About Us

Luca Rastelli is the Chief Scientific officer of Jubilant Therapeutics Inc., a subsidiary of Jubilant Pharmova Limited. Luca brings to Jubilant Therapeutics more than 20 years of oncology drug discovery and development experience, as well as business development experience ranging from startups to large pharmaceutical companies. Most recently, he was CSO at Kleo Pharmaceuticals where he led all aspects of R&D for the company and was instrumental in bringing a CD38 targeting compound based on Kleo novel ARM technology to the clinics for multiple myeloma.

Previously Luca was Vice President, Oncology at BioXcel Therapeutics where he helped bring the company to a successful IPO. He has held multiple preclinical and clinical project leadership positions at Boston Scientifics, CuraGen, Sopherion and EMD Serono (Merck Serono). He led the initial development of c-MET inhibitor TEPMETKO, approved for the treatment of METex14 positive NSCLC patients. Luca was also part of the initial development of the immuno-oncology antibody BAVENCIO, a PDL-1 inhibitor approved for several type of cancers. He received the American Brain Tumor Association's 25th Anniversary Translational grant for his work on Medulloblastoma tumors at the Department of Neuro-Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is a named inventor on more than 10 issued patents and holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Geneva.

Sridharan Rajagopal (Raj) is Vice President and Head of Medicinal Chemistry of Jubilant Therapeutics Inc. (JTx), a subsidiary of Jubilant Pharmova Limited. Raj brings a wealth of experience in drug discovery, medicinal chemistry and epigenetics to JTx. Before joining, he spent 5 years in various positions at Jubilant Biosys as Associate Director, Director and Associate Vice President, where under his leadership the company delivered several LO and preclinical candidates working with various small biotech and Big Pharma.

He also spent seven years in various positions as Senior Scientist, Chief Research Scientist and Associate Director at Orchid Pharmaceuticals Ltd, India, where he was instrumental in developing a healthy pipeline in Oncology and Inflammation and advanced two candidates into the clinic in cancer and inflammation. He also worked for two years at Aurigene Discovery Technologies Ltd, India as Senior Scientist.

Raj has published nearly 25 peer-reviewed journal articles and holds 19 patents in drug discovery and development. He holds an M.S and a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, India and postdoctoral experiences from the University of Miami, Miami University and the University of Missouri.

Dhanalakshmi Sivanandhan is Vice President & Head, Biology at Jubilant Therapeutics Inc., a subsidiary of Jubilant Pharmova Limited.

Previously, Dhanalakshmi worked as Head of Oncology therapeutic area at Jubilant Biosys Ltd., where she executed close to 25 Oncology discovery projects delivering three pre-clinical candidates and out-licensed one of the in-house projects to a US-based Biotech.

Before joining Jubilant in 2007, Dhanalakshmi has completed two post-doctoral trainings, at the National Cancer Center, Tokyo, Japan and at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, USA. She received her Ph.D. in Life Sciences (Cancer research) from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.