James Sapirstein, MBA, PharmD

James Sapirstein is currently the Chairman, President, & CEO of First Wave BioPharma (FWBI:NASDAQ). He spent the first 17 years of his career working at large pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly, Hoffmann-LaRoche, and BMS. Mr. Sapirstein later joined Gilead Sciences, Inc. and lead the Global Marketing team in its launch of Viread (tenofovir). He later accepted the position of EVP, Metabolic and Endocrinology, at Serono. In 2006, he was the founding CEO of Tobira Therapeutics, which was acquired by Allergan in 2016. In 2012, he was CEO of Alliqua, Inc. Thereafter, he served as CEO of Contravir Pharmaceuticals from 2014 through 2018. Mr. Sapirstein holds a board position on Enochian Biosciences. He was Chairman of the Board for BioNJ, from Feb 2017-Feb 2019. He is also a Board Director for BIO, where he sits on the Emerging Companies Section Governing Board. Mr. Sapirstein received BS (Pharmacy) from Rutgers University in 1984 and MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1997.