Team

FRANK S. DAVID, MD, PhD

FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR

Frank is an experienced consultant and former physician-scientist who works at the intersection of corporate strategy, clinical medicine and basic research. He focuses on helping established and emerging biomedical companies, entrepreneurs, and investors maximize the value of innovative R&D.

Frank has advised C-suite, commercial, R&D, business development, and investor clients across all major therapeutic areas and business sectors within life sciences, including biopharma, devices, diagnostics, tools, and health care services. He previously worked in the consulting arm of Leerink Partners (acquired by SVB), a leading healthcare investment bank, where he co-led the Transactional Consulting practice that advised investors, strategic partners, and early-stage companies side-by-side with Leerink's banking team. He also served as Director of Strategy in AstraZeneca’s Oncology Innovative Medicines unit, where he supported the pre-Phase 2a portfolio with end-to-end franchise strategy, portfolio valuation, external communications to collaborators and investors, and new product planning support.

Frank is the lead author of two books, The Pharmagellan Guide to Biotech Forecasting and Valuation (2017) and The Pharmagellan Guide to Analyzing Biotech Clinical Trials (2022). As a researcher, his analyses of biopharma strategy and policy have been published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Health Affairs Blog, JAMA Network Open, and other academic and industry publications.

In addition to his advisory activities, Frank is a Professor of the Practice of Biotechnology in Tufts University's Department of Biology, where he teaches courses on drug development, runs a biopharma internship program for master’s degree students, and trains graduate students on professional skills and career development. Frank is also a member of the Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science and an Innovation Strategist at the Brigham Research Institute of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

A board-certified pathologist, Frank began his career as a physician-scientist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where his NIH-funded research focused on cell signaling in cancer and kidney development. He received his B.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale, his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and his clinical training in anatomic pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Frank can be reached directly at frank@pharmagellan.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.

 

JEFFREY BROWN, PHD

VICE PRESIDENT, TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE

Jeff is an expert in biomarker-enabled drug development with over two decades of experience as a translational scientist in large and small biopharma companies. After receiving his PhD in Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, he started his industry career as one of the first scientists to join Millennium in the 1990s. Subsequently, Jeff was the Translational Science Site Lead for the AstraZeneca Oncology group in Boston, where he delivered biomarker and patient selection strategies for a portfolio of more than 12 clinical programs encompassing small molecules and antibodies, and spanning from preclinical science through Phase 1/2, Phase 2 proof of concept, and Phase 3 pivotal trials. He subsequently led translational medicine at Radius Health, where he was an integral part of the successful FDA approval of TYMLOS (abaloparatide) for osteoporosis. Immediately prior to joining Pharmagellan, Jeff drove the translational research for a number of novel immune oncology (IO) targets at Palleon Pharmaceuticals, with a particular focus on prioritization of indications and delivering patient selection strategies for early clinical IO programs.

Jeff can be reached directly at jeff@pharmagellan.com.