Marco Gottardis
Head of Business Development Strategy

Marco Gottardis is SVP and Head of Business Development Strategy at Replay. He has over 30 years of experience as a cancer research investigator in both biotech/large pharma and over 35 of years of experience overall in translational cancer research. He has had roles in drug discovery and development that has resulted in multiple drug approvals. He has recently retired from JANSSEN PHARMACEUTICALS R&D (the Pharma division of J&J) after 10 years of service.

At JANSSEN, Marco was VP of Oncology and the Disease Area Stronghold Leader of Prostate Cancer (DASL). For 8 years, he led both directly and by matrix, the discovery, the development and the clinical translational teams for Prostate Cancer. As part of the Oncology SLT, he was tasked with establishing the strategy and execution of the prostate cancer pipeline. In those 8 years, he significantly increased the prostate pipeline in drug approvals, and in early/late-stage development programs. These portfolio programs encompassed a diversity of MOAs, such as, Hormonal agents, Targeted small/large molecules and large molecule I-O therapy approaches.

In his last two years at JANSSEN, he became VP of Innovation, and helped to bring in multiple opportunities to the Oncology TA. During this time, he worked to externally license technologies establishing allogenic cell therapy and ADC platforms at JANSSEN.

Marco spent 15 years at BMS, where he rose to be an early development lead and co-led all discovery efforts in Oncology, as an Executive Director. He began his career in biopharma at LIGAND PHARMACEUTICS where he worked for 5 years as the Senior Scientist in Pharmacology.

Marco obtained his BS from Columbia College, Columbia University, his Ph.D. at the Wisconsin Clinical Cancer Center, University of Wisconsin. He completed his post-doctoral fellowship at Vincent T Lombardi Cancer Center Georgetown University. He has co-authored over 100 publications and is co-inventor on multiple patents. Marco is externally recognized as an industry leader in Oncology.