At its October 2005 Board Meeting, the TB Alliance Board of Directors appointed two new Board members to three-year terms: Mr. Mark Kessel of New York’s Symphony Capital and Dr. Thelma Tupasi of the Tropical Disease Foundation, in the Philippines.
“We are pleased to welcome both Mr. Kessel and Dr. Tupasi to the Board,” said Dr. Gijs Elzinga, Chairman of the Board for the TB Alliance and Deputy Director-General, Netherlands' National Institute of Public Health and the Environment.
“Both bring relevant and important expertise to the operations of the TB Alliance – including regulatory and public health knowledge which is particularly relevant as more drug candidates enter clinical testing.”
Mark Kessel is the CEO and managing director of Symphony Capital LLC, which he co-founded in 2002 to manage a private equity fund that invests in the clinical development of novel biopharmaceutical products. Mr. Kessel is widely recognized as the inventor of structured financial products for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. From 1979 to 2001, Mr. Kessel was a partner at Shearman & Sterling, a leading international law firm. He served as the firm’s managing partner from 1990 to 1994.
Dr. Thelma E. Tupasi is President of the Tropical Disease Foundation Inc., the principal recipient of projects supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria in the Philippines. An internationally respected expert in infectious diseases, Dr. Tupasi chairs the DOTS-PLUS committee of Stop TB, and serves as Chairman, National Infectious Disease Advisory Committee to the Department of Health. In June 2005, Dr. Tupasi served as the President of the 24th Annual Meeting of the International Congress on Chemotherapy (ICC) which met in Manila, Philippines.