Ned Sharpless, MD

Managing Director

Ned Sharpless, M.D., is the Managing Director of Hatteras Discovery, the firm’s seed-stage, company creation effort designed to discover and develop novel therapeutics and platforms from academic science.
 
Ned is a physician-scientist, entrepreneur, and former federal health leader with experience spanning cancer research, biotech innovation, and healthcare policy. He started his career on the faculty of UNC-Chapel Hill in the Lineberger Cancer Center. Ned oversaw research in aging, cell senescence, and the cell cycle. His research formed the basis of G1 Therapeutics, a company he founded that discovered, developed, obtained regulatory approval for, and commercialized the drug, trilaciclib (Cosela). Hatteras was the founding institutional investor of G1 Therapeutics, leading to a 14-year working relationship between Ned and Hatteras.
 
Ned served as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) from 2017 to 2022. While at NCI, Ned led the U.S. Government’s efforts to identify and develop biomarkers for COVID, and he provided key support to entrepreneurial programs, including the SBIR/STTR program. In 2019, Ned was Acting Commissioner of the U.S. FDA.
 
Ned earned a mathematics degree as a Morehead Scholar at UNC–Chapel Hill, followed by an honors medical degree from the UNC School of Medicine in 1993. He completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and a hematology-oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care.