David Mackey

Dave Mackey is the CFO of Catalyst Health Ventures (CHV). He’s responsible for the financial management, reporting, audit, tax, legal and administrative functions of CHV and brings over 20 years of finance, legal, operational and transactional experience to the firm.

Prior to joining CHV, Dave held senior roles at two Catalyst portfolio companies, serving most recently as Chief Operating Officer at PanTher Therapeutics after previously serving as President and Chief Financial Officer at Lantos Technologies. Prior to that, he was the Chief Financial Officer at AgNovos Healthcare, where he led finance, administration and business development.

Before joining the MedTech industry, Dave was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in New York, where he advised companies and investment firms on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPOs, follow-on offerings, and debt financings. He began his career as a corporate attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he focused his practice on M&A and securities offerings. Dave received a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and a B.A. from Colorado State University.

Manish Bhandari

Manish Bhandari, MD, E-MBA, is the Founder and Managing Partner of Angel Physicians Fund, a venture capital firm that supports early-stage healthcare technology companies. He is also Medical Oncologist and Chief of Innovation & Oncology at St. Elizabeth Healthcare in MidWest USA.  With over two decades of experience in the healthcare sector as a clinician, research investigator, and as a MedTech investor, he advises five large MedTech funds nationally.

As a medical oncologist, healthcare executive, and strategy consultant, Manish  brings a combination of clinical, operational, and financial expertise to identify, evaluate, and invest in promising opportunities in the healthcare sector. His work is driven by a mission to improve patient outcomes, advance medical innovation, and drive healthcare transformation. He also serves on the Board of Directors of several portfolio companies in oncology, where he provides strategic guidance, industry insights, and mentorship to the founders and management teams. Additionally, he advises Catalyst Health Ventures and AngelMD, two leading healthcare investment platforms. Manish has multiple publications and patents in the field of oncology and medical devices, was named "Doctor of the Year" by Cincinnati Magazine in 2018, and bestowed a lifetime achievement award by a cancer patient support group in the U.S.

Manish is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a board-certified medical oncologist from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, with an executive MBA from McKinsey & Co.

Dan Wildman

Dan Wildman, in addition to being a Board member, is a Strategic Advisor to PanTher Therapeutics.  In this role Dan applies his expertise and decades of experience to advancing the clinical development program for PanTher’s lead program, PTM-101, and selecting and prioritizing other Sagittari™ platform product candidates. A seasoned executive with more than 35 years of experience in the MedTech industry, Dan is President of Wildman Ventures, LLC. He also currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors or as a Strategic Advisor for several early-stage organizations and publicly-held companies.

Prior to joining PanTher Therapeutics, Dan led the Digital Surgery Strategy initiative at Johnson & Johnson and served as worldwide President of Depuy Synthes Spine, the second-largest spine surgery business in the world. Previously, he served as Worldwide President of Ethicon Biosurgery, where he led the development and commercialization of a novel combination product based on a biomaterial and biologic formulation. The biosurgery business at Ethicon now exceeds $2.0B in revenue and continues to be one of the fastest-growing companies in Johnson & Johnson’s medical device portfolio.

Maria Palasis

Maria Palasis, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of Lyra Therapeutics, a combination product biotechnology company she took public in 2020.

Maria is also on the Advisory Board of Beta Bionics. Prior to Lyra Therapeutics, she was President, CEO, and Board Director of both Arsenal Medical and its spin-out, 480 Biomedical. Maria also served in senior leadership roles at Boston Scientific Corporation,  focused on the development of drug-device combination products. In 2021, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for outstanding contributions to the design of medical devices and drug delivery systems.

Maria holds a BS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine.

Darshana Zaveri

Darshana Zaveri is a Founder and Managing Partner of Catalyst Health Ventures (CHV). She is actively involved in all aspects of fund management including investments and capital raising and has led several investments in the medical device, women’s health and diagnostics markets.

She led CHV’s investments in Augmenix (acquired by Boston Scientific), nVision Medical (acquired by Boston Scientific), Maxwell Health (acquired by SunLife), Aria CV, PanTher Therapeutics, AtaCor Medical, Instylla, Avive, Rejoni and Venova Medical. She currently (or previously) represents CHV on the Boards of all companies.

Prior to joining CHV in 2007, Darshana was an Investigator at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and an integral part of drug development programs in oncology, metabolic disease, and immunology. Previously she worked at Genome Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company and at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Darshana currently serves as an advisor of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT, (a foundation that helps MIT students and faculty commercialize breakthrough technologies and inventions), as a Board Director of The New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA) and as a lead advisor to the Portfolia FemTech fund (an investment fund designed for women).

Darshana received an M.P.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. in Cell and Molecular Biology from Boston University, and a B.S. in Biochemistry from Bombay University in Bombay, India.

Laura Indolfi

Laura Indolfi, PhD, is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Based on foundational technology she invented in the labs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Medical School, she has led PanTher’s business and scientific progress to create its proprietary Sagittari™ drug-development platform, a revolutionary technology for the local administration of cancer therapeutics to treat solid tumors. Under her leadership, the company has advanced its lead drug candidate, PTM-101, from preclinical R&D studies to clinical trials for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Laura has raised equity and grant funding for PanTher since its inception in 2016 and built an experienced leadership team to guide the company’s success.

Laura has been recognized for her entrepreneurial accomplishments by being named a TED Fellow, one of 21 people chosen annually as the most disruptive and transformative change-makers in the world. Prior to founding PanTher Therapeutics, Laura was a postdoctoral associate at the Harvard-MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.

She holds a PhD in Biomaterials and MS and BS degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II in Italy.