BioAdvance - Our Team
About BioAdvance >> Our Team

Our Management and Investment Team

Barbara S. Schilberg, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Barbara S. Schilberg"We have a tremendous opportunity to galvanize economic growth in southeastern Pennsylvania by building on our depth and breadth in the life sciences, particularly in biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. The funding from the Commonwealth allows BioAdvance to provide critical capital and other support to help entrepreneurs move science from the laboratory into successful businesses."

Ms. Schilberg has more than 25 years of experience working with academic technologies and start-up companies in the life sciences sector. Under her leadership as CEO, BioAdvance has committed $18 million to 28 seed-stage companies and 14 pre-seed projects focusing in areas including Alzheimer's disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and infectious diseases. The BioAdvance portfolio companies have gone on to raise over $340 million in additional capital, and six companies have been acquired with aggregate valuations in excess of $650 million.  Ms. Schilberg is a board member or serves as an observer on the boards of several BioAdvance portfolio companies including Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, Immunome, Jenrin Discovery, Marillion Pharmaceuticals, Melior Pharmaceuticals, Novira Pharmaceuticals, QR Pharma, and Yaupon Therapeutics.

As a senior executive with four emerging life sciences companies, Ms. Schilberg's prior experience provides significant insight into the key elements needed to build successful companies including public and private financings, intellectual property protection, corporate partnering arrangements and the management of research programs. Her experience in industry started in 1994 when she joined Cephalon as Senior Vice President and General Counsel and as a member of the executive committee. As part of her responsibilities, she led a multi-disciplinary team charged with completing Phase III clinical trials and preparing a new drug application for PROVIGIL® (modafinil), which was approved by the FDA in December 1999. She joined Incara Pharmaceuticals in 1998 as Executive Vice President and General Counsel, where she managed a research operation in Princeton, NJ engaged in discovering new antibacterial therapeutics. She continued in that capacity after the operation's acquisition by Advanced Medicine (now Theravance) in 2000. Ms. Schilberg also served as Vice President and General Counsel at Locus Discovery, Inc., an emerging pharmaceutical company in Blue Bell, PA engaged in computational drug design.

Before joining industry, Ms. Schilberg specialized in representing biopharmaceutical companies and research institutions in the commercialization of technology, as a partner in the Philadelphia office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. There she developed novel strategies for the licensing and commercialization of life sciences technology on behalf of biopharmaceutical companies such as Cephalon, Inc. and non-profit research institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, The Wistar Institute and Thomas Jefferson University. Her practice supported a wide range of industry activities, including venture capital financings, IPOs and other public offerings, marketing, co-development and joint-venture arrangements, sponsored research, and technology transfer. Ms. Schilberg received a J.D. from the University of Virginia and clerked with the Honorable Edward R. Becker, now Senior Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.