Meet The Team
Nikolaos Papaioannou, Ph.D.
Nik is a co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Omma Therapeutics. He has more than 20 years of drug discovery and development experience, including over a decade focused on therapeutics targeting the KKS pathway. Nik has held progressively senior scientific and leadership roles at Wyeth, Pfizer, Shire and Takeda contributing to programs spanning early discovery through clinical development. Most recently, he served as Head of New Chemical Entity discovery in Takeda’s Rare Disease drug discovery unit. Nik earned a PhD in organic chemistry from Boston College and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Recognizing the transformative potential of therapies targeting the KKS pathway beyond HAE, Nik co-founded Omma to advance innovative treatments for patients facing serious conditions with limited or no effective therapeutic options.
Daniel J. Sexton, Ph.D.
Dan is a co-founder at Omma Therapeutics with over 25 years of experience in drug discovery, development, and pharmaceutical portfolio strategic leadership at Takeda, Shire, and Dyax. At Takeda Dan led strategy for rare hematology. At Dyax and Shire Dan led teams engaged in therapeutic discovery and development, including for lanadelumab (TAKHZYRO®) and ecallantide (KALBITOR®), which are plasma kallikrein inhibitors approved for hereditary angioedema. With lanadelumab, Dan had the unique opportunity to be a leader of a program from invention through the acquisition of Dyax by Shire ($6.6B) and product launch. Dan has long realized the potential for agents targeting the KKS to treat thrombo-inflammatory edematous diseases & co-founded Omma to benefit unmet needs of patients with severe conditions.
Christopher B. Primiano, J.D., M.B.A.
Chris is a co-founder at Omma Therapeutics with extensive experience in all aspects of company operations at biotech companies. He was previously the Chief Business Officer and General Counsel at Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc., a company that developed small molecule, oral inhibitors of XPO-1 from novel discovery through to approval and commercialization in multiple oncology indications. At Karyopharm, Chris led non-oncology drug development, raised hundreds of millions of dollars across global investment and business development transactions and was responsible for implementing multiple quality and compliance programs to align the company’s processes to the requirements of a public company with clinical trials and a commercial product. After Karyopharm, Chris moved into the ocular space as Chief Business Officer of Aura Biosciences, Inc. Now at Omma, Chris brings 20 years of experience across all aspects of life sciences, with particular expertise in business, legal and operations, that positions Omma to pursue impactful science in a business-minded context.