Board of Directors


Paul F. Truex, MBA  • Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer

Paul F. Truex

Mr. Truex is the CEO and Chairman of Thryv Therapeutics (previously LQT Therapeutics). Over the course of two decades he has been involved in over $5 billion of life science financings and strategic transactions. His recent experience includes initial public offerings for Milestone (Board Member 2019), Trius (Board Member 2010), Anthera (CEO 2010), Peninsula (CEO 2004), and Versicor (Vice President 2000).

Prior to Thryv, Mr. Truex founded Anthera Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded biotech company with large clinical programs in cardiovascular disease, lupus, inflammation and cystic fibrosis. Mr. Truex was Founder, President and CEO of Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, an antibiotic development company that was acquired by Johnson and Johnson and Forest for more than $700 million. Mr. Truex began his life science career at Eli Lilly and Company where his business development experience included the Lilly ICOS joint venture for the development of Cialis® and several successful out-licensing programs. He obtained his MBA from Indiana University and a BA in Economics from the University of Waterloo. Mr. Truex currently serves on the Board of Directors for Find Therapeutics and Feldan. He is an Acting Board Member of the Indiana University Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He is a former member of the Board of Directors for Milestone (MIST), Anthera (ANTH), Trius (TSRX), CymaBay (CBAY), Eiger (EIGR), Protagonist (PTGX), and Peninsula Pharmaceuticals.


Robert Booth, PhD • Director

Robert Booth, PhD

Dr. Booth brings more than 30 years of biopharmaceutical industry experience to Thryv Therapeutics, most recently as founder and chief executive officer of Virobay Inc. In addition, he has served as operating partner and senior advisor at TPG Biotech.

Prior to Virobay, Dr. Booth was the chief scientific officer at Celera Genomics, where he was responsible for all discovery and development activities. He conceived and initiated the BTK inhibitor program that was ultimately licensed to Pharmacyclics, and from which Imbruvica was developed and approved. Imbruvica is a novel kinase inhibitor used for the treatment of many B cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas (NHL).

Dr. Booth served on the board of directors of Pharmacyclics until its acquisition by AbbVie. Prior to Celera, he was senior vice president for Roche in Palo Alto, California. He was a member of the global research management team and the business development committee, which oversaw licensing opportunities.

Dr. Booth received his BSc and PhD in biochemistry from the University of London.


Shi Yin Foo, MD, PhD • Director

ShiYin Foo, MD, PhD

Dr Shi Yin Foo brings 20 years of experience as a practicing physician and a catalyst in advancing innovative new programs through the various stages of drug development. She has expertise in a breadth of disease areas, including cardiorenal, immunology/inflammation and rare diseases, as well as an interest in novel and adaptive clinical trial designs.

Dr Foo has been in executive roles at Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cydan Therapeutics, Imara Therapeutics and Tiburio Therapeutics, where she was also an Observer on the Board. She was previously a translational medicine expert at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where she was responsible for the establishment and development of multiple novel programs in heart failure and the cardiorenal space, including rare disease indications. She is the founder of Orchard Biomedical Consulting, which serves a variety of biotech and pharma partners in broad disease indications. Dr Foo is the scientific founder and CEO of Arvada Therapeutics, a company working on novel therapeutics in rare arrhythmic diseases.

Dr Foo received her MD and PhD in Immunology from Stanford University, and a MMSc in Clinical Science from the Clinical Investigator Training Program at Harvard Medical School. She was clinical faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and a dual Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and in Cardiology.


Daniel Hétu, MD, MBA • Director

Daniel Hetu, MD, MBA

With over 20 years of investment banking, corporate development, and licensing and investment experience, Daniel has been involved with life sciences companies at all stages of development in North America and overseas. With demonstrated success managing complex initiatives, projects and transactions, Daniel is recognized for his strategic thinking and problem-solving skills. Daniel’s investment activities are focused on building companies in the therapeutics and medical device sectors that develop products and technologies with a direct and significant impact on patient care. He manages Lumira Ventures’ Montreal office.

