Les serves as Vice President of Clinical Development of Erasca, bringing more than 20 years of experience as a scientifically-driven oncology drug developer in early phase clinical development and translational medicine. Les joined Erasca from Neon Therapeutics, where he led the clinical development of the personalized neoantigen vaccine program. He also led the clinical development of their shared neoantigen vaccine program resulting in the recent filing of the IND for this program. Prior to this, he served as the Program Team Leader of IPI-549, a PI3K-gamma inhibitor, at Infinity Pharmaceuticals. At Infinity, Les was responsible for the strategic and operational aspects of the molecule including the first-in-human study, IND filing and development of the overall clinical strategy. He began his career at Eli Lilly and Company in their early phase Oncology drug development group where he was the clinical lead on multiple programs, responsible for Phase I and II development. Les worked closely with the pre-clinical development teams to optimize the characteristics of the drug development candidates with a focus on clinically relevant biomarkers.
He earned his Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto.