Louisa Petropoulos
Chief Executive Officer
Louisa Petropoulos joined C3i in August 2016. Prior to that she was at Thrasos Therapeutics as Director of Business Development where she headed BD, Market & Commercial Development of Thrasos’ leading products. Prior to Thrasos, she was an Associate Direrctor of BD at MethylGene (now Mirati) where she played an active role in the negotiations leading to successful licensing deal with upfront, RD and milestone payments of more than $50M. In addition, Louisa played a key R&D, market & commercial role in MethyGene’s anti-infective programs that helped advance the Company’s anti-fungal into clinical trials. Before joining MethylGene, she spent 8 years in venture capital as part of Innovatech du Grand Montreal then Multiple Capital where she was Director of Life Science Investments leading and supporting numerous deals and public offerings including Enobia, MethylGene (Mirati) leading to over $1B in value. She also held several board and observer seats that included Enobia (sale to Alexion), BioAxone, BioAgriculture (sale to Merck), Nextal Biotechnoligies (sale to Qiagen), Vascular Genetics (now VIA Pharmaceuticals).
Louisa holds a Ph.D in Microbiology & Immunology from McGill University.
Denis-Claude Roy
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Roy is currently Director of the Hopital Maisonneuve-Rosemont Research Center and Scientific Director of its cGMP Cell Therapy Center (CETC). He is a practicing hematologist at HMR. He is also Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal; Clinician-Scientist in the Hematology and Medical Oncology Program Dr. Roy is CEO of the Network of Centres of Excellence: CellCAN Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy Network. He is Director of the Clinical Therapeutics Arm of the Canadian Stem Cell Network, Co-Director of the ThéCell FRSQ Network, and former board member of the Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group and Executive Committee of the National Cancer Institute of Canada- CTG-Hematology. Dr Roy is a renowned researcher in the field of hematopoietic stem cell therapy with publications in Nature Medicine, Cell, Cancer Cell, NEJM, J Clin Investigation and Blood. His main area of research is translational research; and includes stem cell transplantation and graft engineering. He has developed a photodepletion strategy to selectively remove alloreactive T-lymphocytes from cell grafts to prevent the development or treat graft-versus-host disease. He participated to all steps of development of this strategy that is now in Phase II clinical trials for 2 different indications. Throughout his career he interacted closely with biotech and pharma. The combination of his laboratory and clinical expertise have led him to devise and chair more than 15 national and international Phase I-II clinical trials in stem cell transplantation. He is currently co-director of a Genome Qc-Genome Canada project aimed at eliminating leukemia cells using T lymphocytes directed agains minor histocompatibility antigens. He has been on numerous scientific review panels, including the Fonds de la recherche en Santé du Québec (president, clinician-scientists panel), Cancer Research Society, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and is currently sitting on the Quebec Leukemia Cell Bank and Canadian Institutes for Health Research scientific review panels.
Owing to his current activities within the clinical research field, Dr Roy draws from a wealth of experience in network development and homologation processes with Health Canada and various other regulatory agencies. Dr. Denis-Claude Roy obtained his Medical Degree from Université de Montréal and completed residencies in Internal Medicine and Hematology prior to completing a Tumor Immunology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University.
As the CSO of C3i Denis-Claude brings solid scientific acumen and his extensive knowledge of homologation processes to the table, which will prove invaluable for the successful implementation of clinical trials within the framework of the C3i program.
Lambert Busque
Chief Medical Officer
Dr Busque is a practicing hematologist at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (HMR), and serves as Chief of Molecular diagnostic and Chief of HMR’s Diagnostic Program of Medical biology being altogether responsible for 300 employees and managing a budget of 30 Million$/year. He sits on several Quebec government regulatory committees such as the Institut National d’Excellence en Santé et Services Sociaux (INESSS). He is the co-founder of the Quebec CML Registry and a founder and current president of the non-for-profit organization GQR-LCM/NMP (Groupe québécois de recherche en leucémie myéloide chronique et en néoplasies myéloprolifératives) where he successfully built a network comprising 20 oncology centers in the province of Quebec. Dr. Busque is a sought after as a key opinion leader (KOL), and his advice and expertise are critical to numerous pharmaceutical companies.
Dr Busque has over 20 years of biotechnology and clinical research experience. He founded and was the medical director at ProDNA diagnostics, a molecular diagnostics provider, which was later sold to Warnex (now known as Dynacare). He founded and was the President of HemaX Genome, a company focused on the identification of genes of medical interest localized on the X chromosome. HemaX genome was later acquired by Emerillon Therapeutics Inc. During these tenures, Dr Busque acquired experience in raising venture capital funds and in developing international collaborations.
