Are you ready for INVESTORS HANGOUT'S MAAAAIIIN E
Post# of 30028
Posted On: 03/14/2015 2:39:36 PM
Are you ready for INVESTORS HANGOUT'S MAAAAIIIN Event OF The EVENING
IIIIIIT'sssss TIIIIMEEEE, for the. Championship AMBS Belt on the line
In this Corner
The DiaperGang
Trained in:
The I Want it & I Want It Now!!! Strategy
Making up self imposed times lines
Hating their investment, not trusting the CEO
& the progress the company had made so far
and yet STILL buying shares
Rash decisions
Strong Convictions to their "Opinions"
Creating non-company goals, statements, timelines
Repeating falsehoods over and over and over hoping people take them as Facts
Running wild on other message board & social
media screaming insults not staying here and debating the facts
Fear Mongering
Cornered by & willing to trust the knowledge & experience of
An unemployed Insurance Sale Rep
Uhhh, some, uhhh other uhhh guy uhhh
Another sales guy that posts incessantly
Some guy that put Expert in his Handle
ANNNNNNND In This Corner
The GroupThink Bully Gang
Trained in:
A Long Term Investment Outlook
Analyzing at Facts
Being comfortable with their investment
Critical thought
IQ
Due Diligence
Showing Proof of Facts
Wiling to debate facts here
Letting the CEO and management do their job
Cornerd by & Willing to trust the knowledge & experience of
Scientific Advisory Board
Lawrence M. Schwartz, PhD
Isenberg Professor of Integrative Science at University of Massachusetts
Scientist at Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute
Professor of Biology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Adjunct Faculty in Pathology, BayState Medical Center
Dr. Lawrence M. Schwartz was appointed in 2010 as the the first Isenberg Professor of Integrative Science at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Schwartz is a Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Massachusetts, as well as the Founding Director of the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute in Springfield MA where he served as Scientific Director from 2004 until 2010. He also served as the the Director of the Center of Excellence in Apoptosis. His laboratory examines the molecular mechanisms that mediate cell death during normal development and in pathology. One avenue of research focuses in Acheron, a novel gene cloned in the Schwartz laboratory that regulates the differentiation and death of skeletal muscle, and may play a role in the metastatic behaviors of some soft tissue tumors. A second line of investigation examines the role of ubiquiton E3 ligases Parkin and Human Homolog of Ariadne-1 in dopaminergic neuron survival.
William Marks, MD
Associate Professor of Neurology, UCSF Medical Center
Director, Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Care Center (PADRECC)
San Francisco Veteran's Affairs Medical Center
Dr. William Marks, a specialist in epilepsy and movement disorders, has extensive experience in treating Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders with brain stimulators. He earned a medical degree at Johns Hopkins University and completed a residency and a fellowship in neurology at UCSF Medical Center. He currently is medical director of the UCSF Center for the Surgical Treatment of Movement Disorders. At the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco, he is director of the Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center and the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center.
John W. Commissiong, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Commissiong has served as the Chief Scientific Officer and a Director of Amarantus since co-founding the company in 2008. Prior to Amarantus, Dr. Commissiong served as the CSO of Neurotrophics, Inc. and Prescient Neuropharma, Inc. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Commissiong has been focused on the discovery of novel neurotrophic factors for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases as well as understanding the fundamental underlying biology of protoplasmic type-1 astrocytes that secrete neurotrophic factors. He was Chief of the Neural Transplantation Unit, NINDS-NIH, from 1989-94 where his research focused on identifying therapeutic approaches to spinal cord injury. Dr. Commissiong was Head of the Neurotrophic Factors Group, NINDS-NIH, from 1994-97 where he focused on developing technologies to systematically identify novel neurotrophic factors with applications for specific Central Nervous System disorders. He co-founded Prescient Neuropharma in 1999, and discovered MANF in 2003. MANF is currently in preclinical development for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The work pioneered by Dr. Commissiong has led to significant advancements in the field of astrocyte-neuron biology. Dr. Commissiong believes that a fundamental understanding of astrocyte-neuron interactions in the Central Nervous System will lead to a new generation of therapies to treat brain-related disorders.
Dr. Commissiong did his Postdoctoral work in the Lab Preclin Pharmac, NIMH-NIH, concentrating on the application of quadrupole mass spectrometry in the analysis of neurotransmitters. He holds a Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from the University of Southampton, an M.Sc. in Biochemical Pharmacology from the University of Southampton, and a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from the University of the West Indies.
Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnostics SAB
Jeffrey L. Cummings, M.D., Sc.D.
Dr. Cummings is a leading expert in neuropsychiatry of neurologic disorders, biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases, and an experienced clinical trialist with expertise in trial design and analysis, global trial implementation, and trial outcome measures. He is Director, Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, Nevada and Cleveland, Ohio. Additionally he is the Camille and Larry Ruvo Chair of the Neurological Institute of Cleveland Clinic and Professor of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Cummings is the author of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) which is the most commonly used tool for clinical trials characterizing behavioral disturbances in dementia syndromes.
Dr. Cummings’ research and leadership contributions in the field of Alzheimer’s disease have been recognized through the Henderson Award of the American Geriatrics Society (2006), the Research Award of the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Research Foundation (2008), and the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Award of the national Alzheimer’s Association (2008). In 2010, he received the Legacy Award from the Ticki Wilkerson-Kassel Movement Therapy Foundation and was honored by the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry with their Distinguished Scientist Award. In 2011, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science by his alma mater, The University of Wyoming and was recognized for his “Lifetime of Medical Achievement” in Healthcare Headliners, a special publication of Las Vegas Inc. magazine (September 2011).
Dr. Cummings was featured in GQ (June 2009), Vogue (September 2009) and Vanity Fair (September 2009) as a “Rockstar of Science.” Dr. Cummings was formerly Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at UCLA, director of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA, and director of the Deane F. Johnson Center for Neurotherapeutics at UCLA. He is past president of the Behavioral Neurology Society and of the American Neuropsychiatric Association. Dr. Cummings has authored or edited over 38 books and published 650 peer- reviewed papers.
