Vertero is innovating beyond the brain to develop differentiated therapies to turn the tide of challenging neurodegenerative diseases and preserve patients’ quality of life for longer.

Dr. Stewart Campbell joined Vertero Therapeutics in 2017 and was appointed the company’s Chief Executive Officer in February 2021. Stewart has played a fundamental role in the company’s growth and strategy, bringing more than 30 years of experience leading and building teams that have strong track records of discovering and developing novel therapeutics for the patients who need them. As CEO, he secured multiple rounds of equity financing to support advancement and growth of Vertero.

Prior to joining Vertero, Stewart held various leadership roles at biopharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing companies, including Corden Pharma, Ancora Pharmaceuticals (where he led its acquisition by Corden), Surface Logix, and Insmed, after starting his career as a medicinal chemist at Boehringer-Ingelheim. During his career, Stewart has been a co-inventor on more than 20 issued patent families, including the foundational patents for the graft-versus-host disease drug Rezurock®.

Stewart holds a BS with Honors in Chemistry from St. Francis Xavier University, a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Queen’s University (Canada) and completed his post-doctoral research at Duke University.

R. Scott Greer, managing director of Numenor Ventures, LLC, is a private investor in and consultant to the life sciences industry with over thirty years’ experience. Scott has made direct investments in over two dozen healthcare, technology, and consumer product companies. He currently is a director of Nektar Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: NKTR), a biotherapeutics company where he chairs the audit committee and serves on the compensation (past chair) and governance committees. 

He was a founder and CEO of Abgenix, Inc., through 2002 and served as its Chairman of the Board until 2006 when Abgenix was acquired by Amgen for $2.2 billion. Mr. Greer was also previously Chair of the Board of Sirna Therapeutics, which was sold to Merck for $1.1 billion in 2007. Earlier, Mr. Greer spent five years at Cell Genesys and held various positions at Genetics Institute, Inc., (acquired by American Home Products, Inc.). He has previously held board positions with other public companies including Inogen and Illumina, as well as numerous private companies including Auspex, Inc. (acquired by Teva for $3.5 billion) where he served on the compensation committee, Anaptys Biosciences, Inc., (subsequently went public), and Calimmune, Inc. (acquired by CSL, Inc.) where he was Chairman of the Board. 

Mr. Greer has a B.A. in economics from Whitman College and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. Prior to attending business school, Mr. Greer was an auditor with Coopers & Lybrand and was a certified public accountant. 
 

Michele Cucullu is Managing Director of Private Investments at a single-family office located in Silicon Valley and oversees the family office’s private equity investments and the foundation’s CNS investment program.

Michele has over two decades of investment experience and, prior to her current role, was Director of Private Equity at the University of California for more than a decade. Earlier, she was on the Investment Team at Caltech.

Dr. Nora Frey has been a Venture Partner at Seventure since June 2021 and brings more than 20 years of professional experience in healthcare research, investment, management, strategy and business development. Nora is based in Basel, Switzerland and focuses mainly on Nutrition, Foodtech and microbiome-related opportunities. She co-founded several companies and was a board member and chairman of companies in different fields including biotech, nutraceuticals/food production and finance/investment.

Nora started her career in 1998 as partner at Bellevue Group, Switzerland, as part of the BB Biotech team, one of the largest investors in the public and private biotech sector. She then founded Adamant Biomedical Investments AG, a successful healthcare asset management boutique, and served as the CIO and headed research and portfolio management. In 2008, Nora co-founded Cederberg GmbH, a healthcare marketing and distribution business. Nora was also centrally involved in the building of a food and nutraceuticals developer and producer in Africa.

Nora holds a PhD in Biochemistry/Immunology and a Master’s degree in Microbiology.

Sarah Meibusch is a Partner at OneVentures, focused on sourcing and supporting life sciences companies developing transformative technologies with global potential. Sarah brings over 20 years of enterprise-level leadership experience across the life sciences ecosystem, from agriculture to healthcare.

Her career spans start-ups, private and public companies (ASX- and NASDAQ-listed), multinational pharma, and university research organizations. She has a strong track record in deal-making, from early-stage investments and university collaborations to major pharma transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Prior to joining OneVentures, Sarah held roles in business development and commercial strategy in Australia and the United States, combining deep scientific expertise with commercial acumen to drive innovation to market.

She currently serves as Chair of Vertero Therapeutics, a Board Member for Kira Biotech and an Alternate Board Member and Observer for Vaxxas, Clinical Genomics and Prota Therapeutics.

Sarah holds a Bachelor of Agricultural Science with First Class Honours from the University of Queensland and a Master’s in Genomics from Cornell University. She has post-graduate training in negotiation from Harvard and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD). She is also a member of the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute Commercial Advisory Board and the AusBiotech Investment Advisory Group.

