Team Category: Team Member

Puneet Arora is the CMO of Lassen. Puneet is a highly regarded physician-scientist and drug developer with more than a decade of experience in the development of innovative investigational therapies and clinical leadership in small and large biotech companies. He most recently served as Head of Clinical, Inflammation and Immunology at Principia Biopharma, a Sanofi company.  At Principia, he led clinical development strategy and the clinical team in the design and execution of clinical studies across the company’s portfolio. Puneet managed clinical development for lead programs including early translational development and proof of concept through late development and regulatory submissions. He played a key role in leading the pivotal study clinical and filing teams for the rilzabrutinib program in pemphigus. Prior to his time at Principia, he was Senior Medical Director of Early Clinical Development and Clinical Team Leader at Genentech Research and Early Development working across multiple therapeutic areas. He also worked at Amgen, leading clinical teams for the development of romosozumab (early stage) and denosumab (late stage).  Puneet received his medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, completed his residency in internal medicine at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, a fellowship in endocrinology at NYU, and a Master’s Degree in Clinical Research and fellowship in Advanced Diabetology at the Mayo Clinic, as part of the Clinical Research Training Program. He is also an alumnus of the American Course on Drug Development and Regulatory Sciences (UCSF).

Jamie Swaney, Ph.D. is Vice President of Fibrosis and Translational Biology. Jamie has more than 15 years of drug development experience in tissue fibrosis/remodeling and inflammation. Prior to joining Lassen, Jamie was Executive Director and head of fibrosis at Metacrine, leading small molecule programs for NASH liver fibrosis. He began his career at Lpath Inc. where he helped advance lysophospholipid and sphingolipid antibodies for cardiac and pulmonary fibrosis and age-related macular degeneration. Following Lpath, Jamie spent several years at Amira Pharmaceuticals developing LPA receptor antagonists and autotaxin inhibitors for fibrosis.

Following the acquisition of Amira by Bristol Myers Squibb, Jamie  led the in vivo fibrosis effort at BMS in San Diego as a member of BMS’s fibrosis discovery team. Jamie later joined Inception Sciences where he led in vivo and in vitro efforts to advance small molecule therapeutics in multiple fibroinflammatory disease indications. He has contributed to several patents and authored multiple peer-reviewed publications. Jamie received a Ph.D. in Molecular Pathology from the University of California at San Diego and holds an M.S. from the University of San Diego and a B.S. from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Toni Jun, Ph.D. is Vice President of Preclinical Biology. She has more than 20 years of experience in both cancer and inflammation drug discovery and development programs. Prior to joining Lassen, Toni was the Senior Director of Preclinical Development at Phanes Therapeutics where she helped advance the company’s immuno-oncology programs. She began her career at Kinetix Pharmaceuticals developing small molecule kinase inhibitors for cancer and inflammation. Following the acquisition of Kinetix by Amgen, Toni spent more than a decade with Amgen, working on antibody and small molecule programs targeting cancer. Toni later headed the assay biology group at AnaptysBio, leading antibody and bispecific immuno-oncology programs, including both antagonist and agonist molecules against the immune checkpoint LAG3. She has contributed to multiple patents and peer-reviewed publications throughout her career. Toni received a Ph.D. in Virology from Harvard University and B.S. from the University of Michigan.