An experienced senior executive with leading expertise in financing and corporate business development, Daniel located in Montréal spent 10 years at Shire Pharmaceuticals and at Biochem Pharma prior to its acquisition by Shire. As vice president, business development (North America) and vice president, corporate development, respectively, he led several financing, licensing and M&A transactions in the therapeutics, vaccine and diagnostics sectors. At Biochem, as well as serving on the company’s portfolio committee and the steering committee of strategic research collaborations, Daniel served on the boards of investee companies. Prior to joining Biochem Pharma, Daniel was an investment banker at a major Canadian Investment Bank where he was involved in M&A and financing transactions across various industrial sectors.


Jean-François Pariseau, M.Sc., MBA, ICD.D • Director

Jean-François Pariseau

Jean-François Pariseau is co-founder and Partner at Amplitude Ventures, a capital catalyst for highly innovative companies at the point of value acceleration. Amplitude works with Canada's most promising healthcare companies with a shared vision of bringing groundbreaking technologies to patients. Amplitude is focused on building world-class companies in precision medicine and next-generation medical devices.

Before co-founding Amplitude, Jean-François was Partner at the Healthcare Fund of BDC Capital and an investment manager with CDP Capital Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, where he was responsible for healthcare investments in Canada and the US. While completing his graduated studies in biomedical sciences at a university hospital, Jean-François co-founded a consulting company specializing in regulatory affairs, and a pharmaceutical-product distribution company.

Jean-François currently sits on the Board of Directors of Imagia-Canexia Health Inc and Reseau Capital. When Jean-François is not on a plane meeting with entrepreneurs, he splits his time between the dojo, his bike or as the personal driver of his two teenagers.


Melissa Koomey, MBA • Director

Melissa Koomey is a biopharma leader with 30 years of experience across large pharma, small biotech and communications consultancies. She has held global, US and international country affiliate roles spanning multiple therapeutic areas. She has a track record of delivering business results including delivering P+Ls from $300 million to $14 billion and leading organizations through multiple successful product launches.

Melissa is currently Vice President and Head of Global Commercial Operations at Gilead Sciences, Inc. Previously, she was General Manager of Gilead Sciences, Canada, where she led company operations including launching novel antiviral and oncolytic therapies. Prior to this, she led the Gilead US HIV Business Unit where she grew revenue 50% in 3 years from $8.6B to $14B and led the US launch of Biktarvy®, the most successful launch in HIV category history.

Prior to joining Gilead, Melissa held commercial leadership roles in both large pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotechs as well as healthcare communications agencies. She has served as a director on the boards of biopharma industry organizations and not-for-profit boards including Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC), BIOTECanada and the U.S. National AIDS Memorial. Melissa received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale College and a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School.


Scott Weiner • Director

Scott Weiner, MBA

Scott joined Amzak Health as a Partner in 2020 and leads the Firm’s activities to expand and manage its biotech portfolio. Prior to that he was a Partner at Pappas Capital where he spent 13 years focused on life science venture investing. Scott was previously an Investment Analyst at Silverback Asset Management, a Vice President at Chicago Growth Partners, and an Investment Banking Analyst at Lehman Brothers where he worked in New York, London and Hong Kong.

Scott received an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business where he was a Thomas F. Keller Scholar and received the Robert F. Garda Endowment Scholarship. He graduated summa cum laude and received a BS in Biological Anthropology and Anatomy from Duke University. Scott has been a buy side investor in the life science sector for over 20 years.


Saumya Das, MD, PhD • Board Observer

Saumya Das, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a faculty member of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Service and the Director of the Resynchronization and Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Das completed his residency in internal medicine at MGH, and fellowship training in cardiovascular disease and clinical cardiac electrophysiology at MGH. He completed a research post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Rosenzweig, studying signaling pathways in cardiac electrical remodeling and started his own laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2011. He was recruited to MGH in 2016. His research has focused on signaling pathways in electrical and structural remodeling in models of heart failure and cardiometabolic disease with a focus on extracellular vesicles and their cargo RNAs as biomarkers and mediators of intercellular signaling.

He has been the lead PI of several National Center for Advanced Translation (NCAT) grants to discover and validate RNA biomarkers of heart remodeling in heart failure. As part of the NIH Extracellular RNA Communication Consortium he has served as a co-chair of the steering committee. He was inducted in the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2020 and also received an NIH EIA award (R35).

Work done in his laboratory has led to several patents. He is a cofounder of LQT Therapeutics (now Thryv Therapeutics) and Switch Therapeutics based on research done in his laboratory.

Saumya graduated summa cum laude in Biology from Harvard College. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his PhD from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.


