Co-founder and CEO of IFM Therapeutics, Gary started his career as a faculty member at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he is currently the Werner E. Bachmann emeritus professor of chemistry.
While at Michigan, Gary founded Lycera Corp, serving first as President, then as CSO. After leaving Lycera in 2015, he founded First Wave Bio, a clinical stage company focused on novel, cost-effective treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, and then IFM Therapeutics, to develop modulators of innate immune system proteins as treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases.
In 2017, IFM sold 2 of the company’s cancer assets to BMS for over $2.3b, while retaining a portfolio of drug candidates for inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. In 2019, he led the sale of IFM’s NLRP3 subsidiary, IFM Tre, to Novartis in a deal valued at $1.6b. Gary holds a PhD (organic chemistry), Columbia University and a postdoc from Harvard University.
