Leadership Team
Mark Manfredi, PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Mark Manfredi, PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Mark serves as the Chief Executive Officer of DISCO Pharmaceuticals, bringing more than 25 years of experience as a drug hunter and company builder in oncology. Prior to DISCO, Mark built Ikena Oncology (IKNA) from the ground up, developing a differentiated precision oncology pipeline and leading the company from inception through multiple financings, strategic collaborations, and a transition to the public markets.
Before Ikena, he was Chief Scientific Officer at Raze Therapeutics and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Atlas Venture. Mark began his career at Millennium/Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where he held roles of increasing responsibility, ultimately serving as Vice President of Oncology Biology.
He earned his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Boston College.
Johannes Heuckmann, PhD
Chief Operating Officer
Co-Founder
Johannes Heuckmann, PhD
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer
Johannes serves as Chief Operating Officer and Head of Computational Biology at DISCO Pharmaceuticals. Johannes has more than a decade of senior management experience with a successful track record in company building as well as leading Research & Development and operational activities in the biotech and diagnostics industry.
Before co-founding DISCO, Johannes co-founded PearlRiver Bio (acquired by Centessa in 2021) and led the discovery of its next generation EGFR inhibitors as CSO. Earlier, as co-founder and CSO of NEO New Oncology (acquired by Siemens in 2016) he developed CE-IVD-labeled next-generation sequencing (NGS) diagnostic tests and successfully built a start-up into a company with more than 50 employees.
Johannes holds a PhD in Cancer Genomics from the University of Bonn, Germany.
Ajla Hrle, PhD
Chief Business Officer
Ajla Hrle, PhD
Chief Business Officer
Ajla Hrle, Chief Business Officer at DISCO Pharmaceuticals, brings over a decade of experience in building transformative Life Science companies, driven by the mission to positively impact patient lives. She is a recognized leader in the biotechnology sector, combining her expertise as a scientist, business professional, and board member.
From 2023 to 2024, Ajla served as Head of Life Sciences at ATHOS KG, the Strüngmann Family Office. Between 2016 and 2022, she held roles at Immatics N.V., most recently as Vice President of Strategic Alliances. During this time, she completed multiple licensing transactions from early-stage to commercial, contributed to public listings, led fund and direct investments, and established Corporate Communications and Alliance Management departments. Earlier, she led technical sales in Scandinavian markets at NanoTemper Technologies GmbH.
Ajla obtained her PhD from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich as a Schering Foundation Fellow.
Emanuela Tschudy-Milani, PhD
Vice President Technology & Head of DISCO Zürich
Emanuela Tschudy-Milani, PhD
Vice President Technology & Head of DISCO Zürich
Emanuela serves as Vice President Technology & Head of DISCO Zürich overseeing technology development and all activities at DISCO Switzerland. Prior to joining DISCO, she was Head of the Proteotyping Node within the Tumor Profiler consortium, where she contributed to the initiatives focused on integrated, multi-omics, and functional tumor profiling, with a special emphasis on advancing personalized medicine. Emanuela also contributed to the academic community as Research scientist and lecturer at the ETH Zürich.
Emanuela holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), University of Basel, Switzerland. She did a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Bernd Wollscheid at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology & Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
Tobias Schmidt, PhD
Vice President Discovery
Tobias Schmidt, PhD
Vice President Discovery
Tobias serves as Vice President Discovery overseeing target validation and preclinical development at DISCO Pharmaceuticals. Tobias is a target validation expert with several years of drug development experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
Before joining DISCO, Tobias was a Team and Project Lead at Hoffman-La Roche, where he established and led a target discovery & validation group with a focus on genetic screens to identify targets in the field of cancer immunotherapy.
Tobias holds a PhD in Molecular Biomedicine from the University of Bonn, Germany, where he worked on pattern recognition receptors of the innate immune system and gene editing technologies as a tool for target identification.
Roopika Menon, PhD
Vice President
Tissue Analytics
Roopika Menon, PhD
Vice President Tissue Analytics
Roopika serves as Vice President Tissue Analytics overseeing all tissue analytics activities, including pathology analyses for target expression in tumor and healthy control tissue. Furthermore, she serves as DISCO’s R&D Project Manager.
Before joining DISCO, Roopika was the Oncology Program Lead at the European Spatial Biology Center and Resolve Biosciences. Prior to this she headed the Diagnostic Operations at NEO New Oncology (acquired by Siemens in 2016), where she led all pathology, diagnostic and case-reporting activities. Roopika has extensive experience in a variety of pathology tissue analytic techniques as well as project management in the biotech industry.
Roopika holds a PhD in Molecular Biomedicine from the University of Bonn, Germany.
François Bertelli, PhD
Vice President
ADC Development
François Bertelli, PhD
Vice President ADC Development
François brings decades of experience in Drug Discovery from big Pharmas (Pfizer, Abbott, Medimmune, Astrazeneca) and small biotechs (Spirogen, LifeArc, Avvinity, 272Bio) driven by the mission to positively impact patient lives. He is a recognized leader in the Antibody/ADC field.
François obtained a Ph.D. in protein engineering from Paris-Sud University in 1997 then moved to the UK in Cambridge as a Post-doc at Parke-Davis which became part of Pfizer later in 2000, stayed there till 2012, then joined Abbott antibody manufacturing facility till 2015 before joining Spirogen, the pioneer of the PBDs in ADC field, which became part of Medimmune/Astrazeneca. Then, from 2020, he worked in several biotechs gathering experience around Antibody discovery/humanization, non-cytotoxic ADCs, and nanobodies.
