Michael Christiano

Michael Christiano is the chief business officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He has over 20 years of corporate development and transactional experience in the life sciences industry, contributing to company-building efforts in both start-up biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies. During this period, he has led the design and negotiation of transformative license and collaboration agreements, mergers and acquisitions, and early-stage equity investments in promising start-up companies.

From 2017 to 2021, Christiano was a founding management team member and chief business officer of Tmunity Therapeutics, where he was responsible for establishing the CAR-T company and building out its product and platform portfolios and their associated rights. Prior to joining Tmunity, Christiano was vice president and head of transactions in global business development and licensing (BD&L) at Novartis AG. Joining Novartis in 2010, he also held head of transactions roles for Novartis's Cell & Gene Therapies Unit and the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. While at Novartis, he played an instrumental role in establishing many strategically important and innovative transactions across Novartis's oncology and cell & gene portfolio. His transactions leadership was recognized through Novartis’s President’s, Innovation, and Team Awards.

Prior to Novartis, Christiano held a series of increasingly senior BD&L positions at Millennium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Takeda); AVEO Oncology, from its start-up to IPO; and Karyopharm Therapeutics, as co-founder.

Christiano holds a B.S. from Virginia Tech and M.B.A. from Cornell.