Management

Roger Tung, Ph.D., President and CEO
Steve Bernitz, Chief Business Officer
Nancy Stuart, Chief Operating Officer
Robert Silverman, J.D., Ph.D., Vice President and General Counsel
Robert Zelle, Ph.D., Vice President, Drug Development

Biographies of the Concert management team are available to download as a PDF.

Roger Tung, Ph.D., Co-Founder, President and CEO

Dr. Roger Tung, President and Chief Executive Officer of Concert Pharmaceuticals, Inc., co-founded the Company in April 2006 based on research he carried out as an independent scientist. Before Concert, Dr. Tung worked in venture-backed start-up and major pharmaceutical companies, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., where he was a founding scientist, Merck, Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, and The Squibb Institute for Medicinal Chemistry. At Vertex, Dr. Tung was most recently Vice President of Drug Discovery and led their drug discovery programs at its San Diego site. He co-invented and headed discovery of Vertex’s two commercial HIV protease inhibitor products, Lexiva® and Agenerase®. He also headed development of Agenerase, in collaboration with Glaxo, through FDA and EMEA approval. Dr. Tung has overseen the discovery of 13 new chemical entities which have been studied in the clinic. He has numerous publications and has been granted 40 U.S. patents. Dr. Tung received his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from Professor Daniel H. Rich.

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Steve Bernitz, Chief Business Officer

Mr. Bernitz has over 15 years experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.  He brings extensive experience in business, corporate and product development as well as commercial operations to Concert.  Most recently he served as Chief Executive Officer of Histogenics Corporation.  Before Histogenics, he held the position Senior Vice President, Business and Commercial Development at Coley Pharmaceutical Group, where he led the negotiation of a $515 million licensing deal with Pfizer, which subsequently acquired Coley.  Mr. Bernitz was also a senior executive at Organogenesis, and has has held senior positions in business development, alliance management and product development with Dyax Corp. and Merck & Co.  Prior to his life sciences experience he worked in private equity and was a consultant at McKinsey & Co, Inc.  Mr. Bernitz received his B.S. summa cum laude from Tufts University where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

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Nancy Stuart, Chief Operating Officer

Ms. Nancy Stuart has over 20 years of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry experience and currently serves as Chief Operating Officer of Concert Pharmaceuticals, Inc.  Prior to joining Concert in July 2006, she held senior level business and drug development positions at RRD International, Scion Pharmaceuticals, Kinetix/Amgen Inc., Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Genzyme Corporation.  At Kinetix, Ms. Stuart established the business development strategy that culminated in its $170 million acquisition by Amgen.  At Vertex, she served as Vice President of Program Planning and Management and was responsible for Vertex’s strategic partnerships and global drug development programs. In addition, she co-directed the development of Agenerase®, Vertex’s HIV protease inhibitor and initiated the Thyrogen® program for thyroid cancer testing at Genzyme.  Ms. Stuart has had extensive experience in raising private capital for start up biotechnology companies. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the Simmons College Graduate School of Management.

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Robert Silverman, J.D., Ph.D., Vice President and General Counsel

Dr. Robert Silverman joined Concert Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as Vice President and General Counsel in January 2007 with over 20 years legal and scientific experience.  Before Concert, he served as Associate General Counsel at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he was primarily responsible for developing and leading the company’s chemical patent practice. Prior to his tenure at Millennium, he was a senior patent attorney at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where he played a major role in building its patent department.  Before Vertex, Dr. Silverman held positions of increasing responsibility in the law department of FMC Corporation where he became Group Patent Counsel overseeing intellectual property matters for multiple chemical businesses.  He was also a senior research chemist at FMC before joining its law department.  Dr. Silverman received his J.D. from Rutgers-Camden Law School.  He also has an undergraduate degree from Lehigh University, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of New Mexico and conducted postdoctoral research in chemistry at Stanford University.

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Robert Zelle, Ph.D., Vice President, Drug Development

Dr. Robert Zelle has over 20 years of drug discovery and development experience and currently serves as Vice President, Drug Development of Concert Pharmaceuticals, Inc.  Prior to joining Concert in July 2006 he held key positions at Scion Pharmaceuticals, Acusphere, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Abbott Laboratories.  Before Concert, Dr. Zelle founded Bell Rock Associates, a pharmaceutical development consulting firm.  He also served as Vice President of Chemistry at Scion where he was responsible for discovery chemistry, manufacturing, intellectual property and regulatory submissions.  Before Scion, he was Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs and Product Development at Acusphere.  In this role he was responsible for regulatory affairs, quality assurance, quality control and preclinical testing. Dr. Zelle has been granted 23 U.S. patents with numerous pending U.S. applications.  Dr. Zelle has had extensive experience filing investigational new drug (IND) applications and bringing compounds into clinical development.  He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Professor Samuel Danishefsky at Yale University.  He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at Indiana University from Professor Paul Grieco.

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