Margaret Dean, MBA, is Senior Director, Portfolio Oversight, of Fortrea’s Rare Diseases, Advanced Therapies and Pediatrics Team (RAPT). She has 19 years of experience across the product development life cycle from bench research through commercialization, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and healthcare IT systems. Her therapeutic experience includes acute coronary syndromes in the catheterization lab setting, development of an EMR-based tool for decision support in oncology setting and the delivery of CRO services across multiple rare diseases. 

Margaret has broad functional experience spanning strategic planning, business development, deal negotiation, marketing, sales and program management. Her MBA program had a focus on entrepreneurship and venture capital management.

Marco Durini, MD, PhD, is senior medical director of oncology for Fortrea, based in Milano, Italy. He brings more than 25 years of experience in clinical research for CRO and Pharma. Before joining the company, he held medic positions with Ipsen, Pfizer, Sanofi, Roche. His expertise in oncology ranges from biomarkers/precision medicine to immuno-target therapies and vaccines in solid and non-solid malignancies. Oncogenomics and Radiomics are latest areas of interest. 

Dr. Durini is board certified medical doctor at the Milan physician registry, and hold a business school training mastership at the SDA Bocconi Milan. He received his medical degree with summa laude from the University of Milan in Italy, and a granted post-degree research fellowship at ICP - University of Milan. He is author of papers submitted to ESMO/ASCO congresses. He joined Fortrea (formerly Labcorp) early 2019.

Dr. Calabresi has more than 20 years of clinical experience and 16 years of industry experience with a strong track record of designing, (including adaptive design), conducting and reporting clinical studies in all phases of development in neuroscience. He has worked as a research physician and medical lead at CROs and major pharma companies across various neuroscience indications, including neuropathies, somatic- and chemotherapy-induced pain, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, spinal cord injury, mitochondrial encephalopathy and others across Phases I-IV.

Marcin Koziej, MD, is a medical director of oncology for Fortrea based in Warsaw, Poland. Dr. Koziej has more than 33 years of experience in medical onco-pulmonary research centers, CROs and the pharmaceutical environment. His roles have included physician and investigator, clinical operations professional and project management leader of pan-European and global teams, medical monitor and advisor, clinical strategist, business advisor and mentor. 

Dr. Koziej earned his medical degree from the Warsaw Medical School, Warsaw, Poland and completed his internal medicine fellowship at the National Research Institute for Tb and Lung Disease in Warsaw, Poland. In 2016 he joined Chiltern, which then became part of Labcorp in 2020 and is now Fortrea.

Marcelo Costa, MD, is a Board-Certified Gastroenterologist/Hepatologist with more than 25 years of experience in managing patients with diverse liver diseases, including Hep B, Hep C, MASH (formerly NASH), autoimmune and biliary disorders, liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, portal hypertension, hepatocellular carcinoma and liver transplantation. 

He has a robust leadership track record in pharma R&D, drug development and medical affairs (virology and metabolism therapeutic areas) in HCV, MASH, liver fibrosis and cirrhosis indications. His experience includes HCV protease inhibitors, RORγt oral inhibitors, SSAO/VAP-1 inhibitors and sGC activators. He has also worked in in-license business development teams that successfully resulted in development programs for a novel SSAO/VAP-1 inhibitor PXS-4728 from Pharmaxis, an siRNA HMGB1 inhibitor from Dicerna and a first-in-class IL-11 inhibitor antibody from Enleofen. 

Dr. Costa has a particular interest in the development of non-invasive tests (biomarkers, -omics and imaging) for patient screening, assessment of disease severity and treatment response to support both daily practice and clinical trial settings. 

After joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp) in 2022, Dr. Costa has served as the lead project physician for two Phase II trials in MASH and one Phase II trial in a rare GI/liver disease indication.

Mala Puri, MD, is a Board-Certified Pediatric Endocrinologist and Senior Medical Director focused in the Cardiovascular, Metabolic, Endocrine and Renal therapeutic areas at Fortrea. Dr. Puri completed her residency training and fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore, New York and has over 20 years of combined clinical and research work in academia and industry including significant experience in global pediatric and rare disease studies.

Maksym Novikov, MD, is a Senior Medical Director for Fortrea, based in Maidenhead, United Kingdom. He serves as global lead project physician on assigned projects, providing medical expertise and support in the development and conduct of clinical trials. This includes reviewing feasibility of investigator sites and recruitment of trial subjects and performing feasibility risk assessment and data safety monitoring, develops and reviews protocols, case report forms and other data and materials on assigned projects. 

Dr. Novikov has more than 20 years of experience as a physician (surgeon), clinical researcher and medical director. Before Fortrea, he was Senior Medical Officer for Chiltern International in the UK. He also has held clinical research and medical monitoring positions with Novartis, AstraZeneca and other drug development and health care organizations. He joined Fortrea in April 2019.

Maixing Ai, MD, is a Senior Medical Director, based in Princeton, NJ, U.S. Dr. Ai is a trained immunologist/rheumatologist with more than 22 years of clinical practice. He has extensive experience managing different immunologic/rheumatologic disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis. 

Dr. Ai has more than 16 years of pharmaceutical and CRO industrial experience. He has experience with many clinical trials on NSAIDs, DMARDs, small molecules and biologics in autoimmune diseases. He has also worked on cell and gene therapies in autoimmune disease and musculoskeletal disease, with hands-on experience in cell therapies for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic sclerosis. 

Since joining Fortrea (formerly Labcorp/Covance), Dr. Ai has worked with many biotech companies and global pharmaceutical companies. His experience also includes Phase II-IV protocol design in many indications. 

Dr. Ai earned his medical doctorate degree from University of Luebeck, Luebeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He has authored/co-authored more than 60 papers/books in rheumatological topics.

Luca Cantini, MD, PhD, is Medical Director at Fortrea, based in Leiden, the Netherlands. Dr. Cantini has 8 years of experience in oncology clinical drug development from academia to CROs, dealing with all aspects of early and late phase clinical trials. As a Medical Oncologist, he has been actively involved in translational research in Immuno-Oncology with a special focus on thoracic cancers. He earned his medical degree from the University of Pisa, Italy and completed his medical oncology fellowship training at the Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy. In 2020, he was awarded with the ESMO Translational Research Fellowship, to carry on a project titled “ENSURE study - dENdritic cell therapy combined with SURgEry in mesothelioma” at the Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. During the Fellowship, he decided to pursue a PhD trajectory at the same Institution, which has been finalized in 2022. Besides the ESMO Fellowship, he has been awarded with the IASLC Early Career Education Award, the ESO Grant for participating to the “18th ESO/ESMO Masterclass in Clinical Oncology,” the ESMO Grant for participating to the “Translational Research Unit Visit,” the ESMO Travel Grant for participating to the “2022 European Lung Cancer Conference,” and the NRS Travel Grant. He has authored 53 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals. He joined our company in December 2022.

Louise Kearney is an Executive Director of Fortrea’s Rare Diseases, Advanced Therapies and Pediatrics Team (RAPT) and Chair of Fortrea's Cell and Gene Therapy Long-term Follow-up Workstream. She has 23 years of experience, across sites, biotech, pharmaceutical and CRO companies. She has worked at Labcorp (now Fortrea) for 19 years, including 10 years within Project Management. Her operational expertise spans a wide variety of complex rare disease and pediatric trials including leading a rare, pediatric program.