Gergely Tóth, Ph.D., M.B.A.

Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Dr Gergely Tóth founded Gardedam Therapeutics in Palo Alto, CA in 2009 and is CEO of Cantabio Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Tóth is also affiliated with the School of Pharmacy at University College London (UK) as a Honorary Lecturer and with the Research Center for Natural Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Hungary) as the Head of the Research Group for Neurodegenerative Disease Drug Discovery. He is a scientist and a serial entrepreneur with a long-term focus on developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Creighton University (U.S.) in 2001, and an Executive M.B.A. in 2012 from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge (UK). He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of California at Berkeley (U.S.). Dr. Tóth previously held various research roles in small and global biopharmaceutical companies in the U.S., where he mostly pursued drug discovery research for Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Thomas Sawyer, Ph.D., M.B.A.

Chief Financial Officer

Dr. Thomas Sawyer is the Chief Financial Officer of Cantabio Pharmaceuticals, combining a background in academic research with 13 years of experience in entrepreneurship, consulting and private equity investment in sectors including biotechnology, IT, logistics and natural resources across the globe. He has worked on M&A activities for private and public companies in the U.S., Europe and Africa and has experience in raising capital, IPOs, mergers and in CEO/CTO roles for start-up and private equity backed ventures. Dr. Sawyer holds a Ph.D. in Life Sciences from the University of Glasgow, an Executive M.B.A. from the University of Cambridge and is a visiting lecturer on Corporate Finance at the University of Exeter. Dr. Sawyer combines a strong technical background with business development, corporate finance and operations, and is an active mentor on the Accelerate Cambridge business accelerator program at the University of Cambridge.

Max Zhu, Ph.D., M.B.A.

Director

Dr. Max Zhu obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 2013 researching Alzheimer's Disease and holds an Executive M.B.A. from the Judge Business School. He was first a research scientist and Head of Computer-Aided Drug Design at Cantabio in 2015. His areas of responsibility expanded in late 2017 to include business development activities for the company in Asia and became the Head of Business Development in the region. Dr. Zhu has been a key player in the advancement of Cantabio's therapeutic programs and developing business and investor relationships for the company, where he became the Chief Business Development Officer at Cantabio in 2019 and more recently director. 

Dr. Zhu's Ph.D. thesis focused on computational studies of the beta-amyloid peptide and amyloid in Alzheimer's disease. This work has led to the discovery of a set of potential drug leads for Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Zhu's research required the use of computer science, AI, genome and protein structure analysis, computational biology and chemistry, applying the combination of different skillsets and knowledge in a multi-disciplinary biomedical research environment, and he has been both lead and co-author on a number of peer reviewed articles in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

Johnny He, Ph.D.

Director

Dr. He has extensive research experience in Nanotechnology, RF devices, Biosensors and other related areas and has published more than 40 papers on international top-ranking journals and academic conferences. He previously worked as a reviewer for IEEE Journal of MEMS, Journal of American Institute of Physics and A*STAR (Agency of Science and Technology and Research, Singapore). He was also appointed as a visiting professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Dr. He is the founding partner of SinoVest Capital. SinoVest Capital focus on private equity investments for wealthy families from Singapore, Hong Kong and Mainland China, including both direct and indirect investments. Dr. He is also an advisor for Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia, Goldman Sachs PIA, and Olympus PE. Before founding SinoVest Capital, he spent more than 10 years as an investment professional and 8 years in research, in Singapore Government Funding Agency, and a SOE investment arm.

Dr. He obtained his Ph.D. at University of Cambridge, MSc. at National University of Singapore and MIT, both degrees with full scholarships.