Mr. Truex is the CEO and Chairman of Thryv Therapeutics (previously LQT Therapeutics). Over the course of two decades he has been involved in over $5 billion of life science financings and strategic transactions. His recent experience includes initial public offerings for Milestone (Board Member 2019), Trius (Board Member 2010), Anthera (CEO 2010), Peninsula (CEO 2004), and Versicor (Vice President 2000).

Prior to Thryv, Mr. Truex founded Anthera Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded biotech company with large clinical programs in cardiovascular disease, lupus, inflammation and cystic fibrosis. Mr. Truex was Founder, President and CEO of Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, an antibiotic development company that was acquired by Johnson and Johnson and Forest for more than $700 million. Mr. Truex began his life science career at Eli Lilly and Company where his business development experience included the Lilly ICOS joint venture for the development of Cialis® and several successful out-licensing programs. He obtained his MBA from Indiana University and a BA in Economics from the University of Waterloo. Mr. Truex currently serves on the Board of Directors for Find Therapeutics and Feldan. He is an Acting Board Member of the Indiana University Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He is a former member of the Board of Directors for Milestone (MIST), Anthera (ANTH), Trius (TSRX), CymaBay (CBAY), Eiger (EIGR), Protagonist (PTGX), and Peninsula Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Odink is the President and Chief Development Officer of Thryv Therapeutics. Over the course of 30 years, she has been involved in pharmaceutical development across the spectrum of large and small molecules.

She started her career at Roche working in manufacturing process development and characterization of several of Roche's early-stage programs. After Roche, she began her career in start-up, venture backed biotech, first at Peninsula advancing a sterile filled antibiotic from pre-clinical to NDA which was acquired by Johnson and Johnson. At Anthera Pharmaceuticals, as the Chief of Technical Operations she advanced two products into phase 3, one a small molecule enzyme inhibitor targeting inflammation and the other a large molecule peptibody for lupus. At Eiger Biopharmaceuticals, she was SVP, Technical Operations advancing four of Eiger’s rare disease programs into the clinic, one of which was recently approved. At SiteOne Therapeutics, she served as Chief Development Officer and was instrumental in advancing a novel non-opioid pain therapeutic into the clinic. She obtained her Ph.D. in chemistry from University of California, Davis and B.S. in chemistry from California State University, Stanislaus.

Dr. Sager is a cardiac electrophysiologist who has had a long career in academia, drug development and regulatory policy. He was a tenured faculty member at the UCLA School of Medicine and is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Senior pharmaceutical industry leadership roles include Vice President, CV/Metabolic Development at Gilead Sciences and Executive Director at AstraZeneca, with major development leadership on multiple drugs (e.g., Zetia, Vytorin, Crestor, Letairis and Brilinta), NDA’s and sNDA’s, and was a BOD member of Anthera, Inc, a public biotechnology company. He is a co-founder of LQT Therapeutics (now Thryv Therapeutics).

He is a past chair of the FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee and a Founding Member and Executive Committee member of the FDA-Sponsored Cardiac Safety Research Consortium. He has played a major international leadership role in CV safety issues in drug development, public health policies regarding drug safety, and was the ICH E14 (“the QT Guidance”) PhARMA Expert Working Group Topic Leader. He holds an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine, B.S. degrees in biology and chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, trained in internal medicine, cardiology, and cardiac electrophysiology at the Yale School of Medicine, and has published more than 200 original manuscripts and abstracts.

Ms. Aidan McNeil is Associate General Counsel and Vice President, Administration at Thryv Therapeutics. She is responsible for all legal and administrative matters for the company.

Prior to joining Thryv, she practised law for 8 years in the corporate law group at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, primarily in corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions, with a particular focus on venture backed emerging and high growth companies. She also spent 8 years as in-house counsel in the Legal Department at McKesson Canada, where she advised on multiple acquisitions and divestitures and was responsible for the legal affairs for numerous business units, including the specialty pharmaceutical and patient support programs businesses. While at McKesson Canada, she was also responsible for all legal matters associated with the establishment of a national network of infusion clinics for various biologics and other infusion medications.

Ms. McNeil holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Development Studies from the University of Winnipeg and a Juris Doctor (JD) and a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) from McGill University.

Dr. Pirouz Shamszad serves as Senior Vice President, Clinical Development and Portfolio Execution. He is responsible for cardiovascular clinical development strategy and overseeing program teams across Thryv Therapeutics’ clinical portfolio. 

Dr. Shamszad is a pediatric cardiologist with over a decade of drug development experience in both the CRO and pharmaceutical industries, bringing together strategic development with efficient operational execution. After leaving academia, Dr. Shamszad joined Medpace (CRO) where he oversaw or designed numerous early to late-phase trials in metabolic, cardiovascular, and rare diseases. After Medpace, he joined Sanofi where was responsible for the development strategy of various small molecules in heart failure and biologics in rare disease.  Dr. Shamszad continues his academic interests and holds an Adjunct Professorship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Shamszad obtained his B.S and M.D. at the George Washington University, completed his pediatric residency at Texas Children’s Hospital at the Baylor College of Medicine, completed his pediatric cardiology fellowship at the Texas Heart Institute at the Baylor College of Medicine, and completed his pediatric cardiac intensive care fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center at the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Eric Campeau serves as the Vice President, Translational Research at Thryv Therapeutics, researching how the development of SGK1 inhibitors represents a novel approach to target treatment resistant cancers, and complement existing therapies.

Eric has nearly 30 years of biomedical research experience, most recently as Vice President of Translational Biology at Zenith Epigenetics, Ltd. He has several publications in the field of epigenetics, cancer, DNA repair and metabolism. He has been involved in the preclinical and clinical development of ZEN-3694 since the beginning of Zenith in 2013. Most notably, the Translational Medicine team, led by Dr. Campeau, made key contributions in the design of a patient pre-selection approach for a randomized metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer study.

Prior to joining Zenith, Dr. Campeau joined Resverlogix Corp. in 2011 as a Scientist. He was previously an Instructor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and a Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Dr. Campeau obtained is Ph.D. degree in Human Genetics at McGill University.

Mr. Doug Wight is Vice President, Drug Development at Thryv Therapeutics. He is a seasoned scientist and drug development professional with over 35 years of experience in scientific research and drug development roles in academia, and the pharmaceutical and CRO industries.

Mr. Wight began his career in academia, conducting research in pulmonary physiology at McGill University and the Université de Montréal. He then joined the pharmaceutical industry with Sandoz (now Novartis), then moved to Searle (now Pfizer). He later joined the CRO industry with MDS Pharma Services (now Celerion) as Senior Director responsible for the strategic and operational oversight of drug development programs from discovery through clinical proof of concept for Celerion clients, including therapies for type 2 diabetes, spinal cord injury, hepatocellular carcinoma and acute bacterial infection. He moved to Milestone Pharmaceuticals in 2011, a publicly traded pharmaceutical company developing a novel therapeutic, etripamil, for treatment of Paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) and atrial fibrillation, serving as VP Drug Development and lead the development of etripamil from discovery to Phase 3 clinical trials.

Mr. Wight received his BSc. in Bio-Physical Education from Concordia University and his MSc. in Physiology from McGill University.

Dr. Vidal serves as Senior Director, Product and Process Development at Thryv Therapeutics. Before that, Dr. Vidal worked at Gladius Pharmaceuticals between 2016 and 2019, first as a Research Scientist where he designed and executed multiple-step synthesis for the elaboration of a library of cephalosporin-based compounds for the treatment of multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections. Dr. Vidal continued on in the role of Head of Chemistry, overseeing CMC operations.

Dr. Vidal holds a chemical engineering degree from école Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Caen (ENSICAEN), France. He then received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Université de Montréal, Canada, where he developed and studied a new class of anion transporters. Following his PhD, Dr. Vidal performed postdoctoral studies at Université de Montréal, Canada, where he developed molecularly imprinted polymers for the capture of small compounds.

Dr. Brkovic serves as Senior Director, Program Management at Thryv Therapeutics. Dr. Brkovic trained in pharmacology and biochemistry, and has more than 10 years in the pharmaceutical industry working in the areas of project management, clinical operations and pharmacokinetics.

Most recently, he was Senior Manager, Clinical Trials at Bausch Health (and Bausch and Lomb following its spin-off) managing medical devices, small and large molecules studies from Phase 1 to 4 in various therapeutic areas, such as dermatology, ophthalmology and infectious disease. Prior to that at Jubilant DraxImage, he served as Manager, Clinical Trials, overseeing a therapeutic radiopharmaceutical investigational product in Phase 2, 3 and expanded access program in an ultra-rare pediatric oncology disease. Dr. Brkovic started his career in the pharmaceutical industry at Pharmascience, where he had several roles with increasing responsibilities. Before leaving, he was the Director, Biopharmaceutics overseeing the execution of clinical trials and leading a team of scientists and clinical research associates.

He obtained his Ph.D. in pharmacology from University of Montreal.

Delphine Labit serves as Director, Research in translational research at Thryv Therapeutics, mainly studying the SGK1 inhibitors impact in oncology. Delphine joined Thryv in early 2022. She has over 20 years of industry experience as a scientist, including roles in cellular and pharmacodynamic small molecule research as well as bioanalytical analysis in GLP environment. Delphine has extensive expertise in drug development in oncology and immunology fields.

