Tara Nickerson

Tara Nickerson has spent a career refusing the usual choice in biotechnology. The industry tends to sort people early: the scientists who understand the molecules, and the business people who understand the money. Nickerson picked up both, and the combination has defined nearly everything she has done since.

The science came first. She earned a BSc in Biology and then a PhD in Experimental Medicine from McGill University in Montreal, the kind of training that puts a person at the bench and teaches them how evidence is actually built. The business came next, an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, at the Haas School of Business. That second degree is what turned a scientist into a builder of companies.

Learning the trade at Elan

Her operating career runs through one of biotech's more storied lineages. She held Vice President roles in business and corporate development at Elan Pharmaceuticals and Neotope Biosciences, work that meant sitting across the table from partners and investors and translating early science into deals. When Elan spun out its drug-discovery business, Nickerson was on the core team that formed Prothena Corporation as a public company, and she went on to serve as its Chief Business Officer.

The pattern that would come to describe her was already visible: get involved early, before the story is proven, and help build the structure a company needs to stand on its own.

Building Maze, then a board seat that paid off

That pattern repeated at Maze Therapeutics. As a founding-team member and Chief Business Officer, Nickerson helped launch the genetics-driven company publicly in 2019 with more than $191 million in initial financing, and she led business development along with operations spanning finance, legal and facilities. She has described the work as company-building in the fullest sense, not a single function but the scaffolding that lets a young company grow.

Around the same time she took a board seat at Inversago Pharma and stayed through its journey from Series A to Series C. In 2023 Novo Nordisk acquired the company. For most executives that would be a career highlight. For Nickerson it reads more like a rehearsal, one more company watched from formation through to an outcome.

The CEO chair

In 2024 she stepped into the role her career had been pointing toward. Therini Bio named Tara Nickerson its President, Chief Executive Officer and Director. It was the first time she would set the strategic direction of a company rather than help someone else set it, and she brought to it the full range of what she had learned: the scientist's read on the data and the dealmaker's read on the room.

Therini Bio is a clinical-stage company built around a specific and unusual idea. Its work centers on fibrin, a protein best known for its role in blood clotting. The company's approach uses a targeted antibody, THN391, designed to block fibrin's inflammatory activity while leaving normal clotting intact. In 2025 Nickerson led a $39 million Series A extension that brought the company's total Series A financing to roughly $75 million, with a syndicate that included Angelini Ventures, Apollo Health Ventures, Sanofi Ventures and Eli Lilly.

"We are deeply grateful to partner with such a distinguished investor group," she said of the round, framing it as a step toward "a rational, innovative approach." It was the language of someone who has raised money many times and still treats each round as a vote of confidence to be earned.

A small team, a large ambition

Therini Bio is not a large organization. It runs lean, around 15 people, which makes the scope of its ambitions all the more striking. Nickerson is scheduled to take the stage at the 2026 BIO International Convention to argue that neuroinflammation is, in her words, "the next frontier" in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. It is a bold claim, and one she has spent two decades earning the standing to make.

What comes through in her career is consistency of method. She finds the science early, builds the company around it, and raises the money to prove it out. She has done it as a vice president, as a chief business officer, as a board member and now as a CEO. The titles changed. The approach did not.