Mr. Dennis Dean serves as the Chief Development Officer at IFM Therapeutics, Inc. Mr. Dean has worked in large pharma and biotech for over 20 years, leading groups across drug discovery and development. He has focused on finding new and better ways to link and optimize progression through drug discovery to preclinical and early clinical development. Prior to joining IFM, he served as Senior Vice President of Exploratory Development at Vertex Pharmaceuticals with oversight for translational groups including DMPK, preclinical safety assessment, clinical pharmacology and biomarkers and modeling & simulation. While at Vertex he helped advance numerous programs from discovery into clinical development in disease areas including cancer, inflammation, anti-virals, pain and cystic fibrosis. He also played an important role in filing approved NDAs for Vertex's first marketed product, Telaprevir for HCV and later for transformational drugs Kalydeco and Orkambi for cystic fibrosis. Prior to joining Vertex, he served as an Executive Director of DMPK at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, NJ with oversight for discovery and development DMPK across 4 Merck research sites. He has co-authored over 90 publications and has served in leadership roles in various scientific societies and industry consortia. Mr. Dean obtained his PhD in medicinal chemistry from SUNY / Buffalo and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in synthetic organic chemistry at Emory University.