Alessandra Cesano

Alessandra Cesano, MD, PhD, currently serves as the chief medical officer of ESSA Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to joining ESSA, Dr. Cesano was chief medical officer at NanoString Technologies, Inc., 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 research and development 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 career 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 (Turin, Italy).