Executive Team

Dr. Parkinson has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of ESSA Pharma Inc. since January 2016, and as a Director of the company since June 2015. Prior to joining ESSA he had been a Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates, Inc. From 2007 until 2012, Dr. Parkinson served as President and CEO of Nodality, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the biological characterization of signaling pathways in patients with malignancy. Until October 2007 he was SVP, Oncology Research and Development at Biogen Idec, where he oversaw all oncology discovery research efforts and the development of the oncology pipeline. Previously he had served as VP, Oncology Development, at Amgen and VP, Global Clinical Oncology Development, at Novartis. In those roles he oversaw the successful clinical development of a series of cancer therapeutics, including Gleevec, Zometa, Femara, and Vectibix. Dr. Parkinson worked at the National Cancer Institute from 1990 to 1997, serving as Chief of the Investigational Drug Branch and then as Acting Associate Director of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP). He is a past Chairman of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Biologics Advisory Committee, a past member of the FDA Science Board, and is a recipient of the FDA’s Cody Medal. He is a past editor of the Journal of Immunotherapy and past president of the Society of Biological Therapy. He has served on the National Cancer Policy Forum of the Institute of Medicine and is a past co-chair of the Cancer Steering Committee of the NIH Foundation Biomarkers Consortium. A past Board Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, he currently serves as a Board Director for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. He served as Chairperson of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Finance and Audit Committee for 15 years and is a previous elected Board Director of AACR. Dr. Parkinson was a Director of Facet Biotech, Inc., until the acquisition by Abbott Pharmaceuticals, and was a Director of Ambit Biosciences until the acquisition by Daiichi Sankyo. He was also previously a Director at Threshold Pharmaceuticals and Cerulean Pharmaceuticals. He currently serves as Director on the Boards of Tocagen Inc (TOCA), 3SBio Inc (1530.HK), CTI Biopharma, Inc (CTIC), and is a Co-Founder and Director of Refuge Biotech, Inc. He has held academic positions both at Tufts and at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Peter Virsik has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer since August 2016. Mr. Virsik has over 20 years of experience in corporate development, strategy, new product planning, alliance management, and finance. During his career, Mr. Virsik has completed over 30 licensing, M&A and financial transactions, totaling over $3 billion in value. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development for XenoPort (acquired by Arbor Pharmaceuticals), leading licensing, strategy, new product planning and alliance management for the company. During his tenure at XenoPort, Mr. Virsik played an integral role in the licensing and commercialization of Horizant® (gabapentin enacarbil). Prior to XenoPort, Mr. Virsik worked for Gilead Sciences from 2000 through 2005 in Corporate Development, where he was involved in building Gilead’s HIV franchise through the acquisition of Triangle Pharmaceuticals and the licensing of Vitekta® (elvitegravir). Before joining Gilead, Mr. Virsik worked at J.P. Morgan in the biotechnology equity research group and as a consultant for Ernst and Young. Mr. Virsik began his career in R&D at Genentech. Mr. Virsik received an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, an MS in Microbiology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Wood has been CFO of ESSA since October 2013. He is responsible for managing all financial aspects of ESSA’s business and matters related to compliance and corporate governance. Mr. Wood has over 30 years of experience in management of both large and early stage companies in North America and the U.K. From 2003 to 2013, he was Head of Finance, Secretary and Treasurer at Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc. Prior to 2003, he was Managing Director of Cubist Pharmaceuticals (UK) Ltd., and Finance Director at TerraGen Discovery, Inc. During 18 years in the biopharmaceutical industry, Mr. Wood has overseen several M&A transactions and numerous financings, raising over $100 million. Mr. Wood began his career in the finance and exploration departments of Chevron Corp. He received a B.Sc. in Biology from Queen’s University, an M.B.A. from University of Western Ontario and holds a CPA, CMA accounting designation. He served on the governing body of the National Research Council of Canada from 2008 to 2014.

Alessandra Cesano, MD, PhD has recently joined ESSA as Chief Medical Officer.

Previously she has been the Chief Medical Officer of NanoString Inc from July 2015 until June 2019 where she focused in the development of translational and diagnostic multi-plexed assays for the characterization and measurement of mechanisms of immune response/resistance.

Prior to joining NanoString, Dr. Cesano was Chief Medical Officer at Cleave Biosciences, Inc. and before then she served as Chief Medical Officer and Chief Operations Officer at Nodality, Inc., where she built and led the R and D group, while providing the overall clinical vision for the organization. Between 1998 and 2008, Dr. Cesano held various management positions at Amgen, Biogen Idec and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, where she helped to advance various oncology drugs through late stage development and FDA approvals.

Early in her professional career Dr. Cesano spent 12 years conducting research in tumor immunology, including nine years at the Wistar Institute, an NCI Basic Cancer Center connected with the University of Pennsylvania.

She also holds membership in several professional and scientific societies including ASCO, ESMO, ASH, EHA, AACR and SITC. In the latter she serves as co-chair in the SITC Industry Committee, Associate Editor for the Biomarker section of JITC and is an active member of the SITC Biomarker Working Group.

Over her careers she has been an author on over 100 publications.

Dr. Cesano received an MD summa cum laude, a Board Certification in Oncology and a PhD in Tumor Immunology from the University of Turin.