Robert A. Stern, Ph.D.
Dr. Stern’s major focus of research expertise is on the long-term effects of repetitive brain trauma in athletes, including the neurodegenerative disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). He is a Professor of neurology, neurosurgery, anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine, Director of the Clinical Core of the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and Director of Clinical Research for the CTE Center at Boston University. Both the NIH and the Department of Defense have funded his work on developing methods of detecting and diagnosing CTE during life, as well as examining potential genetic and other risk factors for this disease. Dr. Stern’s other major areas of funded research include the assessment and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the cognitive effects of chemotherapy in the elderly, thyroid-brain relationships, and driving and dementia. He has published on various aspects of cognitive assessment and is the senior author of many widely used neuropsychological tests, including the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB).
Dr. Stern was formerly on the faculty at University of North Carolina, where he was the Associate Director of the NIMH-funded Mental Health Clinical Research Center, and Director of the Neurobehavioral Assessment Core. He was also on the faculty at Brown Medical School, where he was Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, as well as Director of Neuropsychology and the Memory and Cognitive Assessment Program at Rhode Island Hospital. Dr. Stern has received several NIH and other national grants and has published over 250 journal articles, chapters, and abstracts. He is a Fellow of both the American Neuropsychiatric Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology. He is on several editorial boards and serves on the Medical and Scientific Advisory Boards of the MA/NH Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and the Sports Legacy Institute. Dr. Stern is also a member of the Mackey-White Traumatic Brain Injury Committee of the NFL Players Association. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging and frequently appears in national and international print and broadcast media for his work on CTE and AD.
Paula T. Trzepacz, M.D.
Dr. Trzepacz is an international expert in delirium, with extensive psychiatric clinical experience in the assessment and management of neurological disorders in Geriatrics Psychiatry, Neuropsychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine including delirium, dementias and traumatic brain injury. She is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine, on the Clinical Faculty at the University of Mississippi Medical School, and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Trzepacz has been a principal investigator or research collaborator for numerous international and NIH-funded projects, including a genomics study of post-operative delirium at Duke University Medical School and research in ICU delirium at Indiana University School of Medicine.
Most recently Dr. Trzepacz was a Senior Medical Fellow at Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”) focused on amyloid assessment in evaluation of cognitive impairment and the scientific exploration of the relationship of a variety of biomarkers across the continuum of Alzheimer’s disease. Her role at Lilly neuroscience also included registration experience, Phase 2 through Phase 4 clinical programs, and leading the Phase 2 program on mibampator for agitation and aggression in AD. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, General Hospital Psychiatry, and Psychosomatics. Additionally, Dr. Trzepacz has published and lectured extensively on delirium and neuropsychiatry. She was President of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine (APM) from 2004-2005, and President of the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA) from 2009-2011, and is a Fellow of both organizations. Dr. Trzepacz is the recipient of a number of honors and awards, including the 1997 Research Award from APM, and was listed in four editions of Best Doctors in America.
Board of Advisors
Dr. Adam J. Simon
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Simon is the founder and president of AJ Simon Enterprises, LLC, a consulting firm serving pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients, including Bristol Myers Squibb. He is also the founder and chief executive officer of Cerora, Inc., a healthcare information technology company focused on developing medical devices and services to assess brain health, including Traumatic Brain Injury. Earlier in his career he spent more than 13 years at Merck Research Laboratories, where he served as a Senior Research Fellow in Integrative Systems Neuroscience and Biomarkers and in Alzheimer's disease research. He has also been a visiting scientist at Princeton University. Dr. Simon received Bachelor's degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Rochester. He received a Doctorate in Physics from the University of Chicago. He holds four patents related to medical research, and has published more than 60 articles in scientific and medical journals.
Dr. Owen Garrick
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Garrick joins Amarantus with over 20 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology experience. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Bridge Clinical Research and is President of the American Medical Association Foundation. Prior to that, he was Director of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at McKesson Corporation. Dr. Garrick was Executive Director and Co-Head of Mergers & Acquisitions at Novartis Pharmaceuticals where he oversaw company acquisitions, hybrid equity/license rights deals, mature product divestments and venture investments in biotechnology companies. Prior to Novartis, Dr. Garrick was an associate at Goldman Sachs in New York. Dr. Garrick received his MD from Yale School of Medicine and earned his MBA from Wharton School of Business. He holds an AB from Princeton University, where he has served on the national fund raising board.
Dr. Colin Bier
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Bier is managing and scientific director of ABA BioResearch, an independent bioregulatory consulting company providing expertise for technology assessment, fairness evaluation, due diligence and technical representation. Dr. Bier has extensive regulatory experience in the strategic management and development of pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics. Dr. Bier received his doctorate in experimental pathology from Colorado State University in 1978 and then pursued additional training as a Medical Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow and the Dr. Douglas James Fellow in the Department of Pathology, McGill University. Dr. Bier has extensive management experience in the biomedical sector having held senior scientific and executive management positions in the contract research industry as well as private industry and is a Senior Advisor to several venture funds and global biopharmaceutical companies. Dr. Bier is Chairman of the Advisory Committee for Technology Transfer of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, is on the scientific advisory board of three companies and serves as a director of two private companies and is a member of the Board of Trustees of Mount Sinai Hospital in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Bier will be working closely with Dr. Adam Simon, current member of the Company's Corporate Advisory Board, to finalize and implement the Company's commercialization strategy for LymPro to both maximize potential revenue and position LymPro as a potential companion diagnostic for therapeutic Alzheimer's programs.