Frédéric Lemaître Auger, PhD • Board Observer

Dr. Frédéric Lemaître Auger leads adMare’s investments and manages its portfolio companies. He brings more than 20 years experience in life sciences investment management, including extensive health sciences venture capital expertise gained through his prior involvement with Desjardins Venture Capital and CDP Capital – Technology Venture (Sofinov) where he was involved in both biopharmaceutical and medical device deals. At Sofinov, Frédéric was involved in investments such as NuVasive, Inhibitex, IntraLuminal Therapeutics, Acurian, and TransMedics. While at Desjardins, he showed significant leadership in the creation and management of a profitable early-stage health sciences investment portfolio that included, amongst others, BioAxone Therapeutics, Enobia Pharma, and Tranzyme.

In recent years, Frédéric was involved in project-based investments, as well as developing licensing and spin-off opportunities at MSBi Valorisation (now Aligo Innovation). He has served on the board of directors of many health sciences companies, and has been involved on organizing committees of conferences such as MedTech North and AdvaMed.

Frédéric holds an MBA in Finance and International Management from HEC Montréal, a MSc in organic chemistry, and a PhD in polymer physical chemistry, both from Université de Montréal.


Philip Sager, MD • Board Observer

Philip Sager, MD

Dr. Sager is a cardiac electrophysiologist who has had a long career in academia, drug development and regulatory policy. He was a tenured faculty member at the UCLA School of Medicine and is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Senior pharmaceutical industry leadership roles include Vice President, CV/Metabolic Development at Gilead Sciences and Executive Director at AstraZeneca, with major development leadership on multiple drugs (e.g., Zetia, Vytorin, Crestor, Letairis and Brilinta), NDA’s and sNDA’s, and was a BOD member of Anthera, Inc, a public biotechnology company. He is a co-founder of LQT Therapeutics (now Thryv Therapeutics).

He is a past chair of the FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee and a Founding Member and Executive Committee member of the FDA-Sponsored Cardiac Safety Research Consortium. He has played a major international leadership role in CV safety issues in drug development, public health policies regarding drug safety, and was the ICH E14 (“the QT Guidance”) PhARMA Expert Working Group Topic Leader. He holds an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine, B.S. degrees in biology and chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, trained in internal medicine, cardiology, and cardiac electrophysiology at the Yale School of Medicine, and has published more than 200 original manuscripts and abstracts.


Marc-Olivier Sirard, CPA • Board Observer

Marc-Olivier Sirard, CPA

Marc-Olivier Sirard, CPA, joined the Fonds de Solidarité FTQ in 2015 as an investment adviser in the life sciences sector. Prior to his arrival at Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, he worked two years as a financial analyst for Lightspeed POS. Before that, he spent six years in accounting firms, RCGT and BDO Canada, fulfilling audit, restructuring and insolvency mandates.

Mr Sirard is a chartered professional accountant in the province of Quebec and holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from McGill University.


Youssef Bennani, PhD, MBA • Board Observer

Dr. Bennani brings a wealth of experience from project inception to clinical work, technology transfer, in-and-out licensing transactions with academic and corporate partners R&D units. His work has led to over twenty preclinical and clinical-stage NMEs, out-licensed partnerships; as well as contributions to approved medicines. His governance leadership has contributed to corporate strategy alignment, leading to corporate growth and to nine single-asset and technology spinoff companies from Domain Therapeutics, and AdMare BioInnovations. He has over 25 years' experience in pharmaceutical R&D leadership and management. He previously was Chairman of the Board of Domain Therapeutics from 2014-2023; and an independent Board Director at Bellus Health from 2014-2023, until its successful acquisition by GSK in 2023.  He also was a founding CEO at Find Therapeutics.

Previously, he served as Site Head and Vice President of R&D at Vertex Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc. Prior to this position, Dr. Bennani spent several years as Vice President Drug Innovation at Vertex's Headquarters (Boston – MA). He has also held various positions of increasing responsibility in pharmaceutical R&D at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Laboratories (now AbbVie) and Athersys. His experience spans multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, neurology, infection, inflammation, rare and renal diseases. Dr. Bennani has studied in chemistry (PhD, Université de Montréal), business (MBA, LFGSM – Chicago) and corporate governance (ICD.D, McGill-Rotman Schools of Business).