Bernard Ravina is a Johns Hopkins-trained neurologist who spent two decades treating people with dystonia before deciding the field needed a drug that did not yet exist. In 2025 he founded Vima Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is its CEO, advancing VIM0423, a once-daily oral therapy aimed at the dopamine-acetylcholine imbalance behind movement disorders. The company emerged from stealth with a $60 million Series A, later extended to $100 million, and dosed its first Phase 2 dystonia patient in March 2026.
Shashi Kori is a neurologist and neuro-oncologist turned biotech founder, and the co-founder and CEO of Novilla Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge-based company using a proprietary AI model to design transdermal formulations that deliver drugs to the site of action while minimizing systemic effects. Before Novilla, he spent decades building pain programs at Duke and the University of South Florida and led clinical development at GlaxoSmithKline, Allergan, MAP Pharmaceuticals and Autonomic Technologies. He partnered with Dr. Eric Fossel in 2019 to merge their drug-delivery innovations into Novilla's pipeline, led by lead candidate NOV-1776.