Dr. Sarkis K. Mazmanian is the Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Biology & Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also received his PhD training in microbiology and immunology. Sarkis was a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow and subsequently appointed assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in 2006. He moved to Caltech to investigate how the gut microbiome impacts development and function of the immune and nervous systems and pioneered the concept that researching the microbiome may lead to development of novel therapies for immunologic and neurological diseases.

Sarkis has won numerous awards including a Searle Scholar, Young Investigator of the Year at Harvard Medical School, Damon Runyon Innovation Award, was named by Discover Magazine as one of the “Best Brains in Science under 40”, “Life Science Superstar” by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, and recently received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award.

He is a founder of two biotech companies and has or currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of more than a dozen companies, academic centers, and not-for-profit foundations.

Kalpana Merchant is a translational neuroscientist with more than 30 years of experience in drug development for neurological disorders. She retired from Eli Lilly as Chief Scientific Officer for Tailored Therapeutics–Neuroscience. Prior to Lilly, she spent a decade in neuroscience research at Upjohn/Pharmacia. Kalpana has co-founded biopharma companies, served as Chief Executive/Chief Scientific Officer. 

Currently, she serves on Boards of Directors, Scientific Advisory Boards and as a consultant in the biopharma sector. She is an Adjunct Professor of Neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and an advisor to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. She has been appointed to the Oregon Innovation Council, a trustee of the Portland Community College Foundation and has served on advisory boards/council at the National Institutes of Health. She earned her PhD from the University of Utah and held faculty roles at the University of Washington.

Professor Anthony Schapira was appointed in 1990 as Chairman of the University Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, and Professor of Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and the Royal Free Hospital, London, UK. He is currently Head of the Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences at UCL. He is a member of the Board of Oxford University Hospital, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and the NHS Reconfiguration Panel.

He leads a program of research on Parkinson’s disease supported by the ASAP consortium through the Michael J. Fox Foundation. He has over 500 peer-reviewed publications and has edited over 15 books on various aspects of neurology including the textbook Neurology and Clinical Neuroscience. He has been on the annual list of the world’s most Highly Cited Researchers (Clarivate) since 2017.

Professor Schapira is the recipient of the Harveian Medal, the Royal College of Physicians Clinical Science Prize, the European Prize for Clinical Science, the 1999 Opprecht Foundation Award and the Duchenne Prize. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999. He was appointed a Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health Research in 2012 and to Academia Europaea in 2023. He was awarded the Dorothy Russell Medal in 2024.

Dr. David Standaert is the John N. Whitaker Professor and Chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Neurology and a senior member of the faculty of the Division of Movement Disorders.  He is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the American Parkinson Disease Association, a Deputy Editor of the journal Movement Disorders, and a Fellow of both the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association. He has previously served as a Director and Vice President of the American Neurological Association, and Vice President of the Association of Academic Leaders in Neurology. 

He was a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School from 1995 to 2006 and then relocated to the University of Alabama at Birmingham. 

Dr. Standaert graduated from Harvard College and received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. Following Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, he was appointed a Howard Hughes Fellow and completed a three-year research and clinical fellowship in Movement Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Professor Bas Bloem is a consultant neurologist at the Department of Neurology, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Professor Bloem is on the editorial board for several national and international journals and has published over 1,100 publications and is ranked among the top 1% most cited scientists in the world of the past 10 years. Professor Bloem founded the Radboudumc Centre of Expertise for Parkinson & Movement Disorders.

He previously served on the Executive Scientific Advisory Board of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. In 2022, he received the Stevin prize, the highest recognition for a Dutch scientist who has had the greatest impact on society, and in April 2024, was appointed as Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion, the highest royal distinction in The Netherlands. 

He received his MD and PhD at Leiden University Medical Centre, where he trained as a neurologist. He completed fellowships at The Parkinson's Institute, Sunnyvale, California, and at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London.

Dr. Sarkis K. Mazmanian is the Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Biology & Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also received his PhD training in microbiology and immunology. Sarkis was a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow and subsequently appointed assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in 2006. He moved to Caltech to investigate how the gut microbiome impacts development and function of the immune and nervous systems and pioneered the concept that researching the microbiome may lead to development of novel therapies for immunologic and neurological diseases.

Sarkis has won numerous awards including a Searle Scholar, Young Investigator of the Year at Harvard Medical School, Damon Runyon Innovation Award, was named by Discover Magazine as one of the “Best Brains in Science under 40”, “Life Science Superstar” by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, and recently received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award.

He is a founder of two biotech companies and has or currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of more than a dozen companies, academic centers, and not-for-profit foundations.