Henry Ji
Chairman, President and CEO
- 25+ years of experience in the biotechnology and life sciences industry
- Dr. Ji co-founded Sorrento and has served as a director since 2006, CEO and President since 2012, and Chairman since 2017
- During his tenure at Sorrento, he has engineered and led a phenomenal growth of Sorrento through acquisition and merger including Bioserv, Scilex Pharmaceuticals, Concortis Biotherapeutics, Levena Biopharma, LACEL, TNK Therapeutics, Virttu Biologics, Ark Animal Health, and Sofusa Lymphatic Delivery Systems
- Served as Sorrento’s Chief Scientific Officer from 2008 to 2012 and as its Interim CEO from 2011 to 2012
- Prior to Sorrento, he held senior executive positions at CombiMatrix, Strategen and also co-founded Stratagene Genomics, a subsidiary of Stratagene, and served as its President & CEO and Director of the Board
- B.S. and Ph.D.
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Mike Royal
Chief Medical Officer
- Dr. Royal is a pharmaceutical executive with 20 years of clinical development and medical affairs. Recently, he was the Chief Medical Officer of Suzhou Connect Biopharmaceuticals and, prior to that, Concentric Analgesics. He rejoins Sorrento where he was previously EVP, Clinical Development and Regulatory Affairs in 2016
- He has been responsible for or instrumental in several successful NDAs, including NCEs, 505(b)(2)s and ANDAs
- Dr. Royal is board certified in internal medicine, pain medicine, anesthesiology with additional qualifications in pain management, addiction medicine and legal medicine
- He has been an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and an Adjunct Professor at University of Oklahoma and University of California San Diego
- He has published extensively with over 190 book chapters, peer reviewed articles and abstracts/posters; and has been an invited speaker at national and international meetings
- B.S., M.D., J.D., M.B.A.
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Najjam Asghar
SVP - Chief Financial Officer
- Mr. Asghar serves as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) leading the functions of Finance, Accounting and Tax and has over 17 years of experience. Prior to his appointment as the Company’s CFO, Mr. Asghar served as Chief Accounting Officer since June 2019
- Prior to joining Sorrento, he worked at NuVasive, Inc. leading various accounting and finance functions. He was instrumental in several acquisitions to build upon NuVasive’s portfolio of products, segments, geographic expansion and helped the Company achieve its goal of more than $1 billion revenue
- He started his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he served various S&P 100 and S&P 500 clients in North America and Asia in the audit and assurance practice
- B.A.
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Mark R. Brunswick
SVP - Regulatory Affairs
- Dr. Brunswick has over 35 years of senior positions in Regulated Industry including over 9 years in the US FDA, Center for Biologics, Division of Monoclonal Antibodies
- Prior to joining Sorrento, Dr. Brunswick was Head of Regulatory Affairs and Quality at Sophiris Bio, a company developing a drug for benign prostatic hyperplasia and prostate cancer. Prior to that he was the head of Regulatory Affairs at Arena Pharmaceuticals specializing in therapies directed at G Protein receptors
- Dr. Brunswick led the regulatory group at Elan Pharmaceuticals concentrating on Alzheimer Disease and the pain compound, ziconotide
- B.S. and Ph.D.
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Alexis Nahama
SVP - Head of RTX Program
- Dr. Nahama leads RTX human and animal health drug development programs
- As a member leadership team, Dr. Nahama supports strategy development, oversees high value projects, facilitates go to market preparation, and nurtures external alliance efforts
- Passionately drives the translational opportunities to accelerate human development programs while bringing technologies that otherwise would not be available to pets
- Prior to joining Sorrento, he spent over 25 years holding global executive roles working in Life Sciences and Biotechnology for Sanofi, Colgate, Novartis, Merck, VCA Antech and VetStem Biopharma
- D.V.M. with early career focused on R&D in the pain area (clinical trials for pets)
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Robert D. Allen
SVP – Antiviral & Immunotherapy
- Dr. Allen has spent over 15 years in the biotechnology industry leading research, preclinical development, and early clinical manufacturing of antiviral and anti-cancer therapeutics.
- Prior to joining Sorrento, Dr. Allen served as Scientific Director of the Oregon Translational Research and Development Institute (OTRADI), collaborating with industry and academic partners on drug discovery and candidate profiling campaigns targeting hematologic cancers, solid tumors, and infectious disease pathogens.