Dr. Louis Kirby
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Kirby, is a board certified neurologist, and is a specialist in the development of drugs, medical devices, and laboratory developed diagnostics over the course of his career in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. He previously founded Pivotal Research Centers, which became one of the nation's largest free-standing private clinical research operations, before being sold in 2005 to a public company. Dr. Kirby currently consults for various biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Kirby previously worked as Chief Medical Officer at Provista Life Sciences developing blood based biomarkers for breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Kirby also previously served as Director and co-Chair at the Critical Path Institute, working with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's biomarkers in the regulatory arena, working as a liaison between academia, industry and the FDA/EMA (EMEA) where he assembled international expert panels and managed their deliberations. Currently, Dr. Kirby is co-founder of ZettaScience (ZettaScience.com), a mission-based science infrastructure company offering a global scientific data search engine for researchers at universities, government and industry that promotes deeper scientific collaboration on pressing global challenges. Dr. Kirby sits on the Board of Directors of the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SARRC) and chairs their Medical Research committee. Dr. Kirby is also an author, writing science-based thrillers including Shadow of Eden, a medical and political thriller that currently is an Amazon bestseller. Dr. Kirby obtained his undergraduate degree in honors Liberal Arts at University of Texas (Austin) and his medical degree from the University of Texas (Galveston).
Board of Directors
David A. Lowe, PhD
Dr. Lowe is President & CEO of NeuroAssets, Sarl, a Swiss-based neuroscience-focused consulting firm, providing advisory services to pharmaceutical, venture capital and biotechnology companies throughout the world. Dr. Lowe previously served as the Chief Scientific Officer of Psychogenics, Inc. and before that as Director and Chief Scientific Officer of Memory Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company pursuing innovative treatments for Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia. Prior to Memory Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Lowe served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Fidelity Biosciences Group, Fidelity Investments in Boston, MA, an investment firm focused on the healthcare industry.
He also served as President, CEO and Director of Envivo Pharmaceuticals, a Fidelity-funded pharmaceutical company pursuing new treatments for Alzheimer's disease now in Phase 3 development. Dr. Lowe also served as Vice-President and Therapeutic Area Head, Central Nervous System, at Roche Pharmaceuticals, Vice President & Global Therapeutic Area Head of Central Nervous System Research at Bayer AG., and Head of CNS Biology and Deputy Head of CNS Research at Sandoz Ltd (now Novartis). Dr. Lowe received his PhD in neurobiology from the University of Leeds, UK.
Joseph Rubinfeld, PhD
Independent Director
Dr. Rubinfeld is a renowned expert in the field of drug development, and a co-founder of Amgen, one of the most successful companies in the history of the biotechnology industry. He brings more than 40 years of biopharmaceutical leadership experience to Amarantus’ Board of Directors. Dr. Rubinfeld is currently a Board member of Regenicin, Inc. and CytRx Corporation. Earlier in his career, he served 12 years at Bristol Myers, where in addition to developing Amoxicillin and Cephadroxil, he was instrumental in licensing their original anti-cancer line of products, including Mitomycin, Etoposide, and Bleomycin. Dr. Rubinfeld is also credited with making a major scientific and public health contribution to society by inventing the first ever synthetic biodegradable detergent. In 1980, Dr. Rubinfeld was one of four co-founders of Amgen, Inc. and served as its Chief of Operations, where one of his primary efforts was the prioritization of erythropoietin (EPO) in Amgen’s pipeline due to its initial commercialization pathway under the Orphan Drug Act. In 1984, Dr. Rubinfeld won the prestigious Common Wealth Award for Science and Invention, which was a testament to his prowess for achieving major inventions, represented by the numerous patents obtained during his distinguished career. In 1991 he co-founded SuperGen, Inc., where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer until 2003 and as a Board member until 2005. He has also served as an advisor or Board member to a number of companies including AVI BioPharma and Quark Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Rubinfeld received a B.S. degree in chemistry from C.C.N.Y. and M.A. and Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University.
Donald D. Huffman
Independent Director
Chairman of the Audit Committee
Mr. Huffman currently serves as a Director of Dance Biopharm Inc., a diabetes company entering Phase 3 clinical development with an inhaled insulin program. Previously, Mr. Huffman served as the Chief Financial Officer of Wafergen Biosystems Inc., a publicly-held emerging genomic analysis company and was its Co-President from September 2011 to March 2012. Before that, Mr. Huffman served as the Chief Financial Officer of Asante Solutions, Inc., a medical device company with an approved wearable insulin pump. Mr. Huffman also served as Chief Financial Officer of Guava Technologies, Inc., a life science instrumentation company acquired by Millipore Corporation and then Merck & Co., Inc. Previous to that he served as Chief Financial Officer and principal of Sanderling Ventures, a biomedical venture capital firm. Mr. Huffman has also served as the Chief Financial Officer of three other public companies: Volcano Corporation (formerly known as EndoSonics Corporation), Microcide Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Celtrix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which was acquired by Insmed Incorporated in 2000. Mr. Huffman earned a B.S. degree in Mineral Economics from Pennsylvania State University and an M.B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He completed the Financial Management Program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Robert L. Harris
Independent Director, Compliance Officer
Mr. Harris has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Amarantus since December 2010. Harris is a retired vice president of Environmental, Health, Safety, Technical and Land Services at Pacific Gas and Electric Company,where he worked from September 1972 to January 2007. In 1985, he became the first and only lawyer in PG&E's history to argue and win a case for it in the United States Supreme Court. In so doing, he became the first lawyer in the nation to convince the Supreme Court that a corporation, like an individual, has negative First Amendment rights.
He graduated from San Francisco State University in 1965 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University Of California School of Law at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 1972. He was admitted to the California State Bar in December 1972 and argued and won a case in the United States Supreme Court in 1985. Harris also completed the Harvard Graduate School of Business Advanced Management Program and the Management Development Program at Duke University's School of Business.
Iain Ross
Independent Director
Mr. Ross is currently Chairman of the Board of Ark Therapeutics Group PLC and Biomer Technology Ltd, and is also a Non-Executive Director of Benitec Biopharma Limited , Novogen Limited and Tissue Therapies Ltd each of which is traded on the Australian Securities Exchange. He is a Qualified Chartered Director of the UK Institute of Directors and Vice Chairman of the Council of Royal Holloway, University of London.
Following a career with multi-national companies including Sandoz, Fisons plc and Hoffman La Roche, Mr. Ross joined the Board of Celltech Group plc in 1991 and was responsible for building Celltech Biologics, the contract manufacturing division which was later sold to Alusuisse Lonza. For the last 18 years he has undertaken a number of start-ups and development stage companies as a board member on behalf of private equity groups and banks, including Quadrant Healthcare plc, Allergy Therapeutics Ltd, Eden Biodesign Ltd, Phadia AB and Silence Therapeutics plc.
