Daryl C. Drummond, PhD

Chief Science Officer, Senior Vice President, and Founder

Daryl C Drummond is the Founder, Chief Scientific Officer, and Senior Vice President of Akagera Medicines.  Through June of 2019, Dr. Drummond served as the Head of Research and Senior Vice President of Discovery for Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, a public biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge, MA, where he oversaw the discovery efforts for Merrimack’s Nanotherapeutics and Biologics-based therapeutics. Dr. Drummond received a PhD degree in Biochemistry from Indiana University in 1997, with an emphasis on membrane biochemistry and biophysics, and later completed a postdoc under the renowned father of lipid-based drug delivery systems, Demetrios Papahadjopoulos at California Pacific Medical Center.   

Dr. Drummond was a principle inventor for a wide range of nanotechnology-based drugs and platform technologies, most notably Onivyde, a highly stabilized liposomal formulation of irinotecan.  He joined Merrimack in 2009 following the merger of Merrimack with Hermes Biosciences.  Overall, Dr. Drummond has more than 25 years of experience in the research and development of advanced drug delivery systems, including five unique drugs or imaging agents that have been tested in various clinical trials, an NDA and EMA approval for Onivyde, >40 issued patents or patent applications, and more than 75 peer reviewed publications.

The focus of his research is in developing targeted nanotherapeutics for treating a wide range of solid tumors.  He successfully developed novel platform technologies for targeting lipidic nanocarriers such as liposomes using a range of novel ligands, but most notably Fab’ or scFv antibody fragments.  He has also developed platform technologies for dramatically improving the in vivo drug retention of difficult to stabilize small molecule drugs, and for systemic delivery of nucleic acids.  Three of their nanotherapeutics are being studied in clinical trials, including an ErbB2-targeted liposomal doxorubicin which was evaluated in a Phase II study in ErbB2-overexpressing breast cancers and a nanoliposomal formulation of irinotecan which was approved by both the EMA and FDA following promising results in a Phase III trial in gemcitabine-refractory pancreatic cancer.  Onivyde is currently being studied in front line pancreatic cancer in combination with oxaliplatin and 5FU and in second line small cell lung cancer by Ipsen Pharmaceuticals.  A fourth antibody targeted lipososomal drug (MM-310) was recently evaluated in a Phase I study in multiple EphA2 overexpressing solid tumors.  In addition, Dr. Drummond previously oversaw the discovery and development of more traditional biologics, such as a stabilized TRAIL-Fc fusion and a monoclonal antibody against the immuno-oncology target, TNFR2.

At Akagera, he is advancing the use of these sophisticated lipid-based nanotechnologies to deliver novel and highly potent anti-bacterial agents directly to innate immune cell reservoirs for these mycobacterium or bacterium, and assembling a highly experienced scientific team and network of collaborators to target some of the world’s most challenging and neglected diseases, including tuberculosis. 

Dmitri B. Kirpotin, PhD

Chief Investigator and Founder

Dmitri Kirpotin is a leading expert in lipid-based drug delivery systems, and currently serves as a Chief Investigator and co-founder of Akagera Medicines.  Dmitri was previously a Chief Investigator at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, and a Founder and Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Hermes Biosciences. He is also a co-inventor on more than 40 patents and patent applications, and more than 60 peer reviewed scientific publications in the field of nano-therapeutics and the underlying drug delivery technologies used to create them, including that of the commercial drug, Onivyde, used to treat patients with gemcitabine refractory pancreatic cancer.   For more than three decades he has played a critical role in developing and translating advanced lipid-based nanotherapeutics into the clinic, with six drugs entering the clinic that he was involved and played a key role in advancing.   Dmitri’s multidisciplinary experience is exceptionally broad and covers key areas including medicinal and organic chemistry, biophysics, analytical methods and formulation development, and pharmacology.

Charles O. Noble, PhD

Independent Contractor – Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemist/Formulations Expert

Charles Noble completed his PhD in chemistry at Louisiana State University working with conductive polymers and dendrimers. His postdoctoral work at California Pacific Medical Center and the University of California San Francisco focused on antibody-targeted immunoliposomes and drug delivery to brain tumors. As a Senior Scientist at Hermes Biosciences and Merrimack Pharmaceuticals he was a key contributor to development of multiple liposome-based drugs, including a liposomal irinotecan (MM-398) which was approved by the FDA in 2015 for treating pancreatic cancer and is marketed as Onivyde®. In 2011 he co-founded ZoneOne Pharma, Inc. and had the role of President and Scientist. At ZoneOne Pharma Charles has managed multiple collaborations and contracts with pharma and government agencies. He is an inventor on 5 issued patents and has co-authored over 50 publications.  At Akagera, Charles serves many roles and leads the analytical and bioanalytical characterization work of Akagera’s novel therapeutic designs.

