Timothy Pelura

Dr. Pelura is the President and CEO of OptiKira, a drug development company exploring new therapeutics targeting the unfolded protein response which when stressed in diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, diabetes, cancer, retinal and neurodegenerative diseases, leads to inflammation, aberrant cell behavior and ultimately progressive cell death. Tim is a serial entrepreneur with over 40 years in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device industries and has been pivotal in the development of several new drugs and devices spanning numerous therapeutic areas. Dr. Pelura has been the CEO of five life science companies over the past 20 years and successfully raised over $100M in seed and series A/B rounds of equity financings. He was also a founding scientist at Alliance Pharmaceuticals as VP of Research and Development, where they developed synthetic, oxygen-carrying “blood substitutes” for use in the critical care setting of high blood loss. Additionally, he has developed several lipid particle/emulsion-based therapeutics spanning several therapeutic areas.