Gerald E. Commissiong
President & CEO
Mr. Commissiong is President, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of Amarantus, the company he co-founded with John Commissiong, PhD in 2008. From the inception of the Company, Mr. Commissiong attracted seed capital, acquired the intellectual property rights to MANF and recruited scientific and executive talent to Amarantus to allow for the further development of the technologies. Prior to becoming CEO in October 2011, Mr. Commissiong was the Chief Operating Officer where his duties included strategic transactions, licensing, research collaborations, mergers and acquisitions, and fund raising. From August 2009 until March 2011, he served as Chief Business Officer where he was responsible for business and corporate development. Prior to co-founding Amarantus, Mr. Commissiong played professional football for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. Mr. Commissiong received a B.Sc. in Management Science and Engineering with a focus on Financial Decisions from Stanford University.
Robert Farrell, J.D.
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Farrell served as Chief Financial Officer of Titan Pharmaceuticals from 1996 to 2008, and as President and CEO from 2008 to 2010. During his tenure at Titan Mr. Farrell was responsible for all SEC filings, fund raising, financial and tax planning strategies, mergers & acquisitions, corporate partnerships, licensing transactions and financial operations, where he raised over $390M via public equity and non-dilutive financings, including seven corporate partnerships. Mr. Farrell most recently served as CFO at Sanovas, Inc. Mr. Farrell previously served as CFO, Corporate Group Vice President and General Counsel at Fresenius USA and Fresenius Medical Care where he completed 6 corporate partnership and M&A transactions totaling over $4B. Mr. Farrell also previously served as the CFO for the Institute for One World Health in San Francisco and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Prime Genomics, Inc. Mr. Farrell holds a J.D. from the University of California's Hastings School of Law.
Charlotte Keywood, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Therapeutics Division
Dr. Keywood's experience in the pharmaceutical industry includes running European and US pre- and post-registration clinical development programs across a broad range of therapeutic areas, as well as medical marketing and pharmacovigilance activities. Most recently, she was CMO at Addex Pharma, for ten years, overseeing clinical development of the company's allosteric modulator programs. Dr. Keywood served from 2001 to 2003 as medical director for Axovan, a Swiss biotech company that was acquired by Actelion in 2003. From 1996 to 2001 she was medical director at Vernalis, where she helped bring a new migraine drug, Frova frovatriptan, to the market. From 1991 to 1996 she was medical director of the European subsidiary of US biotechnology company Gensia. Dr Keywood is a cardiologist who completed her post-graduate training at St Thomas' Hospital, London.
Elise Brownell, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President of Operations and Project Management
Dr. Brownell has more than 20 years of biotechnology and pharmaceutical project management experience with a proven track record of advancing programs through clinical development. She serves as a Life Sciences entrepreneurial advisor for ASTIA, the nation's premier entrepreneurial organization focused on women-led businesses. Dr. Brownell is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Contract Pharma Magazine, and previous Chair of the Leaders Network program of Women in Consulting. She is the co-founder of ZephyrBiotech LLC, a project management firm dedicated to advancing therapeutic candidates through development to key inflection points for clients. Earlier, Dr. Brownell was a founding member, head of project management and senior director of Aerovance, Inc., a venture-backed biotechnology company spun out from Bayer Healthcare, where she created and managed effective team processes to bring product candidates into full scale clinical Phase 1 and 2 development. Prior to Aerovance, Dr. Brownell acted as head of project management for Bayer's Biotechnology Unit, where she integrated project strategies to meet therapeutic and market needs. Other roles included building and negotiating partnerships with third parties to support development programs, leading research teams through early bench-to-clinic development phases, as well as entrepreneurial investment experience with Angel’s Forum (www.angelsforum.com). Dr. Brownell received her M.S., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in biology from Yale University and her B.S. in biology from Allegheny College.
Marc E. Faerber
Corporate Controller and Vice President of Financial Operations
Mr. Faerber has over thirty years of experience with over nineteen of those in life sciences. His experience has spanned Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, and everything in between. During the past ten years Mr. Faerber has been providing financial, business and advisory services to a broad base of start-up companies primarily in the fields of cardiology, gastroenterology, orthopedics, diagnostics and biotechnology.
Mr. Faerber has extensive experience managing transactions including the establishment of international organizations throughout Europe and parts of Asia, international technology licensing and distribution, mergers and acquisitions, and numerous funding transactions including an initial public offering as well as other international business structural issues. During Mr. Faerber's career he has held various positions in finance and corporate management including CFO, CEO and Director. Mr. Faerber started his career at KPMG as a certified public accountant, and he has a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Business Administration from Providence College.
Tiffini Clark
Regulatory Operations
Ms. Clark brings over 20 years' experience to Amarantus, with over ten years of professional multidisciplinary biotech and pharmaceutical experience, primarily in regulatory, research and development. Ms. Clark recently served as Regulatory Affairs Specialist, Project Management & Regulatory Operations at Pharmacyclics. Previously, she served as Drug Safety Coordinator and Senior Archivist at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development. At Pharmacyclics, she was a team member that brought IBRUTINIB from discovery, IND and into Phase 3 clinical development and an integral member of the business development team that executed $975M BTK transaction with Janssen Biotech, Inc. (IBRUTINIB). Ms. Clark was also an integral member of business development team that completed transactions with Novo Nordisk for the Factor VIIa inhibitor, PCI-27483, and the pan-HDAC deal with Les Laboratoires Servier (ABEXINOSTAT). Ms Clark has prepared, submitted and maintained 7 IND's, 1 NDA, several Orphan Drug Applications, FDA meeting packages and Fast Track designations.