Prior to joining Thryv Therapeutics, Delphine set up the cellular biology unit in the Ligand Binding Assay department at Altasciences as principal investigator for immunogenicity assays, for three years. Prior to that, she held the position of scientist at Aegera Therapeutics for 16 years in the fields of kinase inhibitors for B cell malignancies and small molecule inhibitors of Inhibitor Proteins of Apoptosis family. Delphine received her MSc. in Applied Molecular Cytology from Montpellier II University along with her Master in Genetic from Paris-Diderot University in France.

Curtis McGrath serves as Associate Director, Finance at Thryv Therapeutics. He works alongside the senior management team to plan, budget, and follow-through on the company's financial goals. Curtis is a recent graduate from the Accounting, Audit and Information Technology (BBA) degree program at Conestoga College. With two years of experience in public accounting as a staff accountant, he has gotten the opportunity to be exposed to a wide variety of clients in various industries in the beginning of his career.

A Chartered Public Accountant candidate (CPA 2023), Curtis’ skillsets lie in having a strong understanding of accounting principles, attention to detail, identifying and implementing process improvements while leveraging technology to complete work effectively and efficiently.

Maroua Khalifa serves as a Associate Director, Pharmaceutical Development at Thryv Therapeutics where she oversees the CMC operations for different programs. Before that, Dr. Khalifa worked at Gladius Pharmaceuticals as a consultant where she scaled-up the synthesis of the lead candidate to gram scale for preclinical studies for treatment of multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. Before joining Gladius Pharmaceuticals, she worked as a project manager at Novalix-Tunisia where she contributed to the settlement of the first R&D laboratory in North Africa.

Dr Khalifa holds a Ph.D in Organic Chemistry from the université de Montréal, where she developed an intramolecular C-H amination reaction using Rhodium complex as catalyst. This methodology was used to achieve the formal synthesis of (-)-Cytoxazone, a selective immunomodulator inhibiting the signaling pathway of Th2 cells.

Justine Keller serves as Financial Controller at Thryv Therapeutics where she oversees all financial activities ensuring compliance with regulator requirements and provides strategic financial reporting to the senior management team.  Justine received her bachelor's degree in finance and accounting from McGill University and has over 10 years of experience in finance management and consulting across several industries, most notably aerospace, software, and biotech.

Prior to joining Thryv Therapeutics Justine worked as a financial consultant for several biotech companies across Montreal providing strategic financial guidance to set them up for growth. Before entering the consulting space Justine held the role of Finance Manager for over 5 years specializing in process development and software implementations for companies such as Mitsubishi Aircraft and Valsoft Corporation.

Daphne Doucet serves as Manager, Corporate Communications at Thryv Therapeutics where she manages Thryv’s communications, collaborations with advocacy organizations, and oversees all social media and marketing endeavors. Daphne previously served as Senior Business Associate at Thryv dealing with various administrative matters and overseeing the Human Resources department. Prior to Thryv, Daphne was an educator with the Lester B. Pearson School Board.

Daphne holds a bachelor’s degree in education with a specialization in Physical Education and Kinesiology from McGill University.

Sabindra Pradhananga serves as Senior Research Scientist at Thryv Therapeutics. Although a registered Pharmacist, he is more interested in identifying and developing novel drug candidates. Prior to Thryv, he worked as a Quality Control officer in Omnica Laboratories where he assisted in the manufacturing of tablets and capsules by ensuring the manufactured products complied with pharmacopeial regulations.

Dr. Pradhananga obtained his masters in pathophysiology from Gachon University in South Korea, where he studied the potency of caffeic acid to be used as anti-itch drug, and doctorate in neuroscience from Queen’s University in Canada, where he studied the mechanism of interaction between gut microbiota and the vagus nerve and the role of this interaction in colitis.

Shannon serves as a Research Associate at Thryv Therapeutics, where she studies the impact of SGK1 inhibitors in oncology. She has over five years of experience, including cell-based assays using small molecule inhibitors, immune profiling using flow cytometry, and various molecular biology techniques.

Shannon received her MSc. in Microbiology & Immunology from McGill University, where she studied lipid metabolism, its role in group 2 innate lymphoid cell (ILC2) function, and its potential as a therapeutic target in treating allergic lung inflammation. After her MSc., Shannon worked in a CRO setting prior to joining Thryv in autumn 2022.

Emma Blackburn serves as Clinical Trials Coordinator at Thryv Therapeutics where she assists senior management in the operations, organization and implementation of our various clinical trials. Emma was previously an intern for a year at Thryv, first in the laboratory and then in clinical.

Emma holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Epidemiology at Université de Montréal, with her research project focused on cardiovascular health in paediatric populations.