CAMBRIDGE, MA– Mersana Therapeutics, Inc. announced the appointment of Mohan Bala, Ph.D., as SVP, Strategic Product Planning & Program Leadership, effective Monday, October 25, 2021.
Bala will assume strategic product planning responsibilities from Brian DeSchuytner who has been named SVP and Chief Financial Officer. Mr. DeSchuytner will continue to lead finance, business development, corporate strategy and investor relations and remain Mersana’s principal financial officer.
“With over 20 years of clinical development and commercialization experience, Mohan is a seasoned biopharmaceutical executive who brings a deep expertise in overall asset strategy and program management to the Mersana team. Mohan has overseen the advancement of products through early, mid and late-stage clinical development and has helped launch 7 oncology products globally. We are delighted to have Mohan join the Mersana team and welcome his valuable insight as we continue to advance the clinical development of UpRi toward commercialization in ovarian cancer and build out our maturing pipeline of innovative ADC candidates,” commented Anna Protopapas, President and CEO of Mersana. “I would like to thank Brian for his leadership of the Product Strategy function at Mersana and his contributions towards building UpRi into a foundational medicine for ovarian cancer with the UPLIFT, UP-NEXT, and UPGRADE studies. As Mersana’s diversified first-in-class pipeline grows, Brian will continue to ensure Mersana has the resources, partnerships and infrastructure to deliver against our goals.”
Bala was most recently Chief Operating Officer at Constellation Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel therapeutics to address patients with cancers associated with abnormal gene expression. While at Constellation, Bala was responsible for overall asset strategy and program management. Prior to joining Constellation, he served as VP, Development Program Lead at TESARO, where he led cross-functional teams to advance two products to Phase 2 and one product to regulatory filing. He has been involved in multiple successful BLA and MAAs, including the filing of a companion diagnostic. Earlier in his career, Dr. Bala held senior leadership roles at Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and Centocor. Bala holds a Ph.D. in Management Science and an M.B.A from the University of Chicago, and has co-authored over 50 peer reviewed articles published in medical and economics journals.
“I am delighted to join the Mersana team at such an exciting point in the Company’s lifecycle, as we seek to bring UpRi to ovarian cancer patients in desperate need of new therapeutic options and advance our exciting ADC pipeline. I look forward to partnering closely with the clinical development and product strategy teams, and further supporting the Company’s mission to discover and develop life-changing ADCs for patients fighting cancer,” said Bala.