- Prior to OTRADI, Dr. Allen developed discovery programs at SIGA Technologies that identified direct-acting antivirals targeting viruses in the bunyavirus and filovirus families as well as host-directed countermeasures against a broad spectrum of human viruses and obligate intracellular bacteria.
- B.S. and Ph.D.
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Shawn Sahebi
SVP - Strategy and Analytics
- Dr. Sahebi leads Sorrento’s analytics, market research, forecasting and commercial strategy
- 30+ years of hands on experience in commercial analytics and data sciences in pharma
- Prior roles with Novartis, Pfizer and Lilly in senior management positions leading decision science teams supporting up to $20 billion in revenue. Through personal involvement in creating advanced predictive models and analytic processes responsible for significant and measurable sales growth, with several products reaching blockbuster status in areas of Cardiovascular, Neuroscience, Diabetes, Erectile Dysfunction, and Oncology
- A firm believer of collaborative cultures create winning teams
- Past President of Pharmaceutical Management Science Association of America
- B.A., M.B.A. and Ph.D.
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Brian Cooley
SVP - Lymphatic Drug Delivery BU Leader
- 30+ years of experience in the biopharmaceutical and life science industry
- Mr. Cooley has had various leadership positions in new product development (combination products) and commercial roles in big pharma and small start up healthcare technology companies
- Prior to joining Sorrento, Mr. Cooley led global product teams and new product launch teams with P&L responsibility at both Eli Lilly and Company and Genentech in disease areas including Diabetes, Neurology, Immunology and Rare Disease
- In addition to leading large product development and commercial teams, he has also led significant BD, in-licensing, and integration efforts both internationally and in the U.S. This included multiple insulin manufacturing and co-promotion deals Europe, Middle East and Africa, and a $400MM collaboration agreement to in-license, develop and commercialize the first GLP-1 agonist
- Most recently, Mr. Cooley was CBO for the Sofusa Business Unit at Kimberly-Clark and led the successful sale and integration effort into Sorrento Therapeutics
- B.S.
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Bill Farley
VP - Business Development
- 30+ years of experience in the Business Development, Sales and leading efforts in drug discovery, development and partnering
- Prior to joining Sorrento, Mr. Farley has held leadership positions at HitGen, WuXi Apptec, VP of Key Accounts building and leading a global BD team; ChemDiv, VP of BD at, leading numerous efforts to create new therapeutic companies in CNS, Oncology and Anti-infectives
- Mr. Farley has served as a consultant to various executive management teams and BODs to develop and commercialization assets with likes of Xencor, Caliper Technologies and Stratagene
- He has built a robust network throughout pharmaceutical companies, biotech and the Venture Capital community. Mr. Farley has spoken at numerous conferences and has been published in variety of peer reviewed journals
- B.S.
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Hui Li
SVP - ADC BU Leader
- Dr. Li is responsible for Sorrento’s partnerships and licensing negotiations, as well as operation of Sorrento’s Chinese subsidiaries.
- Prior to joining Sorrento, he was CEO at Levena BioPharma, a biotech company focused on antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) discovery and production
- Before Levena, he held senior management roles as the head of Business Development at PDD and BioDuro,
- Dr. Li spent 10 years at Pfizer Global Research & Development, La Jolla Laboratories and has led research programs in a number of disease areas including oncology, metabolic diseases, anti-viral, and ophthalmology
- He is a co-inventor of Filibuvir (PF-00868554), a Hepatitis C Virus polymerase inhibitor advanced into Phase II clinical trials and MS-553, an oral therapy for diabetic retinopathy, which was out-licensed to Ming Sight for clinical development in both the United States and China
- B.S. and Ph.D.
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Brian Sun
SVP - General Counsel
- Mr. Sun leads Sorrento’s legal, intellectual property and compliance functions
- Before joining Sorrento, Mr. Sun worked at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, Prometheus Laboratories and Hologic, and served as outside general counsel to early-stage biotechnology companies
- At Prometheus, he served as the Director of IP and was responsible for all of the company’s patent and trademark activities. During his tenure at Hologic, he focused on all aspects of patent portfolio development and management in the Diagnostic Solutions division. Mr. Sun previously worked in private practice at Foley & Lardner LLP
- B.A., M.S. and J.D.
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