Dr Harri Järveläinen, Chief Operating Officer, is a pharma industry veteran with a track record of more than 50 development programs – leading preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing, business development, fundraising, and project management. Over the past 20 years, he has held various progressively senior-level roles at large companies such as AstraZeneca, Nestlé, and Pharmaron. Harri Järveläinen has also actively and successfully built and operated several early-stage biotech companies, guiding them from inception to clinical milestones. Recently, he advanced a San Diego-based academic start-up from academia into a clinical-stage biotech, Cend Therapeutics, with the lead oncology product, certepetide, now being tested in multiple mid-to-late-stage clinical trials. Cend went public on Nasdaq as Lisata Therapeutics in September 2022. He earned his Veterinary Medicine and PhD degrees from the University of Helsinki (Finland) and completed postdoctoral training at New York University Medical Center (New York, NY) and the Max Planck Institute (Berlin, Germany). He also holds an MBA from the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) and serves as an Adjunct Professor (Toxicology) at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications, patents, and book chapters.
