Management Team

James Bianco, M.D. has more than 25 years of experience in building biotech/bio-pharmaceutical businesses his versatile career has included operational experience covering all aspects of drug development. Prior to joining Morphogenesis, he was the principal founder and Executive Chairman of TuHURA, a joint venture with Moffitt Cancer Center focused on novel technologies to modulate the tumor microenvironment. From 1992 to 2016 he was principal founder and CEO of CTI Biopharma, Inc. During his tenure, Dr. Bianco acquired, purchased or licensed five drug candidates, four of which received marking approval or authorization utilizing the FDA or EMA’s accelerated or conditional approval designation pathway in their development. Dr. Bianco led the company in the sales, marketing and commercial launch of three novel therapeutics, one for which he was awarded the National Organization of Rare Diseases Award for development of Trisenox®, a curative targeted therapy for patients with a type of acute leukemia.

He raised in excess of $2.0 billion and formed development and commercial license agreements with eight large biotech and pharmaceutical companies with more than $850 million in value, $350 million realized by the Company. Dr. Bianco earned his M.D from the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine and completed his residency and chief residency at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in NYC. He completed his fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) where he was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine, Assistant Member FHCRC and Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at a “Hutch” affiliate (SVAMC).

Dr. Bianco’s early work focused on exploring relative biologic effectiveness of radio-immunotherapy in treatment of blood related malignancies. He pioneered the pharmacologic regulation of inflammatory cytokines in prevention of regimen related toxicities following BMT.

Dan Dearborn is a CPA with over 25 years of finance experience exclusively with health care and biotechnology companies. Mr. Dearborn has served as the Chief Financial Officer of Morphogenesis since joining the company in 2018. From 2015 to 2017 Mr. Dearborn was CFO at MYMD Pharmaceuticals, an emerging biotechnology firm. Earlier, Mr. Dearborn served as CFO of Welldyne, Inc, a pharmacy benefit manager that also had several related health care businesses and employed four hundred associates in Florida and Colorado. During his time with Welldyne, the company was sold to Carlyle, one of the largest private equity firms. From 2007 to 2015, he was at BioDelivery Sciences International as Controller. During his time at BDSI, the company signed two very large commercial partnership agreements and was listed on NASDAQ. From 1997 until 2007, he was with Pharmerica, a long-term care pharmaceutical company. Mr. Dearborn is an alumnus of Loyola University in Maryland and joined Ernest & Young early in his career.