We are excited to announce Purnanand Sarma as the 14th President of TiE Boston. Purnanand Sarma takes over from Yash Shah in July 2024.

Thank you to our charter members who selected and voted for Mr. Sarma.

A special thank you to the previous TiE Boston President, Yash Shah, for his leadership, strategic guidance and mentorship in shaping the past two years of growth for the organization.

Dr. Purnanand Sarma currently serves as Consulting CEO at GelMEDIX Inc., an early-stage biotechnology company leveraging its hydrogel platform to develop ocular and regenerative therapies that can restore vision.

Until most recently, he served as President, CEO and Board Member of Immunome (NASDAQ:IMNM), which he successfully led through an IPO in 2020, a large pharma transaction with $2B+ potential in January 2023, and a merger bringing in a seasoned new CEO and a $125M concurrent investment in October 2023. 
 
He has 30+ years of experience in all aspects of pharmaceutical and biotechnology business across multiple therapeutic platforms, and in companies of various sizes ranging from start-ups to large cap pharmaceutical companies.  In addition to conceiving and developing drugs that are commercially sold or in clinical development, Sarma transacted several multi-hundred million products/assets focused on areas of high clinical need and raised over $250M in private and public equity markets.

Prior to Immunome, Sarma was the CEO and Board member of TARIS Biomedical (acquired by J&J) where the product he developed for bladder cancer, currently in late stage clinical testing at J&J, is projected to be a $5B+ product.  Sarma was VP and General Manager of World-wide Drug Delivery Technologies for Cephalon Corporation (NYSE:CEPH) and spent nearly 10 years at Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR), working across inhalation, conjugation and multiple powder technology platforms

He started his career at SmithKline Beecham in King of Prussia, PA after obtaining his PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Minnesota and B.Pharm from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India. He credits his success to keeping the patient as the focal point of inspiration.