About

Thomas J. Schuetz, MD, PhD has over 20 years of experience in oncology, biopharmaceutical drug development and life science venture investing. He co-founded Compass in 2014 following conceptual discussions while he was a venture partner at OrbiMed. While at OrbiMed, Thomas also co-founded Audentes Therapeutics, where he served as a director until its acquisition by Astellas. While at OrbiMed, he worked on the investments in Enobia Pharma, Relypsa, and Arteaus Therapeutics, and served as a director at each of those companies. Thomas has multiple years of clinical strategy, development, and operations experience, including roles as chief medical officer of Therion Biologics Corporation, a cancer vaccine company, and as vice president of clinical affairs at Transkaryotic Therapies, a company acquired by Shire.

Thomas completed his medical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he served as the chief medical resident. He completed a medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Thomas holds a BS in chemistry from Xavier University, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and a PhD in genetics from Harvard University.

Dr. Minori Rosales joined Compass in May 2023.

Dr. Rosales brings significant clinical experience as a proven leader in both biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Prior to joining Compass, Dr. Rosales held an executive position as Chief Development Officer for Sesen Bio. Prior to Sesen Bio, she served as Vice President, R&D at MacroGenics for four years, where she led a team advancing the clinical development of margetuximab. Earlier in her career, Dr. Rosales held various executive and senior clinical leadership roles with increasing responsibilities, at Merck and Eli Lilly, where she led label-expansion and registrational studies for pembrolizumab and ramicirumab, respectively, in a number of indications, including but not limited to, biliary tract cancer, gastric cancer, esophageal cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Dr. Rosales obtained her medical degree from Yamaguchi University and her PhD in tumor immunology from Kansai Medical University in Japan.

Jonathan Anderman, JD, joined Compass in August 2021. He serves as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. He brings deep legal experience in the healthcare and life sciences industry, having served as in-house and outside counsel to biotechnology companies of various stages and sizes across multiple therapeutic areas. In these roles, Jon provided strategic guidance on the broad legal challenges relevant to developing and commercializing innovative products.

Immediately prior to joining Compass, Jon was Global Commercial Counsel at Biogen and, prior to that, Assistant General Counsel at Intarcia Therapeutics, where he advised on diverse areas ranging from corporate transactions to commercialization and compliance. Earlier in his career, Jon was a healthcare and life sciences attorney at the global law firm, Holland & Knight. At H&K, Jon represented clients throughout the healthcare sector on regulatory, transactional, and compliance matters.

Jon earned his JD from Boston University School of Law and his BA from the Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Chia joined Compass in 2018, bringing more than 10 years of experience in the biotechnology industry with roles spanning corporate and business development, strategy, and investment management. Prior to joining Compass, Ian was with the business development team at Pacira Biosciences. Earlier on, Ian worked at Harris & Harris Group, a healthcare-focused venture capital team based in New York.  During that time, he monitored the progress of Harris & Harris Group’s portfolio companies, and was involved in due diligence on several investments. In particular, he represented Harris & Harris Group as a board observer at Mersana Therapeutics, and Ensemble Therapeutics.

Ian earned his PhD, MPhil, MA in Genetics & Development from Columbia University. He has an MPhil in Management from Cambridge University, and a BSc (First Class Honors) in Microbiology and Immunology from McGill University. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University Medical Center.

Bing Gong, PhD, is the Senior Vice President of Discovery Research at Compass. Dr. Gong joined Compass in 2015, bringing more than 10 years of biotech industry experience as a scientific leader for protein analytics and characterization. Before joining Compass, Bing was a Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer Global BioTherapeutic Technologies, where he focused on developability assessment of antibody therapeutics. Earlier at his career, Bing worked at GlycoFi, a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck, where he led a team of scientists responsible for biochemical and biophysical characterization of therapeutic proteins. Dr. Gong has published extensively on glycoprotein analysis and therapeutic antibody development and characterization.

