Gary D. Glick

Gary D. Glick is co-founder and Executive Chairman of IFM Therapeutics and is a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Scorpion Therapeutics. Gary started his career as a faculty member at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he is currently the Werner E. Bachmann emeritus professor of chemistry. While at Michigan, Gary founded Lycera Corp. to develop new therapies for inflammation and cancer based on small molecules that modulate cellular metabolism. Under his direction, Lycera initiated six discovery programs, partnered three of these programs with Merck & Co. in deals collectively valued at over $600M, and advanced two programs into clinical testing.

In 2015, he founded FirstWave Bio, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing new cost-effective treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, and IFM Therapeutics, Inc., to develop first-in-class modulators of the innate immune system as treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases. Under his leadership as CEO, IFM progressed three programs from ideation to clinical development and executed three major transactions: in 2017, the company sold two cancer assets to Bristol-Myers Squibb in a deal valued over $2.3B and in 2019, he directed the sale of IFM’s NLRP3 inhibitor program to Novartis for $1.6B and led the structuring and negotiation of a collaboration and option agreement with Novartis valued at over $840M to develop inhibitors of the cGAS/STING pathway to treat serious inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Gary obtained a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from Columbia University and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of over 100 papers and the inventor on 33 issued U.S. patents and is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing his scientific contributions and accomplishments as a life science executive.