F. Randall Grimes
Head of Sponsored Research
Mr. F. Randall Grimes has more than 20 years of marketing, business development, financial and R&D leadership experience in early stage life science companies. He founded The Randall Group in 2001 to help small to medium-sized technology companies raise funds using state and federal competitive grants. He has garnered over $25 million in non-dilutive capital for clients and employers, including more than $1.5 million for LymPro Test development. Mr. Grimes has previously served as the Vice President of Technology Development at Provista Diagnostics, Inc., Vice President of Operations at RCP Diagnostics, Biomarker Technologies LLC and GW Medical Technologies LLC. Mr. Grimes has authored eight issued patents and has published articles in major technical and trade journals. He holds a B.S from University of Arizona in Material Sciences and Engineering and M.B.A from University of Michigan Business School with an emphasis in new product development and operations management.
Paul Jorgensen
Head of Diagnostics Product Development
Mr. Jorgensen is a biotechnology executive with over twenty years' experience in the areas of *in-vitro* diagnostics development, validation and manufacturing. He has worked at a number of large biotech and diagnostics firms including Boehringer-Mannheim, Chiron Corporation and the diagnostics division of Bio-Rad Laboratories. In 2000 he helped found and served as Director, Operations for AcroMetrix Corporation which manufactured products for molecular diagnostics and was a pioneer in standardizing viral load assays. The company was sold to Life Technologies in 2009. Most recently Mr. Jorgensen was Director of Development and Laboratory Operations for Tethys Bioscience where he established Tethys' CLIA clinical lab and was responsible for the launch of the company's PreDx Diabetes Risk Score product. Mr. Jorgensen has a degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of California at Davis.
Mark Wakefield
Head of Clinical Development
Mark Wakefield brings over 15 years of experience to Amarantus across large pharma, vaccines & biotech, of which the last 8+ years were focused on establishing and implementing development strategies, as Head of Clinical Development Operations at Addex Pharma SA (Switzerland), where he was responsible for the execution of multi-national (US & EU) trials. Between 2000 and 2005 he coordinated the public-private partnering between Chiron Vaccines (Italy), Norwegian Institute for Public Health and the New Zealand Ministry of Health and was responsible for the operational execution of the clinical development program, which lead to the successful development and roll-out of MeNZBTM vaccine. From 1998-2000, he was involved in running a large phase 3b cardiovascular study, for Astra, in the Netherlands.
Mr. Wakefield graduated from the University of Amsterdam, where he studied chemistry, with a specialization in biochemistry, in the section Medical Enzymology and Metabolism, E.C. Slater Institute for Biochemical Research, under Prof. J.M. Tager, with an emphasis on the routing of newly synthesized molecules and organelle formation. PhD research on neurotrophic factors during brain development, were done under Dr. R. Balázs, at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research (now NINS).
The Research Programs team, made up of PhD and MD neuroscientists paired with business-trained project managers, manages the Foundation’s research portfolio of approximately 250 active grants. This team works closely with Foundation peer reviewers to make funding decisions, direct research goals and troubleshoot issues as they arise.
Maurizio Facheris, MD, MSc
Senior Associate Director
Research Programs
Howard J. Federoff, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Federoff is Executive Dean, Georgetown University School of Medicine as well as Executive Vice President, Georgetown University Medical Center. Dr. Federoff formed and leads the US national consortium "The Parkinson's Disease Gene Therapy Study Group" whose mission is to establish a rigorous basis for moving novel gene therapeutics from preclinical studies to clinical trials.
Christopher U. Missling, MS, PhD, MBA
Dr. Missling, President and CEO of Anavex, has over 20 years of healthcare industry experience within large pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industry and investment banking. Prior to joining Anavex, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of Curis and ImmunoGen. In addition, at Aventis (now Sanofi), Dr. Missling worked as head of financial planning on all aspects of financial strategy and M&A. His career experience also includes working as an investment banker in the healthcare practice at Deutsche Bank, serving pharmaceutical, biotech, and diagnostic companies, as well as serving as the head of healthcare investment banking at Brimberg & Co. in New York.
Dr. Missling has an MS and PhD from the University of Munich in Chemistry and an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.
Tasos Zografidis, MS, PhD
Dr. Zografidis, the Vice President Clinical Operations of Anavex, has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, including 12 years at Wyeth (now Pfizer) in clinical project management and prior to joining Anavex most recently served as clinical and pharmaceutical consultant. He has been involved in more than a dozen clinical trials and has co-authored numerous publications. At Wyeth, Dr. Zografidis spearheaded population pharmacokinetics analysis and its implementation in the clinical setting and positively differentiated compounds. His work resulted in increased sales and he received several clinical awards for his accomplishments. Dr. Zografidis first joined Wyeth in 1998 as a Product Manager. During his tenure until 2010, he had increased responsibility as Medical Liaison for the transplantation, haemophilia and oncology divisions where he was instrumental in driving sales in assigned European territories.
Bernd Metzner, PhD
Bernd Metzner, PhD, a director of Anavex, is currently Chief Financial Officer of the Doehler Group, a global producer and provider of technology-based natural ingredients for the food and beverage industry with sales activities in more than 130 countries. Previously, he was Chief Administration Officer and member of the Board of Management of Bayer Schering Pharma AG, the pharmaceutical division of $100+ billion market cap company Bayer AG. In this position, Dr. Metzner had worldwide financial responsibility for the Bayer Pharma Group. During his almost 10-years with Bayer AG, Dr. Metzner also held several senior international management positions in the corporate finance organization of Bayer AG, including Chief Financial Officer of Bayer S.p.A. Italy and heading the coordination of the successful spin-off of Lanxess, a specialty chemicals group. Dr. Metzner started his career at the law firm Flick Gocke Schaumburg and has a degree in business administration from the University of Siegen. After obtaining his doctorate, he became a chartered accountant.
Elliot Favus, MD
Elliot Favus, MD, a director of Anavex, is Chief Executive Officer of Favus Institutional Research, a healthcare research firm serving institutional investors. He has been a healthcare equity research analyst on Wall Street since 2006, starting at Lazard Capital Markets and subsequently at Och-Ziff Capital Management Group. Prior to working on Wall Street, Dr. Favus was an Instructor in medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He attended the University of Michigan (BA, 1996), the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine (MD, 2001) and the NYU-Bellevue Hospital Internal Medicine Residency Program (2004). He is board-certified in Internal Medicine (2004) and has 10 years of basic science laboratory experience working on human genetics projects at Harvard Medical School, the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh.
