What We Do

Dr. Brenner has a strong history of success heading drug discovery and development teams at several of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer Inc., and Merck Research Laboratories. Most recently, Dr. Brenner served as the CSO at Pfenex Inc., which, using its patented Pfēnex Expression Technology^® platform, created an advanced pipeline of therapeutic equivalents, vaccines, biologics and biosimilars. Pfenex was acquired by Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated for approximately $516 million in October 2020. Previously, Dr. Brenner served as the CSO at Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company focused on accelerating drug discovery for rare diseases and diseases with high unmet medical need. Prior to his time at Recursion, he was Vice President and Head of Research & Early Development at Stoke Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company using antisense oligonucleotides to increase gene expression for the treatment of rare diseases. Prior to Stoke, he was Executive Director at Merck, where he built a biotech unit from scratch, focusing his team’s research on diabetes and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Earlier in his career, Dr. Brenner was the Senior Director and Head of cardiovascular, renal, and metabolism (CVRM) biosciences at AstraZeneca. In addition, Dr. Brenner was an Associate Research Fellow at Pfizer where he led the islet biology and in vivo pharmacology in the CVMED Target Exploration Unit before assuming the role of Head of the Insulin Resistance Group.

Mr. Banjak joins iBio with over 15 years’ experience in the biotechnology and contract research industries. He previously served as the first general counsel of both Istari Oncology and Dova Pharmaceuticals, leading the legal and compliance functions within both organizations. While at Dova, Mr. Banjak advised the company through a number of clinical and corporate milestones, including FDA and EMA approvals, a secondary public offering and the acquisition of Dova by Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB. Prior to that, Mr. Banjak negotiated strategic contracts, advised on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Anti-Bribery matters, and labor issues at PRA Health Sciences. His industry experience spans rare disease biotechnology companies, global contract research organizations, and medical device companies.  Prior to entering the biotechnology and contract research industries, Mr. Banjak served as an active duty officer in the U.S. Air Force in a variety of legal roles. Mr. Banjak was admitted to the Colorado state bar. He earned his JD from the University of Denver School of Law and a BA in Psychology from Franklin and Marshall College.

Mr. Duran served as iBio’s Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) from April 2021-February 2023. In that capacity, he played a strategic role in the Company’s forecasting, business planning, management reporting, and business analytics activities. From 2016 to 2021, Mr. Duran served as the Executive Director (CFO), of Lupin Latin America, a subsidiary of Lupin Pharmaceuticals, which is the third largest generic pharmaceutical company in the United States. During his tenure at Lupin, Mr. Duran increased regional net sales by double digits by implementing robust commercial pricing strategies. He also spearheaded the subsidiary at a time when it became a positive EBITDA business in the region. In addition to his Latin America duties, he ran the U.S. R&D finance group, managing and providing guidance on strategy and pipeline. Prior to joining Lupin Pharmaceuticals, he held numerous strategy positions at Teva Pharmaceuticals in both its growth markets and Latin America offices. Mr. Duran also worked as a Manager, FP&A for both Bupa and Noven Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Duran holds a B.A. in Finance and an M.B.A from the University of Miami.

Ms. Middlebrook is a human resources executive with a strong record of accomplishment for achieving results within the CDMO and Generics arenas. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President, Human Resources-The Americas at Lupin Incorporated, a global pharmaceutical company offering branded and generic formulations, biosimilars and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Previously, Ms. Middlebrook’s more than 13 years of progressive experience at Lonza Group included executive roles as Global Head of Human Resources (Lonza Bioscience), Global Head of Leadership Development and Talent Management (Lonza AG), Head Integration (Lonza Inc.), Head of Human Resources & Environmental Health and Safety (Lonza Bioscience), in addition to earlier positions in staffing, human resources and employee relations. She holds an MS in Organizational Development from Johns Hopkins University and a BS in Industrial Relations from LeMoyne College.

