Samir R. Patel, M.D., President & Chief Executive Officer
Samir R. Patel, M.D., was appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective December 16, 2024. Dr. Patel has served as interim President and Chief Executive Officer since May 2024. Dr. Patel is founder and principal of PranaBio Investments, LLC, a firm providing consulting, strategic advisory, and investment services for small cap biotechnology companies. He is also a consultant to GE Global Research, GE’s innovation engine that is creating novel products and solutions across several sectors including biomanufacturing and biotechnology.
Dr. Patel has more than 20 years of experience in life sciences including co-founding Digital Therapeutics, LLC, a startup advancing a therapy for scleroderma and other rheumatic diseases, and SPEC Pharma, LLC, a company that develops and manufactures injectables used in rheumatology applications. Previously, he held multiple roles in Medical Affairs with Centocor, Inc. (now Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, part of Johnson & Johnson). He holds multiple patents, has been an author on several publications and has been an investigator in numerous clinical research studies.
Dr. Patel received his medical degree from the Medical College of Ohio (University of Toledo) in Toledo, Ohio, and completed his internal medicine internship and residency, as well as a rheumatology fellowship, at University of New Mexico School of Medicine Affiliated Hospitals.
Contact: [email protected]
Miles Nunn, D.Phil., Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Nunn has been Chief Scientific Officer of Akari since April 2014 and is the discoverer of nomacopan. Previously, he worked at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for 16 years. He discovered Volution’s lead drug, nomacopan (formerly Coversin), and is an inventor on several other patents. Dr. Nunn was formerly the Scientific Research Manager for Evolutec Group Plc, Director of Amplion Ltd., and a Principal Investigator for the Natural Environment Research Council.
His scientific interests center on the structural and functional interactions between parasite-derived molecules and host defense responses, in particular complement, and on exploitation of the associated information and parasite molecules for drug development. Dr. Nunn holds a D.Phil. from Oxford University, and M.Sc. from University College London.
Contact: [email protected]
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: [email protected]
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: [email protected]
