Kunwar Shailubhai, Ph.D., M.B.A. is Chief Executive Officer of Rasna Therapeutics. Dr. Shailubhai brings more than 25 years of experience within the life science industry, combined with a distinguished track record of success in translating drugs from concept through commercialization to market.

Dr. Shailubhai has been serving as a member of board of Rasna since 2015. He actively played key roles in development of growth strategies through several key licensings of technologies and drug candidates.

Dr. Shailubhai also serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of Tiziana Life Sciences plc. As co-founder, EVP and CSO of Synergy Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGYP) he led the non-clinical, CMC and clinical development of Trulance™ from inception to approval by the FDA, having co-invented and pioneered Synergy’s platform technology for functional GI disorders,inflammatory bowel disease, GI cancer and other human diseases.  Dr. Shailubhai as the chief architect of the IP estate, directed all aspects of IP management, including timely submission of patent applications, directing office actions and coordinating with IP attorneys.

Earlier, from 2003 until 2008, Dr. Shailubhai served as Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery and from 2001 to 2003, he held the position of Vice President, Drug Discovery at Synergy, where he pioneered therapeutic applications of GC-C agonists in a variety of human diseases such as Asthma, COPD and cholesterol lowering.

Prior to Synergy, he was with Monsanto Company, serving as Group Leader, Cancer Prevention and previously served as a Senior Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Shailubhai received his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Baroda, India, and his MBA from the University of Missouri, St. Louis. He has more than 20 issued patents and over 50 peer-reviewed publications.

Mr Lazzaretti has extensive experience in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry and joined Rasna from Pharmentis Srl, a spin-off from Teva Ratiopharm, where he served as Group Finance Director from 2011. Prior to this, Mr Lazzaretti was Executive Director at Alliance Boots Healthcare, and held senior positions at Accenture, SNIA Spa and Fiat Group.

Mr Lazzaretti has a Bachelor of Science (BSc Hons) in Accounting and Finance from the University of Turin, Italy, was awarded a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from Bocconi University, Milan and studied Corporate Finance at the London Business School.

Before joining Tiziana Life Sciences, Dr. Fayez Hamzeh served as Head of Clinical Trials Planning and Implementation Strategy of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Roche Innovation Center, New York from 2015 to 2017. During this period Dr. Hamzeh’s focus was Phase I and Phase II clinical trials in immunology, hepatology and infectious diseases. Dr. Hamzeh served as a Group Medical Director and Head of Infectious Disease, Transplantation and Hepatology at Genentech Inc, South San Francisco from 2009 through 2011 and 2013 through 2015. Dr. Hamzeh served as a Group Medical Director in Genentech Medical Affairs and was responsible for glioblastoma and avastin pan tumor indications. Dr. Hamzeh served as Sr. Medical Director of Hepatology, Transplantation and Infectious Diseases at Roche Pharmaceutical, Nutley NJ from 2003 through 2009. During this period, Dr. Hamzeh was responsible for clinical trials in virology focusing on anti-HIV, anti-influenza, anti-cytomegalovirus, anti-HCV and anti-HBV drugs. Prior to joining the industry in 2003, Dr. Hamzeh served as an Assistant professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and Molecular Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore MD.

During his academic and industry career, Dr. Hamzeh served on many National Institute of Health scientific steering committees including, AIDS Clinical Trials Group, AIDS Malignancy Consortium, Hepatitis-C (HALT-C) Scientific Steering Committee. Dr. Hamzeh received his MD degree in 1981 from the University of Jordan Medical School and his PhD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1990.  

Jules Jacob has 30 years of drug development experience and was previously Senior Director, Product Development at Aprecia Pharmaceuticals where he headed development of Spritam®, the first FDA-approved dosage form manufactured using 3-Dimensional Printing and other 505(b)(2) pipeline products. Prior to that Mr. Jacob was Director of Formulation Development at Panacos Pharmaceuticals, developing first-in-class maturation inhibitors for treatment of HIV and Director of Research and Development and Director of Technology Development at Spherics Pharmaceuticals developing bioadhesive dosage forms for treatment of CNS disorders, following the 505 (b)(2) regulatory pathway.

