals / Velocity Sciences, and Invenra, among others.
Mr. Kubik received his MBA in Finance from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado-Boulder and his BA (cum laude) in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) from CU-Boulder.
Contact: Mark.Kubik@akaritx.com
