The TAP team is under the leadership of Dr. Lee Greenberger, PhD., Senior Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer. The TAP team works closely with Javeed Froozan, Vice President, Business Development & Strategic Alliances, with input from other members of the LLS Research team to evaluate new opportunities.
The Therapy Acceleration Program Committee, a subcommittee of LLS National Board, is the governance body of TAP and is supported by an Advisory Council of key opinion leaders.
Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Research
Dr. Lore Gruenbaum joined LLS in 2020 as the Vice President for the Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP), the LLS venture philanthropy program aiming to accelerate high-risk, innovative blood cancer therapeutics. She brings 20 years of drug discovery and clinical development experience to LLS working on small molecules, biologics, RNA-directed and cell therapies in multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, immunology, virology and neuroscience. Most recently, Dr. Gruenbaum was employed as the Vice President, Biology at Gotham Therapeutics pioneering drug discovery in Epitranscriptomics. Prior to this, she was part of the executive leadership team at Applied Biomath where she led collaborative mechanistic modeling projects to accelerate and de-risk drug development for biotech and pharma and acted as the principal investigator on a NIH small business grant. Dr. Gruenbaum held roles of increasing responsibility at Boehringer Ingelheim and Roche Pharmaceuticals driving technical innovation, predictive toxicology, novel mechanistic and biomarker strategies for drug discovery and clinical projects. She completed her Ph.D. at Free University of Berlin with ‘summa cum laude’ and conducted postdoctoral studies at Yale University.
Vice President, Business Development & Scientific Strategy
Dr. Jun Xu joined LLS in 2011 as Director of Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP). She was recently promoted from Executive Director – Therapy Acceleration Program Lead to Vice President, Research Business Development and Scientific Strategy. Dr. Xu participates in scientific and business due diligence of TAP funding inquiries. Leveraging her deep scientific knowledge in oncology and immunology and business insight, Dr. Xu has been very successful in selecting high potential TAP projects, such as Kite and Stemline, which led to the TAP-supported approval of Yescarta and Elzonris, respectively. She championed both TAP investments in FortySeven, which generated more than $40 million return on investment to further LLS Mission. Dr. Xu has been an integral member of the TAP team in continuously revising TAP strategy. Dr. Xu is highly respected by and influential to TAP partners. She serves on Research Advisory Committees for a diverse LLS TAP portfolio.Prior to joining LLS Dr. Xu spent more than 16 years working in healthcare industry including more than a decade at Pfizer. Dr. Xu has broad and in-depth experience in drug discovery and development, especially in oncology and inflammation therapeutic areas. She had successfully led multiple projects from target validation to clinical development. Dr. Xu has published in peer reviewed journals including Nature and is the lead inventor for several patents. Dr. Xu received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego and conducted her postdoc research at the California Institute of Technology under the mentorship of Dr. Melvin I. Simon.
Vice President, Therapy Acceleration Program
Dr. Blaine Robinson joined LLS in 2011 and was recently promoted in January 2025 to Vice President of the Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP), the venture philanthropy initiative aiming to accelerate high-risk, innovative blood cancer therapeutics. He works closely with the entire LLS Research team and is responsible for identifying and evaluating potential blood cancer drug development opportunities for investment. He has over 20 years of research, drug development and project management experience in the blood cancer field. During his tenure at LLS, he has managed over 25 TAP partnerships and has helped perform scientific due diligence on hundreds of opportunities for TAP.Prior to LLS, Dr. Robinson worked at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where he completed a two year postdoctoral fellowship and continued on as a Research Associate for five years where he was in charge of all research laboratory operations and project management duties in a pediatric leukemia laboratory. He received his Ph.D. degree in Pharmacology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.