Team — Elysium Therapeutics

Our Team

CO-FOUNDER + CEO

Quick Facts:

Mr. Sturmer has worked in the healthcare industry for nearly 30 years, and has been Dr. Jenkins’ business partner and longtime colleague. After leaving Arthur Andersen & Co., where he was a Manager in the consulting and advisory services primarily to healthcare clients, he became CFO of Sonoma Valley Hospital District in Sonoma California. Subsequently, he was the controller at Vivus, Inc., which was a fast growth, publicly traded pharmaceutical company with first year commercial sales of $130M as it transitioned from development to commercial stage. As Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations at Theravance, Inc., Mr. Sturmer partnered with the head of business development to negotiate and execute two landmark deals with GlaxoSmithKline that enabled the company to go public at a value of ~$1 billion. While a private company, Theravance raised over $500 million in equity capital. Most recently, Mr. Sturmer was Vice President of Finance and CFO of Signature Therapeutics (Now Ensysce Biosciences), where in addition to his role in financing the Company (raised ~$70M), he was also responsible for business development. Mr. Sturmer has established long-term relationships with his business development counterparts at multiple pharmaceutical companies involved in the pain space. Mr. Sturmer is a CPA (inactive) and earned his MBA from Pepperdine University.

CO-FOUNDER + CSO, PHD

Quick Facts:

Co-Founder of Theravance, Inc.
Led team at Axys Pharmaceuticals whose discoveries led to several multi-million dollar strategic collaborations and successful IPO
30 years in pharmaceutical industry

Prior to co-founding Elysium in 2013, Dr. Jenkins co-founded Signature Therapeutics (Now Ensysce Biosciences), where he served as Chief Scientific Officer and led a highly productive Research team that advanced nine discovery programs into development, of which eight related to abuse-resistant opioids, with multiple programs successfully completing human Phase 1 clinical studies. Dr. Jenkins graduated from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry in 1993. Since then, he has worked in the pharmaceutical industry. In 1997, he co-founded Theravance, Inc. where he initially recruited and led the medicinal chemistry department, and co-invented the drug discovery technology used to develop multiple clinical candidates, and two approved drugs, resulting in multiple deals with large pharmaceutical companies. While at Theravance, Dr. Jenkins’ responsibilities grew to encompass senior project leadership roles for several multi-disciplinary project teams in research and development. Prior to Theravance, Dr. Jenkins led a discovery team at Axys Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he discovered a novel mechanism for the inhibition of serine proteases that led to several multi-million dollar strategic collaborations.