PureTech Health plc announced the appointment of Denice Torres, J.D., to its Board of Directors. In addition, Michael Chen, Ph.D., Co-founder, was named Chief Scientific Officer, and Eric Green, MBA, was appointed Chief Operating Officer. Ms. Torres brings notable public and private board experience to Seaport, including a position on the Board of Directors at Karuna Therapeutics until its acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb in March 2024. She has over 30 years of P&L, strategy, and leadership experience in pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare and medical devices. Ms. Torres held several leadership positions at Johnson & Johnson, including President of J&J Consumer Healthcare, President of Janssen Neuroscience, and Chief Strategy Officer for the medical device division. Before joining Johnson & Johnson, she held senior leadership roles at Eli Lilly, including Executive Director of Global Neuroscience and Head of Women's Healthcare. Ms. Torres has received numerous awards, including Healthcare Businesswomen's AssociationWoman of the Year, Johnson & Johnson Working Mother of the Year, and the Johnson & Johnson Special Recognition Leadership Award for her work in diversity and inclusion. Mr. Green steps into the role of Chief Operating Officer bringing nearly 25 years of biopharmaceutical development, commercialization and operational experience. Most recently, Mr. Green was Senior Vice President, Head of Development Programs at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals where he led a team responsible for global development and pre-commercialization activities for a portfolio of development stage programs. His initial role at Alnylam was as Senior Vice President, Global General Manager for the TTR Franchise, leading the first ever global approval of a RNAi therapeutic, ONPATTRO® (patisiran) and late-stage development of vutrisiran (now AMVUTTRA®). Mr. Green?s diverse experience spans across R&D process engineering, pharmaceutical manufacturing and operations, and global development and commercialization strategy with former roles at Synageva BioPharma, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme Corporation and Pfizer. He received an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a M.S. in chemical engineering from MIT School of Engineering. He earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from University of Michigan. At Seaport, he will be responsible for implementing strategies to support the growth and development of the company?s pipeline across the organization.
Dr. Chen is Co-founder and has now been appointed Chief Scientific Officer of Seaport. In his most recent role, Dr. Chen was the Head of Innovation at PureTech Health, where he oversaw the rapid advancement of the neuropsychiatric medicines that led to the launch of Seaport. These novel medicines are now being advanced within Seaport?s clinical-stage pipeline powered by the Glyph platform, which leverages the lymphatic system to create new medicines building on clinically validated mechanisms. Dr. Chen was previously Co-founder and Head of Research and Strategy at Sonde Health, a company developing vocal biomarkers for depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Department of Neurology. Dr. Chen completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University, focusing on the neurobiological mechanisms of risk for depression and sleep disorders. He received a B.A. from Yale University.