Jeffrey Bacha, B.Sc., M.B.A., President & CEO/cofounder
Mr. Bacha is a seasoned executive leader with nearly twenty years of life sciences experience in the areas of operations, strategy and finance. His background includes successful public and private company building from both a start-up and turn around perspective; establishing and leading thriving management and technical teams; and raising capital in both the public and private markets. Mr. Bacha serves as a Director of Sernova Corp. (TSX-V: SVA), was the founding CEO of Inimex Pharmaceuticals Inc and co-founder of XBiotech and Urigen Holdings Inc. He has also held positions as and Exec. VP Corporate Affairs & Chief Operating Officer at Clera Inc., VP Corporate Development at Inflazyme Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (TSE: IZP) and Senior Manager & Director at KPMG Health Ventures . Mr. Bacha has been recognized as a “Top 40 under 40” executive by Business in Vancouver magazine and is active in the community through volunteerism with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program and as Chairman of the Board for Covenant House Vancouver, an organization dedicated to assisting at-risk and homeless youth to re-enter society . He received his MBA(honors) from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a B.Sc. in BioPhysics/Premed from the University of California, San Diego.
Dennis M. Brown, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer/cofounder
Dr. Brown has more than twenty years of drug discovery and development experience. He has served as Chairman of Mountain View Pharmaceutical’s Board of Directors since 2000 and is the President of Valent Technologies, LLC. In 1999 he founded ChemGenex Therapeutics, which merged with a publicly traded Australian company in 2004 to become ChemGenex Pharmaceuticals (ASX: CXS/NASDAQ: CXSP), of which he served as President and a Director until 2009. He was previously a co-founder of Matrix Pharmaceutical, Inc., where he served as Vice President (VP) of Scientific Affairs from 1985-1995 and as VP, Discovery Research, from 1995-1999. He also previously served as an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard University Medical School and as a Research Associate in Radiology at Stanford University Medical School. He received his B.A. in Biology and Chemistry (1971), M.S. in Cell Biology (1975) and Ph.D. in Radiation and Cancer Biology (1979), all from New York University. Dr. Brown is an inventor on about 34 issued US patents and applications, many with foreign counterparts.
William J. Garner, M.D., M.P.H./cofounder
Dr. Garner is an experienced entrepreneur and investor and is currently a Kauffman Finalist (Class 16). He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Urigen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (URGP.PK) from December 2005 to December 2010 where he moved a procedure-based drug from a university license to a phase II multi-center clinical trial which achieved statistical significance on all end points in Painful Bladder Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis. He is founder and managing director of EGB Advisors, LLC, a pharmaceutical commercialization boutique. Through this entity, Dr. Garner has worked on a number of pharmaceutical business transactions and has raised financing for both Urigen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and another company that he founded, Inverseon, Inc., which is developing a novel therapy for smoking cessation, asthma and other pulmonary diseases. Before this, Dr. Garner worked in medical affairs at Hoffmann LaRoche in oncology. Prior to Roche, Dr. Garner was in the venture capital department at Paramount Capital Investments in New York City. He serves on the boards of ImmunoGenetix in Kansas City and Angel Investor Card in San Francisco. Dr. Garner has a Master of Public Health from Harvard and received his M.D. degree from New York Medical College. Dr. Garner did residency training in Anatomic Pathology at Columbia-Presbyterian and is currently a licensed physician in the State of New York.
Victor Levin, M.D., Advisor
Dr. Levin is a practicing physician at the Kaiser Permanente Redwood City Hospital Department of Neurosurgery with an emphasis on primary malignant brain tumors. He is a Professor Emeritus and former Chair the Department of Neuro-Oncology for The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Levin has previously held positions as Staff Associate in the Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, where he was involved in some of the original research related to VAL-083 and as a Professor in the Departments of Neurological Surgery, Neurology, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Pharmacology at the University of California San Francisco. Dr. Levin holds B.S. and M.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and neurology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
James Perry, M.D., F.R.C.P.C., Advisor
Dr. Perry is the Chair the Canadian Brain Tumour Consortium, a Canadian national not-for-profit investigator network where he currently lead or co-lead several international collaborative clinical trials. He is an Associate Scientist, Clinical Integrative Biology in the Odette Cancer Research Program at Sunnybrook Research Institute and an Associate Professor, Department of Medicine – Division of Neurology at the University of Toronto, where is research focuses on brain tumor treatment and patient care. Dr. Perry received his medical degree from the University of Toronto and is a neurology Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (FRCPC).
Ms. Christine Charette, Advisor
Ms. Christine Charette served as a leading Canadian Equity Analyst of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals Research for BMO Capital Markets Canada where she was selected as a top life sciences analyst by Brendan Wood International several years in a row. She brings a broad range of experience in evaluating technologies and business strategies on behalf of institutional and retail investors.