Dr. DeLong has more than a decade of business development, corporate development, and corporate strategy experience and has guided dozens of companies through transformative deals and challenging strategic decisions. Most recently, he served as head of business development for Tris Pharma, a commercial-stage specialty pharmaceutical company, where he led multiple transactions and mission-critical strategic initiatives related to the company's commercial drug portfolio and novel drug delivery platform technology. Prior to Tris, he spent 7 years at Locust Walk, a life sciences-focused transaction advisor and investment bank. During his time at Locust Walk, he worked on deal teams for over 40 transaction processes and strategy advising projects and executed multiple transformative deals for small and large companies. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Evolved Capital, a software as a service company providing return-on-investment analytics services to venture capital investors. He holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Rutgers University.

Dr. Greving has a record of innovation with more than 15 years of R&D experience. He is driven by a passion to integrate computation and laboratory technologies to improve biological discovery efficiency. Most recently, Dr. Greving served as Co-Founder and CTO at RubrYc Therapeutics where he led development of an AI-backed antibody discovery engine that generated a pre-clinical pipeline of epitope-selective antibodies. Previously, Dr. Greving served as Principal Scientist at HealthTell where he developed multiplexed computational-laboratory technologies to analyze antibody repertoires from blood for diagnostics. Prior to HealthTell, Dr. Greving was Co-Founder and CSO at Nextval that developed a high-throughput mass spectrometry and computational screening technology to measure drug toxicity at scale and to identify high activity enzyme variants from libraries. This resulted in two prestigious innovation awards: SLAS 2012 “Innovation of the Year”, and R&D Magazine’s 2013 “Oscar of Innovation”. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Greving spent 7 years as a Software Engineer developing high-throughput computing applications. Dr. Greving earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Arizona State University and completed his post-doctoral research at Scripps Research.

Dr. Jenkins has three decades of experience in operations, business development and consulting. Before joining iBio, he was Senior Vice President CMC at Ridgeback Therapeutics during BLA preparation and eventual approval of ansuvimab. Prior to Ridgeback, Dr. Jenkins worked as a Senior Consultant at Bioprocessing Technology Consultants where he managed CDMO clients in both cell and gene therapy. He’s held technical and business roles in the mammalian cell culture space, helping to establish Catalent’s GPEx technology for mammalian cell line engineering and serving as the General Manager during construction of Catalent’s cGMP manufacturing site in Madison Wisconsin. Additionally, Dr. Jenkins held positions with increasing responsibility at CropTech Corporation, a company with a novel, inducible system to produce recombinant proteins in tobacco plants. Dr. Jenkins has a BS in Microbiology from the University of Illinois and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Arizona, where he studied the molecular genetics of UV sensitivity in plants.            

Mr. Luter brings over 25 years of experience in the field of information technology. Before joining iBio, he served as Sr. Director, Information Technology - The Americas at Lupin Incorporated, a global pharmaceutical company. During his tenure as Sr. Director, he aligned IT functions across the Brazil, Mexico, U.S., and Canada regions and successfully deployed advanced security and threat mitigation tools across all four regions. His 11 years of progressive experience at Lupin saw him build the U.S. information technology enterprise from the ground up, serving in roles as Director – IT Infrastructure & Support, Sr. Manager – IT Infrastructure & Support, and Manager – Information Technology. Previously, Mr. Luter spent 14 years in engineering and other information technology related roles in the television, news media, and server hosting industries. He holds a BBA in Business Information Systems from Mississippi State University.

Dr. Phan is an accomplished Drug Discovery leader with more than 15 years of industry experience in building and leading research teams to discover and develop therapeutic agents in diverse areas of unmet medical need. Most recently, Dr. Phan served as the director of In Vivo Pharmacology at Ferring Pharmaceuticals where he and his team conducted preclinical research to support Ferring’s global pipeline.  Previously, he held a position as Associate Director of Drug Discovery at Pfenex where he established the preclinical drug discovery infrastructure and co-developed an innovative rare disease and oncology strategy.  Prior to Pfenex, he was a Senior Investigator at The Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation where he led drug discovery programs in Type 1 Diabetes and Heart Failure indications. Dr. Phan spent 10 years at Gilead Sciences in the Cardiovascular Therapeutic Area after his postdoctoral fellow training at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center.  During his tenure at Gilead Sciences as Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Phan and his team identified and validated numerous targets, initiated drug discovery programs and co-led a novel kinase inhibitor program into the clinic for Diabetic Kidney Disease and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. Dr. Phan earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Molecular Pathology and his B.S in Genetics from the University of California at Davis.