Tom Skarpelos
Mr. Skarpelos, a director of Anavex, is a self-employed investor with 17 years of experience working with private and public companies. For the past 10 years, he has been focused on biotechnology companies involved in drug discovery and drug development projects.Mr. Skarpelos was engaged as a consultant to Anavex Life Sciences for one year effective August 2, 2010. His experience has led to relationships with researchers at academic institutes in Europe and North America. Mr. Skarpelos is a founder of Anavex Life Sciences, and is its largest shareholder.
Abraham Fisher, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Fisher has nearly 40 years of experience in drug design and discovery. He has taken lead compounds including AF102B (EVOXAC®, cevimeline HCl) from concept to approval. AF102B is the first muscarinic agonist approved for sale in the U.S. (2000) and in Japan (2001) to treat dry mouth in patients with Sjoergen’s Syndrome. Dr. Fisher is also the inventor of AF710B (renamed ANAVEX 3-71). Dr. Fisher is co-founding Chairman and President of the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases Conference,is on the scientific review board of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and is a reviewer of the Alzheimer’s Association. He is named on 21 patents worldwide, is the author of numerous peer-reviewed papers and academic book chapters and is associate editor of Current Alzheimer Research. He also serves on the editorial board of Neurodegenerative Diseases and was on the editorial boards of CNS Drug Reviews, Japanese Journal of Pharmacology and Drug Development Research. Currently Dr. Fisher is a visiting professor at the Department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Previously he was senior scientist at the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) and held faculty appointments as adjunct professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, Southern Illinois University and in the School of Medicine, Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology, University of Miami.
Norman Relkin, MD, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Relkin is an internationally recognized expert on Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. An American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology-certified neurologist, he graduated from Yale and earned MD and PhD degrees from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Relkin is an Associate Professor of Neurology at the Weill Cornell Medical College and Founding Director of the Weill Cornell Memory Disorders Program. He has 20+ years of clinical trials experience, serving as principal investigator in over 20 therapeutic studies, including multi-center trials he designed. Over the past decade, Dr. Relkin pioneered the study of naturally occurring human antibodies for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. He led all three clinical trial phases of Intravenous Immunoglobulin as a potential Alzheimer’s treatment, including the pivotal National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Baxter co-sponsored study carried out at 45 sites (US and Canada). The author of numerous publications on neurodegenerative and traumatic disorders of the brain during the past 25 years, Dr. Relkin sits on editorial boards for three scientific journals. Additionally, he has been a reviewer for NIH and funding agencies in Europe and Australia, and has been a long-standing member of the Weill Cornell Institutional Review Board. In 2012, he was elected to the Board of Directors of The American Federation for Aging Research.
Michael Gold, MD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Gold has over 20 years of experience in the clinical development of Alzheimer’s and other central nervous system (CNS) drugs, and currently serves as Vice President of the CNS practice at UCB, Inc., a global biopharmaceutical company. His background also includes leadership roles with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). At GSK, Dr. Gold was responsible for the late-stage CNS and pain portfolio. He also led several clinical Phase II and Phase III Alzheimer’s disease-related project teams. At J&J, Dr. Gold served as the Compound Development Team Leader for Galantamine, an Alzheimer’s drug, culminating in FDA approval of Galantamine CR (Razadyne® ER). Prior to joining UCB, Dr. Gold served as the Chief Medical Officer of Allon Therapeutics, where he led a large pan-US and European clinical study for a neurodegenerative disease. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Gold was an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida (USF) College of Medicine Department of Neurology and Director of the USF Memory Disorders Clinic. During this time, he was the Principal Investigator for several clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease. He has also authored multiple publications related to Alzheimer’s and dementia. Dr. Gold also holds an academic appointment as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
John Harrison, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Harrison is an internationally acknowledged specialist for design of human clinical outcome measurement in Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive impairments. Dr. Harrison has successfully integrated cognitive testing into drug development programs for many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including eight of the current ‘Fortune’ top 10 pharmaceutical companies. He is Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College in London, focusing on investigating cognitive change that may show disease progression in Alzheimer’s and other related indications. Dr. Harrison is a member of the American Psychological Association, holds Chartered Psychologist status with the British Psychological Society and Chartered Scientist status with the UK Science Council. He has authored/co-authored more than 60 books and scientific articles and has been invited as a specialist for cognitive tests at many international meetings, including the European Task Force for Alzheimer’s disease and American Alzheimer’s Association roundtable events. Dr. Harrison’s background also includes prior positions as Head of Neuropsychology at CeNeS Pharmaceuticals, Principal Consultant at CPC Pharma Services, and Principal Scientist at CogState Ltd. In addition to his current academic appointment, he is principal consultant at Metis Cognition Ltd and holds a PhD in neuroscience from the University of London.
Ottavio Arancio, MD, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Arancio is a cellular neurobiologist who has pioneered the field of mechanisms of synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease. He is Associate Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Columbia University Medical Center and The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Arancio has raised more than $25 million in grant funding and published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Dr Arancio’s honors include the “G. Moruzzi Fellowship” (Georgetown University), the “Anna Villa Rusconi Foundation Prize” (Italy), the “INSERM Poste vert Fellowship” (France), the Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation Award (2010), the Margaret Cahn Research Award (2008), the American Health Assistance Foundation Centennial Award (2007) and the Zenith Award (2007). He also founded Citta Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company for development of small molecules to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Tangui Nicolas Maurice, Ph.D.
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Maurice has spent 15 years in the field of neurosciences, including behavioral and molecular neuropharmacology, sigma receptors, neuropeptides, neurosteroids, neurotrophic factors, normal/pathological aging models for Alzheimer’s and related disorders, and behavioral phenotyping of rodent models. Dr. Maurice is a researcher at the Institut national de la sante et de la recherche medicale (INSERM) U710 at Montpellier. He has also held research positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), INSERM U336, the department of neuropsychopharmacology and hospital pharmacy at Meijo University (Nagoya, Japan), and Jouveinal Research Institute (Fresnes, France).
