Panel Participants

Back to main page

Brook Byers, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Sue Desmond-Hellman, Chancellor, UCSF

Regis Kelly, Director, QB3

Gail Maderis, President and CEO, BayBio

Uwe Schoenbeck, CSO, BioTherapeutics External R&D Innovation, Pfizer, Inc.

Brook Byers

Brook Byers.

Brook Byers has been a venture capital investor since 1972. He has been closely involved with more than fifty new technology based ventures, over half of which have already become public companies. He formed the first Life Sciences practice group in the venture capital profession in 1984 and led KPCB to become a premier venture capital firm in the medical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors. KPCB has invested in and helped build over 110 Life Sciences companies which have already developed hundreds of products to treat major underserved medical needs for millions of patients.

Brook was the founding President and then Chairman, of four biotechnology companies which were incubated in KPCB's offices and went on to become public companies with an aggregate market value over $8 Billion. He is currently on the Board of Directors of ten companies, most recently joining CardioDX, Genomic Health Incorporated, Five Prime Therapeutics, OptiMedica, Pacific Biosciences, Inc., Tethys and XDx, Inc. He was formerly a Director of Idec Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Athena Neurosciences (Chairman), Signal Pharmaceuticals, Arris Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacopeia, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Hybritech (Chairman), Genprobe and others. These companies have pioneered the medical use of molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, personalized medicine, molecular diagnostics and genomics.

Brook was President and a Director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He is a currently a Board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the New Schools Foundation, Stanford’s Bio-X Advisory Council and the Stanford Eye Council. He was Co-Chair of the five year, $1.4 billion, UCSF Capital Campaign. In 2007, he was awarded the “UCSF Medal” as their honorary degree equivalent. In 2008, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Venture Capital Association.

He was formerly a Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council, That Many May See (UCSF) Vision Research Foundation (Chairman), the Georgia Tech Advisory Board and was a founder of TechNet.

Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Brook graduated in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and received an MBA from Stanford.

Sue Desmond-Hellman

Sue Desmond-Hellman.

Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, is chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco. She assumed the post August 3, 2009.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF is the only campus in the 10-campus UC system devoted exclusively to the health sciences.

Desmond-Hellmann previously served as president of product development at Genentech, a position she held from March 2004 through April 30, 2009. In this role, she was responsible for Genentech’s pre-clinical and clinical development, process research and development, business development and product portfolio management. She also served as a member of Genentech’s executive committee, beginning in 1996. She joined Genentech in 1995 as a clinical scientist, and she was named chief medical officer in 1996. In 1999, she was named executive vice president of development and product operations. During her time at Genentech, several of the company’s patient therapeutics (Lucent is, Avanti, Perception, Trachea, Ritual and Foliar) were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the company became the nation’s No. 1 producer of anti-cancer drug treatments.

In November 2009, Forbes magazine named Desmond-Hellmann as one of the world’s seven most “powerful innovators,” calling her “a hero to legions of cancer patients.” The seven were lauded for their curiosity, empathy and leadership. She completed her clinical training at UCSF and is board-certified in internal medicine and medical oncology. She holds a bachelor of science degree in pre-medicine and a medical degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, and a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to joining Genentech, Desmond-Hellmann was associate director of clinical cancer research at Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. While at Bristol-Myers Squibb, she was the project team leader for the cancer-fighting drug Texel.

Desmond-Hellmann also has served as associate adjunct professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF. During her tenure at UCSF, she spent two years as visiting faculty at the Uganda Cancer Institute, studying HIV/AIDS and cancer. She also spent two years in private practice as a medical oncologist before returning to clinical research.

In January 2009, Desmond-Hellmann joined the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Economic Advisory Council for a three-year term. In July 2008, she was appointed to the California Academy of Sciences board of trustees.

Desmond-Hellmann was named to the Biotech Hall of Fame in 2007 and as the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association Woman of the Year for 2006. She was listed among Fortune magazine’s “top 50 most powerful women in business” in 2001 and from 2003 to 2008. In 2005 and 2006, the Wall Street Journal listed Desmond-Hellmann as one of its “women to watch.”