Dr. Lambert Busque obtained his Medical Degree from the Université de Montréal in 1986 and completed residencies in internal medicine and hematology before completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard in molecular hematology. He has since continued on as an accomplished clinician-researcher and with a specific interest in translational hematology. He has published in prestigious journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Genetics, Blood and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He is Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal.
As Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of C3i, Lambert will bring a unique blend of expertise inscience, business, management, clinic, reimbursement, network building, and raising public and private funding. These aspects are essential to the successful implementation of clinically relevant solutions for cancer immunotherapy within the C3i program.
Olivier Mailloux
Chief Financial Officer
Olivier Mailloux is CPA, CMA and hold a MBA from HEC Montréal. He has proven track record as leading manufacturing companies evolving in a regulated environment on five continents such as foods, toys and aerospace businesses. Highly specialize in financial and operational processes optimization, M. Mailloux will contribute to deliver C3i business plan.
Before joining C3i, M. Mailloux has been involve in the reorganization and the several SME that leaded to their acquisition by major enterprises such as Zodiac (CAC40: ZC) and Textron (NYSE: TXT. During the recent years, M. Mailloux has been the controlling shareholder and CEO of a manufacturing company and have help different SME to optimize their operations and their balance sheet, specially to face the challenges related to the pandemic.
Eleonora Forero
Vice President of Operations
Eleonora is an industrial engineer with a finance background and over 10 years of experience taking small and medium enterprises to the next level in operational performance and supply chain management. She has the proven ability to create and lead cross-functional teams, with strong analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills. Her specialities include supply chain, inventory and operations management, and continuous improvement.
Nicolas Montpas
Manager – Business Development and Operations
Biomarker and Diagnostic Unit
Nicolas joined the management team of C3i in October 2019 and is now our BD and Operations Manager of the Biomarkers and Diagnostic Unit. He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Montreal in 2017 where he carried out his research to find novel relapse biomarkers for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He then joined the group of Dr Trang Hoang at IRIC as a Research Officer where he worked on the hematopoiesis and on the development of innovative treatment against leukemia. He then joined the ranks of C3i in February 2019 where he participated in several development projects in support of cell therapy before joining the management team.
Jean-François Gélinas
Manager
Biotherapeutics and Vectors Unit
Jean-François joined C3i in August 2020 and is our Manager for the Biotherapeutics and Vectors Unit. Following training in virology (McGill), he worked at the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at the University of Pennsylvania during their work which led to the commercialisation of the first cell therapy treatments. He then obtained his DPhil from the University of Oxford in the UK in the field of gene therapy in 2017 and continued his research during his postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford (lentiviral vectors), McGill (vaccines and viral vectors) and at Université de Montréal (development of the CETC gene therapy platform).
Wilkinson Narcisse
Project Manager & Regulatory Affairs
Contract Research Organization Unit
Wilkinson Narcisse has joined C3i as a Senior Clinical Research Associate in February 2018 and as a project manager & regulatory affairs for our Clinical Research CRO unit in December 2018. He holds more than 11 years’ experience of clinical research (Phase I, II, III, and IV) monitoring and management in Canada & US with different CRO’s including Scimega Research, Covance, and PRA Health Sciences. Wilkinson Narcisse has also previously held the position of Director Business Development at MDS Pharma Services and Scientific Project Manager at Algorithme pharma (Altasciences).
Wilkinson has completed a BSc. In Microbiology with an M.Sc. In Reproductive Immunology from Laval University, Canada.
In addition to his solid knowledge about the pharmaceutical industry, the clinical trials process, the drug development process, and the CRO business, Wilkinson has experience with the following Clinical Indications: Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), Multiple Myeloma (MM), Renal cell Carcinoma, Breast Cancer, Ovarian and Colorectal Cancer, Small cell Lung Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Pancreatic Cancer, Dermatology (Skin Disease, Antibiotic), and Infectious Disease (Hepatitis C).
Fabienne Perreau
Administrative Assistant
Fabienne Perreau joined C3i in August 2016, Prior to join C3i she was with AgeChem and GeneChem since July 1997. She initially worked as a legal secretary in several well known law firms before joining the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec in 1987 as Administrative Assistant to the Vice President – Health and Biotechnology. She then earned the position of Administrative Assistant to the President of Sofinov, Société financière d’innovation Inc., the venture capital subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (now CDP Capital).