Jeffrey Cummings, MD
A clinical expert on the Anavex Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Jeffrey Cummings is Professor of Neurotherapeutics and Drug Development in the Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic. He is Director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas, Nevada and Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Jeffrey Cummings graduated magna cum laude from the University of Wyoming, Laramie and obtained his MD degree (with thesis) from the University of Washington, Seattle. He completed internship at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut and did his Neurology residency at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Cummings was formerly the Augustus S. Rose Professor of Neurology and Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA. He was the Director of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA and Director of the Deane F. Johnson Center for Neurotherapeutics at UCLA. Dr. Cummings has expertise in neuropsychiatric assessment, outcomes in clinical trials, clinical trial design and analysis, and global clinical trials. He is a frequent consultant to industry. Dr. Cummings has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and 30 books on Alzheimer’s disease, neuropsychiatry, and clinical trials. Dr. Cummings’ interests embrace the neuropsychiatry of neurologic disorders, biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases, and clinical trials and drug development for neurologic diseases.
Paul Aisen, MD
A clinical expert on the Anavex Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Aisen is a leading clinician and researcher in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials and is on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine’s Department of Neurosciences. His primary research interests focus on the development of new strategies for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Since 2007, Dr. Aisen has been Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study, a consortium funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to develop assessment instruments and conduct clinical trials. Dr. Aisen is Associate Editor of Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, a major international peer-reviewed journal, and sits on the editorial board of BMC Medicine. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed papers.
Corinne Lasmézas, DVM, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Professor at The Scripps Research Institute for the past 10 years and frequent TED Speaker, Dr. Lasmézas is an internationally recognized expert in the field of neurodegenerative diseases with a focus now on studying the mechanisms of neurodegeneration. Since her appointment at Scripps in 2005, Dr. Lasmézas has focused on how misfolded proteins lead to neuronal dysfunction and loss in diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and prion diseases. Additionally, Dr. Lasmézas is a reviewer for national and private funding agencies worldwide, including the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the UK Medical Research Council, and an advisor for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). She has published more than 60 original scientific papers. Earlier in her career, Dr. Lasmézas’ research provided the first experimental evidence that the prion disease “mad cow disease” had been transmitted to humans, causing variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This fatal disease belongs to the same group of age-related neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer and Parkinson’s diseases, caused by aggregates of misfolded proteins. At the peak of the mad cow crisis, Dr. Lasmézas became an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as several governmental and public health committees. Dr. Lasmézas holds a PhD in Neurosciences from the University Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris and obtained her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and Diploma of Aeronautic and Space Medicine from the University of Toulouse, France.
Jacqueline French, MD, FAAN
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, professor in the Department of Neurology at New York University (NYU), Co-Director of Epilepsy Research and Clinical Trials at NYU’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and Director of the Epilepsy Study Consortium, Dr. French is an award-winning, internationally recognized expert on epilepsy, new therapeutic interventions and clinical trial methodology. She plays an ongoing leadership role in the area of development of new therapeutics for epilepsy, including co-directing a bi-annual symposium on trial design and its implications and holds positions on committees of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), where she has also co-authored several AAN clinical practice guidelines. Broadly published, including numerous research articles, editorials and chapters, her writings have been featured in respected publications including The New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron, Neuro Image, Epilepsy Currents and Lancet Neurology. She has also edited two books on epilepsy and is an in-demand global speaker on antiepileptic drug therapeutics and related topics. Previously, Dr. French was Assistant Dean for Clinical Trials at the University of Pennsylvania, a recent President of the American Epilepsy Society, Secretary of the American Society of Experimental Neurotherapeutics, and worked with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) developing new trial designs for the approval of antiepileptic drugs. Dr. French trained in Neurology at Mount Sinai Hospital (New York), and did her fellowship training in EEG and epilepsy at Mount Sinai Hospital and Yale University. She was the recipient of the Epilepsy Foundation’s 2013 Hero of Epilepsy Award, honoring her longtime contributions to epilepsy research and clinical trials, alongside her significant impact on the epilepsy community.
Cheers
IIIIIIT'sssss TIIIIMEEEE, for the. Championship AMBS Belt on the line
In this Corner
The DiaperGang
Trained in:
The I Want it & I Want It Now!!! Strategy
Making up self imposed times lines
Hating their investment, not trusting the CEO
& the progress the company had made so far
and yet STILL buying shares
Rash decisions
Strong Convictions to their "Opinions"
Creating non-company goals, statements, timelines
Repeating falsehoods over and over and over hoping people take them as Facts
Running wild on other message board & social
media screaming insults not staying here and debating the facts
Fear Mongering
Cornered by & willing to trust the knowledge & experience of
An unemployed Insurance Sale Rep
Uhhh, some, uhhh other uhhh guy uhhh
Another sales guy that posts incessantly
Some guy that put Expert in his Handle
ANNNNNNND In This Corner
The GroupThink Bully Gang
Trained in:
A Long Term Investment Outlook
Analyzing at Facts
Being comfortable with their investment
Critical thought
IQ
Due Diligence
Showing Proof of Facts
Wiling to debate facts here
Letting the CEO and management do their job
Cornerd by & Willing to trust the knowledge & experience of
Scientific Advisory Board
Lawrence M. Schwartz, PhD
Isenberg Professor of Integrative Science at University of Massachusetts
Scientist at Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute
Professor of Biology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Adjunct Faculty in Pathology, BayState Medical Center
Dr. Lawrence M. Schwartz was appointed in 2010 as the the first Isenberg Professor of Integrative Science at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Schwartz is a Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Massachusetts, as well as the Founding Director of the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute in Springfield MA where he served as Scientific Director from 2004 until 2010. He also served as the the Director of the Center of Excellence in Apoptosis. His laboratory examines the molecular mechanisms that mediate cell death during normal development and in pathology. One avenue of research focuses in Acheron, a novel gene cloned in the Schwartz laboratory that regulates the differentiation and death of skeletal muscle, and may play a role in the metastatic behaviors of some soft tissue tumors. A second line of investigation examines the role of ubiquiton E3 ligases Parkin and Human Homolog of Ariadne-1 in dopaminergic neuron survival.