From 2005 to 2008, Desmond-Hellmann served a three-year term as a member of the American Association for Cancer Research board of directors, and from 2001 to 2009, she served on the executive committee of the board of directors of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. She served on the corporate board of Affymetrix from 2004-2009.

Regis Kelly

Reg Kelly.

Prior to joining QB3 in 2004, Dr. Kelly served as executive vice-chancellor at UCSF; he oversaw the UCSF research enterprise and was also responsible for construction of the new Mission Bay campus. He is currently chairman of the Bay Area Scientific Innovation Consortium and has served on the boards of the Malaysian Biotechnology Industry Advisory Board, the Scleroderma Foundation, and Bridge Pharmaceuti­cals. He is an advisor to the Thailand Bionanotechnology Institute, Ho Chi Minh City Biotechnology Department Corp., University of Oxford Systems Biology Program, and the San Francisco Mayor’s Biotechnology Advisory Group. He joined the UCSF Department of Biochemistry in 1971 and has served as the University’s Director of Cell Biology Graduate Program, the Director of the Hormone Research Institute, and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He earned an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Edinburgh and a Ph.D. in biophysics from the California Institute of Technology.

Gail Maderis

Gail Maderis.

Gail Maderis is President & CEO of BayBio, the industry organization representing and supporting Northern California’s life science community. As a former biotech CEO, Ms. Maderis brings deep experience and commitment to supporting the industry through enterprise development, peer-to-peer experience sharing, advocacy and support of education and workforce development. From 2003 to 2009, Ms. Maderis served as President and CEO of FivePrime Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held protein discovery and development company. At FivePrime, she successfully funded the company’s rapid growth through substantial private equity financings and corporate partnerships and took the company’s first novel cancer therapeutic from discovery into clinical trials. Prior to FivePrime, Ms. Maderis held senior executive positions at Genzyme Corporation, including founder and president of Genzyme Molecular Oncology. Ms. Maderis practiced management and strategy consulting with Bain & Co. She serves on the boards of BayBio, the Mayor’s Biotech Advisory Council of San Francisco and the HBS Healthcare Initiative. She received a BS in business from the UC Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Uwe Schoenbeck

Uwe Schoenbeck.

Chief Scientific Officer Uwe Schoenbeck leads Pfizer’s BioTherapeutics External R&D Innovation (ERDI) team which seeks to identify and establish partnerships with outstanding Biotech companies and key academic centers to gain first access to promising science, disease targets, drug candidates and technologies. His team works closely with colleagues across Pfizer, including R&D, Business Development, and Legal to harness these opportunities for the company. Uwe is a member of the BioTherapeutics Leadership team and holds additional responsibilities for the BioTherapeutics Strategy.

Prior to joining Pfizer, Uwe was Vice President, Head External R&D Innovation for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and was a member of the Wyeth’s R&D Executive Committee where he was responsible for developing and implementing Wyeth’s External R&D strategy and operations. The departmental function involved exploration and integration of emerging disease targets, exploratory to clinical Proof of Concept drug candidates, and technologies addressing high unmet medical needs, including those outside of the scope of established therapeutic areas and included both small and large molecule therapies in Oncology, Metabolism, Inflammation, CNS/Pain, Muscoloskeletal, and Cardiovascular/ Haemophilia.

For five years, Dr. Schoenbeck served as Vice President, Cardiovascular Research for Boehringer Ingelheim in Ridgefield, CT and was responsible for global cardiovascular research strategy and drug discovery program from target identification to Pre-Development including life cycle management for marketed and advanced pipeline products. Prior to joining Boehringer in 2003, Uwe was Assistant Professor of Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston MA.

He received his degree from the University of Kiel, Germany, and completed postdoctoral training in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, before joining as a faculty member. Dr. Schoenbeck has served as a reviewer for multiple peer-reviewed journals (including Circulation, Circulation Research, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Journal of Immunology, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), Nature Medicine and the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences U.S.A.) and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, review articles/book chapters and abstracts with particular contributions in areas such as molecular & cell biology, cardiovascular research, immunology and metabolism.