Effie Tozzo

Effie is the Chief Scientific Officer. As a leader in drug discovery and translational sciences and medicine, she has over 25 years of experience in leadership roles in biotech/startups and large pharma organizations. Effie initiated and progressed discovery programs to the clinic by building and effectively leading teams in preclinical biology, chemistry, pharmacology, DMPK, safety and biomarker studies in various disease indications. Effie joined Avilar in November 2021 with the main objective to create a broad and diverse pipeline of extracellular protein degraders as first-in-class medicines for the treatment of serious diseases. Over the past eight years, Effie served at Cellarity (a Flagship Pioneering company) as Senior Vice President, Drug Development and Head of R&D and as Senior Vice President, Translational Sciences at Mitobridge (acquired by Astellas), building teams and strong program pipelines, scientifically leading financing campaigns and pharma partnerships and supporting clinical teams through Ph1 and clinical PoC studies. Earlier in her career, Effie held leading positions at Merck, Roche, BMS, Millennium, Chiron and ErgoScience. She has led the pharmacology of multiple programs reaching various clinical stages including three anti-diabetic drugs approvals.

Effie has authored over 40 peer reviewed publications and patents, has received her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology from the University XI in Paris, France, and completed her post-doctoral training in the Endocrine Division at Beth Israel/Harvard Medical School in Boston.