Holger Weis, Chair
Mr. Weis has served as a member of our board since December 2020. Mr. Weis serves as the principal of Weis Advisors, Inc., a company that provides consulting services to life science companies, since founding the company in April 2018. He has also served as the Chief Financial Officer and Director of PhenoTarget Biosciences, Inc., a biotech start-up company from April 2020 to March 2021. Prior to that, he served in a number of roles at DemeRx, Inc., a clinical stage pharmaceutical company developing nonaddictive treatments for drug addiction, including serving as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer from December 2011 to July 2017, and also as President from September 2014 to July 2017, and as a Consultant from July 2017 to April 2018.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Weis served as the Chief Financial Officer of EnSA Holdings, LLC, a company that focuses on environmentally sustainable agriculture techniques and technologies for the production of rice, from August 2010 to November 2011. From 2006 to 2010, he served as the Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Secretary and Treasurer of NovaVision, Inc., a therapeutic and diagnostic vision restoration company. Prior to that, he served as the Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer of GMP Companies, Inc., a company that develops and commercializes pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostic technologies, from 2000 to 2005.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Weis served as a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young, a multinational professional services company, from 1986 to 2000. Mr. Weis has co-authored a number of scientific papers and presentations and is an inventor on a number of patents and patent applications.
Mr. Weis received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from the University of Georgia and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Robert J. Hofmeister, PhD
Dr. Hofmeister has over 25 years of scientific leadership and a successful track record of drug discovery and early development. Since March 2022, he holds the CSO position at a stealth mode biotech company using their proprietary protein platform to revolutionize the treatment of multiple diseases. In this role, he drives development and indication strategy that leverages their novel therapeutic modality.
He joined TCR2 Therapeutics in 2015 as the company’s first employee, serving as SVP, R&D before promotion to his most recent role of Chief Scientific Officer. There, he was instrumental in building and leading the R&D function and driving the development of their proprietary TRuC®-T cell platform from concept to first cleared IND (TC-210 program). As part of senior leadership, he successfully contributed to taking the company public and securing multi-million dollar rounds of fundraising.
Previously, Dr. Hofmeister held various roles at EMD Serono where he was involved in the development of now approved Bavencio (avelumab) and building the company’s immuno-oncology platform. He started his biotech career at Micromet AG, now Amgen Research Munich, where he helped shape the development of Blincyto (blinatumomab), the first FDA-approved bispecific antibody for the treatment of refractory ALL.
Dr. Hofmeister received his Ph.D. from the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he studied the signaling of the cytokine interleukin-1. He continued to work in the cytokine field as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute.
Curtis Hogue
Mr. Hogue has worked for over 20 years in various roles on both the buy- and sell-side covering biotechnology and pharmaceutical equities. Most recently, he founded Dune Lake Capital, a family office focused on the healthcare industry. Mr. Hogue spent almost eight years as a senior analyst at Discovery Capital Management, where he covered global healthcare stocks including US therapeutics, Japanese pharmaceuticals and European pharma and biotech. Early in his career, he worked as a research scientist and as a patent examiner at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Mr. Hogue holds an MBA from Duke University, an MS in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and a BS in Physics from James Madison University.
Jaime Vieser
Jaime Vieser has over 30 years of investment management and banking experience, which includes his involvement in numerous successful corporate restructurings and providing both start-up capital and guidance for emerging technology and biotech companies.
Since 2017, Mr. Vieser has been the manager of a private investment firm, Brushwood LLC. Mr. Vieser has over three decades of experience investing across various asset classes and served for nearly a decade as Managing Partner and co-principal of Castle Hill Asset Management LLC (“Castle Hill”), a multi-billion dollar asset manager and hedge fund.
Mr. Vieser has a deep understanding of Ziopharm’s assets, governance, and financials as he is a sizable and long-term shareholder of the Company. Prior to founding Castle Hill, for 10 years Mr. Vieser was responsible for the High Yield Sales and Trading Group in London at Deutsche Bank AG, a multinational investment bank and financial services company.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Vieser worked as a banker in the Leveraged Finance division of Bankers Trust Company, a bank holding company that was acquired by Deutsche Bank AG in 1999.
Mr. Vieser holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and a Master’s in Business Administration from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.
Robert Postma
For over two decades, Mr. Postma has served as the principal of WaterMill Asset Management, an asset management firm which he founded that actively trades in municipal bonds and equities. Mr. Postma has valuable relationships with prospective financial partners and brings a strong ownership perspective to Alaunos’ boardroom, as WaterMill is one of the largest, long-term shareholders of the Company.
In addition, Mr. Postma brings over four decades of experience investing across the equity and fixed income markets and frequently analyzes, invests in and engages with healthcare and biotechnology companies.
Mr. Postma holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business and Economics from Lafayette College.