Jackie Drummond

director of operations

Jackie heads all of operations at Akagera and also serves as a project manager for Akagera’s critical development efforts.  She joined Akagera from Takeda Pharmaceuticals where she served as a global project manager for their Global Outcomes Research group from 2017-2020.  Before that, she worked as part of the Medical Affairs and Finance groups at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals from 2009-2017, where she likewise held key operational and finance roles, including support both the global manufacturing and supply chain for FDA-approved drug Onivyde, and later medical education grants to support the same drug.  She also worked for almost a decade as the Head of Operations for a small biotechnology company, Hermes Biosciences, and in Pharmaceutical Sales for Watson Pharmaceuticals, all in San Francisco.  Jackie has a strong science background and holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, and overall has worked almost three decades in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical industries, helping support the development of more than a dozen unique drugs in various disease areas.

Mark Hayes, PhD

Vice President, Research

Mark holds a PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from University College Dublin (UCD) and his postdoctorate with Daryl Drummond and Dmitri Kirpotin at California Medical Center in San Francisco. During his graduate work at UCD, Mark became fascinated with the interactions of lipids and nucleic acids and how they may be applied to benefit human health. Since then he has worked at several biotech companies, specializing in nucleic acid and small molecule drug delivery. Most recently, he was Director of Formulations at TruCode Gene Repair, a gene editing company. Prior to that, Mark was co-founder and Senior Scientist at ZoneOne Pharmaceuticals, and was the Principal Investigator on multiple projects to support development of ZoneOne’s lead clinical candidate, a liposomal iron chelator used to treat transfusional iron overload. Mark also helped oversee various pharmaceutical partnerships and interactions with the FDA’s Office of Generic Drugs (OGD).

Before joining ZoneOne, Mark was a Senior Scientist at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and Scientist at Hermes Biosciences, where he utilized a range of techniques to better understand the engineering and biophysical characteristics behind lipid mixing in aqueous/solvent systems, helping to develop a new antibody-targeted nucleic acid delivery technology termed Genospheres. During his time at Hermes, Mark also made significant contributions to the Onivyde program by conducting many of the initial formulation development efforts, which helped guide the final drug candidate that entered the clinic and was later approved. Mark was also an inventor on a key and recently issued patent related to Onivyde.

Douglas Moore

Senior Director of Quality and CMC Operations

Doug joined Akagera in late 2021 to help build and lead the quality control unit and manage internal and external CMC operations. Doug has over 20 years of experience working within the quality field for multiple biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Throughout his career he has worked within analytical development and QC laboratories, built and managed quality teams (QC and QA) and lead quality operations. Doug has extensive experience in tech transfer activities (manufacturing and analytical) for biologics, small molecules, and liposomal formulations. Doug has helped bring over a dozen drugs into the clinic and was integral in obtaining commercial regulatory approval for the liposomal drug Onivyde®. Prior to joining Akagera, Doug was the senior director of quality at LEAF4Ife and helped bring a liposomal drug product from early research into the clinic in less than 4 months to help save the lives of patients suffering with ARDS due to COVID-19. Over his 9 years at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals as the director of QC, Doug worked closely with most of Akagera science team members.

Ross Fulton, PhD

Senior Director of Immunology

Ross completed his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa with Steve Varga where he studied immune responses to respiratory viruses. He then did postdoctoral research in the lab of Stephen Jameson at the University of Minnesota. There his research focused on a subset of adaptive immune cells called cytolytic T cells and how to generate robust responses against pathogens and cancerous cells. Since then, Ross has gained biotech experience working at multiple companies focused on mobilizing the immune system to fight cancer and is co-inventor on multiple patents. Prior to joining Akagera Medicines, Ross was a research scientist at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and HiFiBio Therapeutics where he worked to develop antibody-based cancer immunotherapies. At Akagera Medicines, Ross is applying his immunology expertise and biotech experience to help guide vaccine development for underserved infectious diseases.

Ross grew up in Montana and lives with his wife and three young boys in the Boston area. When not thinking about immunology, he enjoys home projects, cycling, and chasing after his children.