Laura Benjamin

Laura Benjamin, PhD is CEO and President at OncXerna, a biotech company based out of the Boston area that specializes in state-of-the-art-precision medicine. She received a BA in Biology from Barnard College, Columbia University and her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. Before starting OncXerna in 2018, Laura was a Vice President in Oncology at Eli Lilly where she led cancer discovery and translational discovery teams in NY and Indianapolis. She worked closely with the clinical teams to support multiple clinical programs, most notably the ramucirumab program from Phase 2 to commercial launch in colorectal, gastric, and non-small cell lung cancers. Additionally, she helped build the cross-functional initiative to discover, test and advance biomarker development in oncology clinical trials across the portfolio. Prior to joining Lilly, Laura spent 10 years as a tenure track professor in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. During this time, she supported and mentored Ph.D. students, postdocs and medical students with NIH and foundation grants. When she left Harvard in 2009, Laura was an Associate Professor and was co-Director of the Vascular Biology Center at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Both Laura’s postdoctoral work and academic research at Harvard focused on cellular and molecular mechanisms driving cancer, with a particular interest in the role of the microenvironment on cancer progression and response to targeted therapies.