Mr. Jacob holds over 30 issued patents (US and international) and 38 US patent applications in the fields of drug delivery (proteins, peptides, DNA), nanoencapsulation, microencapsulation, solid oral dosage formulation, polymer compositions, gene therapy, tumor immunotherapy, protein micronization and formulation, imaging and bioadhesion. He has authored more than 30 scientific articles and book chapters and was Grand Award winner of the 2005 Eurand-CRS sponsored “Novel Approaches in Industrial Oral Drug Delivery Award”.  Mr. Jacob completed his undergraduate degree and graduate education in biological and medical sciences at Brown University and has an active visiting faculty appointment in the Department of Molecular Pharmacolgy, Physiology and Biotechnology at Brown.

Dr. Eddy has over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development. Prior to joining Tiziana, Dr. Eddy served as Senior Director, Toxicology and Safety Pharmacology at Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. and was responsible for toxicology, ADME/PK and safety pharmacology studies to support NDA submission of dolcanatide. She also contributed to the NDA for Trulance™. Her work at Synergy also included the development of a delayed release formulation for dolcanatide and she was involved in the supply of API for GLP and feasibility studies.

Prior to Synergy, Dr. Eddy worked at SmithKline Beecham, Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Endo Pharmaceuticals in the areas of drug discovery and development including early clinical development. She received her Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry and is a board certified toxicologist of the American Board of Toxicology. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry she worked at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH in the area of chemical carcinogenesis and environmental health sciences.

Dr. Palejwala has 18 years of experience in drug discovery and development. Since 2012, Dr. Palejwala served as Director of Discovery and Preclinical Research at Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. where he actively contributed to establishing preclinical animal models for testing therapeutic efficacy and mechanism of action of plecanatide (Trulance™) and dolcanatide in the gastrointestinal tract. He also prepared the preclinical pharmacology section of NDA for Trulance™.

From 2001 - 2012, Dr. Palejwala served as Discovery Scientist/Manager at Sanofi Pharmaceuticals contributing to advancing small molecule and biologic programs in immunology, inflammation, oncology, CNS and metabolic disorders. He contributed to establishing and managing high throughput gene expression profiling platform capabilities at Sanofi and collaborated/contributed in cross-cultural/cross-functional team settings.

Dr. Palejwala received his Ph.D. degree in Microbiology from the M. S. University of Baroda in India and post-doctoral training in Molecular Genetics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey.

Kunwar Shailubhai, Ph.D., M.B.A. is Chief Executive Officer of Rasna Therapeutics. Dr. Shailubhai brings more than 25 years of experience within the life science industry, combined with a distinguished track record of success in translating drugs from concept through commercialization to market.

Dr. Shailubhai has been serving as a member of board of Rasna since 2015. He actively played key roles in development of growth strategies through several key licensings of technologies and drug candidates.

Dr. Shailubhai also serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of Tiziana Life Sciences plc. As co-founder, EVP and CSO of Synergy Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGYP) he led the non-clinical, CMC and clinical development of Trulance™ from inception to approval by the FDA, having co-invented and pioneered Synergy’s platform technology for functional GI disorders,inflammatory bowel disease, GI cancer and other human diseases.  Dr. Shailubhai as the chief architect of the IP estate, directed all aspects of IP management, including timely submission of patent applications, directing office actions and coordinating with IP attorneys.

Earlier, from 2003 until 2008, Dr. Shailubhai served as Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery and from 2001 to 2003, he held the position of Vice President, Drug Discovery at Synergy, where he pioneered therapeutic applications of GC-C agonists in a variety of human diseases such as Asthma, COPD and cholesterol lowering.

Prior to Synergy, he was with Monsanto Company, serving as Group Leader, Cancer Prevention and previously served as a Senior Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Shailubhai received his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Baroda, India, and his MBA from the University of Missouri, St. Louis. He has more than 20 issued patents and over 50 peer-reviewed publications.