Key Advisors

Mark Moran MD, MBA

Chief Medical Advisor

Mark Moran is co-founder, chief medical advisor and a director of Synosia Therapeutics.

He was a faculty member in the department of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine for two years until he joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1986. Mark served in a number of roles in research and development, including senior director of clinical research at Searle/Monsanto until 1991 and chief medical officer at Glycomed until 1995.

He subsequently founded and served as the first chief scientific officer of Intarcia Therapeutics, which is actively developing products to treat cancer and viral diseases. In 1997, Mark became an advisor to Versant Ventures, where he continues to serve as clinical director and serial entrepreneur. In 2005, he co-founded Amira Pharmaceuticals, which focuses on discovering and developing new treatments for asthma and other inflammatory conditions, and served as the acting head of development during the start-up phase of activities.

Mark received his medical degree from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, an master’s of business administration from the Kellogg School of Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics.

HervÉ Girsault, MBA

Chief Business Advisor

Hervé Girsault has extensive experience in business development and licensing in the pharmaceutical industry. Until July 2005, he held a number of senior positions at Novartis, including senior vice president and global head of partnering and out-licensing at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Basel, global head of business development & licensing for Novartis Consumer Health and general manager of Novartis Consumer Health in Benelux.

Before joining Novartis, Hervé was the general manager of Gerber Products Company in France from 1990 to 1995. He started his professional career with Coopers & Lybrand Management Consultants, culminating in the position of director of the food & healthcare practices, based in Paris. He earned an master's of business administration with honors from Columbia Business School in New York and has a master's degree from a leading business school in Paris.

Tom Woiwode, PhD

Business Development and Strategy Advisor

Tom has a background in science, strategy and finance, having advised the company through one of the founding investors, Versant Ventures. Tom wrote the business plan and negotiated the license agreements that led to the formation of Synosia. In collaboration with Brad Bolzon, a managing director at Versant, Tom has also enabled the formation of two other start-up companies: Amira Pharmaceuticals, where he served as the acting chief business officer, and Sentient Therapeutics, where he continues to serve on the board of directors.

Prior to Versant, Tom worked as a medicinal chemist at XenoPort on methods to improve the gastrointestinal absorption of drug candidates. In this role, he led the development of a new high-throughput screening technology to enable the identification of pathways capable of transporting large molecule therapeutics across the gastrointestinal barrier.

Tom graduated from University of California, Berkeley summa cum laude with highest honors for his bachelor’s degree in English and earned the departmental citation for his bachelor’s in chemistry. Tom went on to earn his doctorate in organic chemistry as an NSF fellow at Stanford University.