Bing earned his PhD in biochemical engineering from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College on a Merck Research Laboratories sponsored Doctoral Fellowship. He has an MSc in biochemistry from UMass-Amherst and a BSc in Microbiology from Huazhong Agricultural University in China.

Karin Herrera serves as Vice President and Head of Clinical Operations at Compass Therapeutics.

Ms. Herrera joined Compass in early 2023, bringing 18 years of experience and expertise in clinical research and clinical operations. Prior to joining Compass, Karin spent over nine years in roles of increasing responsibility at Kadmon Corporation, including Vice President of Clinical Operations, where she built and led the Clinical Operations team while executing a diverse portfolio of clinical trials. Following the successful NDA approval of REZUROCK (belumosudil) and the subsequent acquisition of Kadmon in 2021, Karin played an integral role in leading the integration of the Clinical Operations team and clinical trial portfolio into Sanofi.

Prior to Kadmon, Karin held various clinical research positions over several years at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute within the Women’s Cancer Program. Karin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Assumption College.

Dr. Kranz joined Compass in August 2023 bringing 21 years of experience in all phases of process development, GMP manufacturing and overall CMC strategy. At Compass, he oversees development and GMP manufacturing of drug substance, drug product, as well as clinical supply chain and logistics. Before joining Compass, Dr. Kranz was the Vice President of Pharmaceutical and Analytical R&D at Greenlight Biosciences, where he was the program lead for a Phase 1 clinical vaccine candidate and developed novel assays and LNP-mRNA formulations for vaccine candidates for infectious disease. Prior to this, Dr. Kranz held roles of increasing leadership in biopharmaceutical formulation and drug development with a focus on monoclonal antibodies, Fc-fusion proteins, antibody drug conjugates, protein replacement therapies, and combination products at several prominent biotech and pharmaceutical companies. His experiences include Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals, Shire-Takeda (legacy Shire), GSK, and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) Pharmaceuticals. Jim also served as an NIH study section reviewer (between 2011-2016) and he is frequently an invited speaker to the Gordon conference and other symposiums.

Prior to embarking on a career with pharmaceutical and biotech companies, Dr. Kranz held an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr Kranz holds a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from Washington University School of Medicine, and a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Iowa.

Neil Lerner joined Compass in 2020 as a finance leader with over 20 years of accounting, finance and business experience, including SEC reporting, system implementations, budgeting and forecasting, Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), and cost accounting.

Prior to joining Compass, Neil led the accounting and finance function of Psychemedics Corporation, a publicly traded diagnostic company. Prior to Psychemedics, Neil assumed several financial leadership roles with Johnson & Johnson, including partnering with the R&D team and new business development organization, leading an enterprise resource planning implementation, plant controller, and as an internal auditor. Additional positions Neil held include Director of Operational Accounting at Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc., and a Controller with Mastec, Inc.

Neil is a CPA and has a master’s degree in international management from the University of Denver.

Dr. Sachsenmeier joined Compass Therapeutics in 2023 as Vice President and Head of Translational Sciences. Prior to joining Compass, Kris led early translational research in the field of immuno-oncology as the Head, Translational Oncology Strategy: Cold 2 Hot at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. In that role Kris led a team of scientists in the design and execution of studies supporting clinical assets. Before Takeda, Dr. Sachsenmeier spent over a decade at Medimmune (Astrazeneca), where he led the development of a number of antibodies including bispecifics, and Oleclumab, the first anti-CD73 antibody to enter human clinical trials, and currently in registrational trials. Dr. Sachsenmeier led the Oleclumab project team from target discovery and validation, through lead isolation and optimization all the way up to filing of an IND and support of clinical trials.

Earlier on in his career, Kris spent time at two early-stage biotechnology companies: Automated Cell, Inc.  and Arius Research, Inc. (acquired by Roche) where he led teams focused on anti-cancer antibody discovery. Additionally, Kris is a prolific scholar who published several book chapters and multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals in cancer immunology.

Dr. Sachsenmeier studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Biochemistry, Immunology and Toxicology. He completed post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a second fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh where he studied viral onco-protein mutants.