Gustavo Pesquin joined AskBio from Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC, where he served as Chief Commercial Officer. Before that, Gustavo spent more than 10 years at Sanofi, a leading global pharmaceutical company, where he served in leadership roles of increasing responsibility, including North America Head for General Medicines as well as Global Head of the multi-billion dollar Diabetes and Cardiovascular Franchise. Prior to Sanofi, he held regional head, general manager, sales head, and strategy head roles at Abbott and Pfizer; brand management roles at Procter & Gamble; and consultant roles with Boston Consulting Group. Pesquin earned an MBA with a concentration in Management and Strategy, Finance and Accounting from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and an undergraduate degree from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Argentina.

Stefan Oelrich has been a member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG and Head of the Pharmaceuticals Division, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, since November 2018. He is also responsible for the region Latin America. After graduating from high school in Paris, France, he joined Bayer AG as a commercial trainee in 1989 and qualified as a commercial assistant in 1991. Over the next 20 years, he held several positions of increasing responsibility in the health care business in Latin America, Europe and the United States. In 1998, after working in Argentina and Uruguay, Oelrich transferred to headquarters in Leverkusen for two years before assuming responsibility for Pharmaceuticals in Belgium. Between 2003 and 2005, he was Vice President of Marketing at Pharmaceuticals in the United States. He was subsequently appointed President of Healthcare and Diagnostics in France. In 2006, Oelrich returned to the United States as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Women’s Healthcare. In 2011, he joined Sanofi as General Manager in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In 2015, Oelrich became head of Sanofi’s Diabetes and Cardiovascular business unit in Europe. At the same time, he served as Sanofi Europe Coordinator. In 2016, Oelrich became head of Sanofi’s global diabetes franchise. A year later, he was appointed Executive Vice President Diabetes & Cardiovascular on the Executive Committee of Sanofi. Since 2016, Oelrich has been a member of the Supervisory Board of the Berlin Institute of Health.

Wolfram Carius is the Head of Pharmaceuticals Product Supply since September 2016 (Chemicals, Pharma, Biotech, Devices) at Bayer AG and is a member of the Executive Committee for Bayer Pharmaceuticals. He is based in Berlin, Germany. Prior to joining Bayer, Carius was a corporate senior vice president and member of the global leadership team at Sanofi Genzyme for two years. Before that, he worked for Boehringer Ingelheim from 1987 to the end of 2013, eventually becoming responsible for that company’s worldwide chemical, pharmaceutical, and biopharma production network. In his 30 years in the pharmaceutical industry he has worked in Asia, South America and Europe. In 2009, the Biberach University of Applied Sciences awarded him the title of honorary professor in recognition for his long and exceptional service.

Christian Rommel became EVP, Global Head of Research & Development and a member of the executive committee of Bayer Pharmaceuticals in February 2021. He joined Bayer from Roche, where he was most recently Senior VP, Global Head of Oncology, Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED). Rommel also served at Amgen as Vice President of External Research and Development. Before that role, he was Amgen’s Vice President, Research Oncology. Previously, Christian Rommel served as Chief Scientific Officer of Intellikine, a private biotech company based in San Diego, from its inception to acquisition by Takeda. Earlier in his career, Rommel was Head of Target Research at Merck-Serono in Geneva, Switzerland. He also worked as a scientist in the team of George Yancopoulos at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, New York. Christian Rommel received his PhD in molecular oncology from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany and the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a lecturer of biotechnology at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He has authored more than 70 publications, including papers in Science and Nature, and is an inventor or co-inventor of 18 patents.

Dr. Samulski received his PhD in Medical Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Florida. His graduate work (1978–1982) demonstrated the first substrate for use of AAV as a viral vector and culminated in the first U.S. patent involving non-AAV genes inserted into AAV. After completing his post-doctoral training at Princeton, Dr. Samulski was hired to provide his expertise in AAV biology as a member of the scientific advisory board of Avigen, a new AAV research company. In 1993, he co-founded an AAV-based gene therapy company called Merlin. This research group was headed by Xiao Xiao, PhD, and was the first to demonstrate AAV-mediated long-term gene transduction in muscle (J. Virology, 1996). This finding precipitated a merger of Merlin with Somatix Corp., which then merged in 1995 with Cell Genesys Inc. In total, Dr. Samulski has worked with AAV for more than 40 years. He spent 25 of those years as Director of the University of North Carolina Gene Therapy Center. Dr. Samulski was the scientific founder of Bamboo Therapeutics, Inc. and served as the Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Chairman of the company until its acquisition by Pfizer in 2016. Upon its acquisition, Dr. Samulski joined Pfizer as Vice President, Gene Therapy to ensure the successful transition of Bamboo’s Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapeutic. Dr. Samulski is a former member of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), which assists the FDA with gene therapy clinical trial approvals in the U.S. He also frequently serves as a gene therapy consultant to the FDA. In 2008, Dr. Samulski was honored by the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy with the inaugural Outstanding Achievement Award. He was also invited by Pope Francis to the Vatican in recognition for his work in the treatment of Canavan disease. Dr. Samulski has advanced therapeutics into human clinical trials including those for hemophilia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, giant axonal neuropathy, Pompe disease, and heart failure. He holds more than 200 patents related to AAV technology.

Dr. Mansuo Shannon joined AskBio in 2024 and serves as its Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). She is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s R&D strategy and leads all aspects of the discovery and development of AskBio’s gene therapy platform. Dr. Shannon also oversees the global teams charged with advancing that platform and provides scientific leadership to the CEO, Board of Directors, and company as a whole, in addition to being a key partner of the broader Bayer R&D leadership team and Bayer’s scientific community. Prior to joining AskBio, Dr. Shannon served as CSO at Prevail Therapeutics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company, where she established a robust gene therapy product portfolio in neurology and rare diseases. Earlier in her career, she spent more than 10 years at Eli Lilly, where she served in leadership roles of increasing responsibility and advanced multiple therapeutics into human clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Shannon also previously held scientific leadership roles at Chugai/Roche Group and Merck.  Dr. Shannon earned her doctorate in Molecular Biology with Dr. Tom Shenk at Princeton University and conducted her postdoctoral research under Dr. Susumu Tonegawa (1987 Nobel Laureate) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.