Running the numbers at a cancer immunotherapy company
Elizabeth Czerepak spends her days doing something most scientists cannot and most financiers will not: standing at the seam where a laboratory breakthrough becomes a funded, public, commercial company. Since April 2024 she has been Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Corporate Development at Mirror Biologics, a clinical-stage immunotherapy company based in Wesley Chapel, Florida, that is developing next-generation immunomodulatory treatments for cancer and infectious disease.
When the company needed operational leadership in the summer of 2024, she took the acting CEO title as well and held it through May 2025, running both the finance function and the company itself for the better part of a year. It was a familiar move for someone who has spent a career being handed the hardest financial problems in biotech and told to solve them.
Mirror Biologics is a small company by headcount, with a Series A behind it and a platform built around what it calls the “mirror effect” and its AlloStim living-cell therapy. For a company like that, the CFO is not a back-office role. It is the person who decides how far the science can travel before the money runs out, and who finds the next tranche before it does. That is the job Czerepak has done, in one form or another, for more than a decade.
Three careers, one industry
Her resume reads like three separate professional lives stacked on top of each other. The first was in big pharma, where she spent roughly 18 years in senior and executive positions at BASF (Knoll) Pharmaceuticals, Hoffmann-La Roche, and Merck & Co., working across finance, strategic planning, and business development. This was not quiet accounting work. She helped lead the global partner search for the compound then known as D2E7, the drug that became Humira, a search that culminated in BASF Pharma's sale to Abbott for 6.9 billion dollars. She also played a key role in Roche's 5.4 billion dollar acquisition of Syntex.
The second life was in venture capital. For about ten years she sat on the investing side of the table as a Managing Director at Bear Stearns and JPMorgan, and as a Founding General Partner of Bear Stearns Health Innoventures L.P., leading biotech investments and learning what makes a young company fundable, or not.
The third, and current, life is the CFO's chair. Over roughly 13 years she has served as finance chief for a string of public and private biopharma companies, including Vaxin, Isarna Therapeutics, BeyondSpring, Cancer Genetics, Altimmune, and Scilex Holding. Along the way she took companies public through three different mechanisms, which is its own kind of rare expertise.
Landmark transactions
The path
Senior and executive roles at BASF (Knoll) Pharmaceuticals, Hoffmann-La Roche, and Merck & Co. across finance, strategy, and business development.
Contributes to Roche's $5.4B Syntex acquisition and the D2E7/Humira partner search behind BASF Pharma's $6.9B sale to Abbott.
Managing Director at Bear Stearns and JPMorgan; Founding General Partner of Bear Stearns Health Innoventures L.P.
CFO of Vaxin, Isarna Therapeutics, BeyondSpring, Cancer Genetics, Altimmune, and Scilex Holding; leads IPOs, mergers, and financings.
Elected to the Board of Directors of Delcath Systems, Inc.
Appointed CFO and VP of Corporate Development at Mirror Biologics, Inc.
Serves as acting CEO of Mirror Biologics while continuing as CFO.
Joins the Board of TransCode Therapeutics as director and audit chair.
A career in proportion
Few people in biotech finance have moved so completely between roles. Her time splits roughly across three domains, each reinforcing the next: the operator learned the science, the investor learned the market, and the CFO learned both.
From the classroom to the capital markets
The starting point is the surprising part. Czerepak's undergraduate degree, earned magna cum laude at Marshall University, was in Spanish and Mathematics Education. She trained to teach, not to finance drug development. The MBA from Rutgers University came later, and the pivot into pharmaceutical finance turned a math teacher into a Wall Street dealmaker.
Decades into her career, well past the point when most executives stop collecting credentials, she added a Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School in 2019 to 2020, sharpening the governance skills she now uses on the boards of Delcath Systems and TransCode Therapeutics, where she serves as audit chair.
- Her first degree was in Spanish and mathematics education, not business.
- She has worked both sides of the deal table: funding biotechs as an investor, then running their finances as CFO.
- She has held the CFO title at six or more biopharma companies.
- She earned a Harvard corporate director certificate decades into her career, on top of her Rutgers MBA.
Frequently asked
Who is Elizabeth Czerepak?
She is a life sciences finance executive and the Chief Financial Officer and VP of Corporate Development at Mirror Biologics, a clinical-stage immunotherapy company. She has more than 35 years of experience across big pharma, venture capital, and public biotech.
What is her role at Mirror Biologics?
She has been CFO and VP of Corporate Development since April 2024. She also served as acting CEO from July 2024 to May 2025.
What boards does she serve on?
She sits on the Board of Directors of Delcath Systems (since 2020) and TransCode Therapeutics, where she is a director and audit chair (since October 2025).
What is her educational background?
A B.A. magna cum laude in Spanish and Mathematics Education from Marshall University, an MBA from Rutgers University, and a Corporate Director Certificate from Harvard Business School.
What are her most notable achievements?
She helped lead the partner search behind D2E7 (Humira) that ended in BASF Pharma's $6.9 billion sale to Abbott, contributed to Roche's $5.4 billion acquisition of Syntex, and helped take Scilex, Altimmune, and Cancer Genetics public.