William Marks, MD
Associate Professor of Neurology, UCSF Medical Center
Director, Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Care Center (PADRECC)
San Francisco Veteran's Affairs Medical Center
Dr. William Marks, a specialist in epilepsy and movement disorders, has extensive experience in treating Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders with brain stimulators. He earned a medical degree at Johns Hopkins University and completed a residency and a fellowship in neurology at UCSF Medical Center. He currently is medical director of the UCSF Center for the Surgical Treatment of Movement Disorders. At the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco, he is director of the Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center and the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center.
John W. Commissiong, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Commissiong has served as the Chief Scientific Officer and a Director of Amarantus since co-founding the company in 2008. Prior to Amarantus, Dr. Commissiong served as the CSO of Neurotrophics, Inc. and Prescient Neuropharma, Inc. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Commissiong has been focused on the discovery of novel neurotrophic factors for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases as well as understanding the fundamental underlying biology of protoplasmic type-1 astrocytes that secrete neurotrophic factors. He was Chief of the Neural Transplantation Unit, NINDS-NIH, from 1989-94 where his research focused on identifying therapeutic approaches to spinal cord injury. Dr. Commissiong was Head of the Neurotrophic Factors Group, NINDS-NIH, from 1994-97 where he focused on developing technologies to systematically identify novel neurotrophic factors with applications for specific Central Nervous System disorders. He co-founded Prescient Neuropharma in 1999, and discovered MANF in 2003. MANF is currently in preclinical development for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The work pioneered by Dr. Commissiong has led to significant advancements in the field of astrocyte-neuron biology. Dr. Commissiong believes that a fundamental understanding of astrocyte-neuron interactions in the Central Nervous System will lead to a new generation of therapies to treat brain-related disorders.
Dr. Commissiong did his Postdoctoral work in the Lab Preclin Pharmac, NIMH-NIH, concentrating on the application of quadrupole mass spectrometry in the analysis of neurotransmitters. He holds a Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from the University of Southampton, an M.Sc. in Biochemical Pharmacology from the University of Southampton, and a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from the University of the West Indies.
Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnostics SAB
Jeffrey L. Cummings, M.D., Sc.D.
Dr. Cummings is a leading expert in neuropsychiatry of neurologic disorders, biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases, and an experienced clinical trialist with expertise in trial design and analysis, global trial implementation, and trial outcome measures. He is Director, Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, Nevada and Cleveland, Ohio. Additionally he is the Camille and Larry Ruvo Chair of the Neurological Institute of Cleveland Clinic and Professor of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Cummings is the author of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) which is the most commonly used tool for clinical trials characterizing behavioral disturbances in dementia syndromes.
Dr. Cummings’ research and leadership contributions in the field of Alzheimer’s disease have been recognized through the Henderson Award of the American Geriatrics Society (2006), the Research Award of the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Research Foundation (2008), and the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Award of the national Alzheimer’s Association (2008). In 2010, he received the Legacy Award from the Ticki Wilkerson-Kassel Movement Therapy Foundation and was honored by the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry with their Distinguished Scientist Award. In 2011, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science by his alma mater, The University of Wyoming and was recognized for his “Lifetime of Medical Achievement” in Healthcare Headliners, a special publication of Las Vegas Inc. magazine (September 2011).
Dr. Cummings was featured in GQ (June 2009), Vogue (September 2009) and Vanity Fair (September 2009) as a “Rockstar of Science.” Dr. Cummings was formerly Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at UCLA, director of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA, and director of the Deane F. Johnson Center for Neurotherapeutics at UCLA. He is past president of the Behavioral Neurology Society and of the American Neuropsychiatric Association. Dr. Cummings has authored or edited over 38 books and published 650 peer- reviewed papers.
Robert A. Stern, Ph.D.
Dr. Stern’s major focus of research expertise is on the long-term effects of repetitive brain trauma in athletes, including the neurodegenerative disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). He is a Professor of neurology, neurosurgery, anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine, Director of the Clinical Core of the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and Director of Clinical Research for the CTE Center at Boston University. Both the NIH and the Department of Defense have funded his work on developing methods of detecting and diagnosing CTE during life, as well as examining potential genetic and other risk factors for this disease. Dr. Stern’s other major areas of funded research include the assessment and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the cognitive effects of chemotherapy in the elderly, thyroid-brain relationships, and driving and dementia. He has published on various aspects of cognitive assessment and is the senior author of many widely used neuropsychological tests, including the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB).
Dr. Stern was formerly on the faculty at University of North Carolina, where he was the Associate Director of the NIMH-funded Mental Health Clinical Research Center, and Director of the Neurobehavioral Assessment Core. He was also on the faculty at Brown Medical School, where he was Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, as well as Director of Neuropsychology and the Memory and Cognitive Assessment Program at Rhode Island Hospital. Dr. Stern has received several NIH and other national grants and has published over 250 journal articles, chapters, and abstracts. He is a Fellow of both the American Neuropsychiatric Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology. He is on several editorial boards and serves on the Medical and Scientific Advisory Boards of the MA/NH Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and the Sports Legacy Institute. Dr. Stern is also a member of the Mackey-White Traumatic Brain Injury Committee of the NFL Players Association. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging and frequently appears in national and international print and broadcast media for his work on CTE and AD.
Paula T. Trzepacz, M.D.
Dr. Trzepacz is an international expert in delirium, with extensive psychiatric clinical experience in the assessment and management of neurological disorders in Geriatrics Psychiatry, Neuropsychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine including delirium, dementias and traumatic brain injury. She is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine, on the Clinical Faculty at the University of Mississippi Medical School, and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Trzepacz has been a principal investigator or research collaborator for numerous international and NIH-funded projects, including a genomics study of post-operative delirium at Duke University Medical School and research in ICU delirium at Indiana University School of Medicine.
Most recently Dr. Trzepacz was a Senior Medical Fellow at Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”) focused on amyloid assessment in evaluation of cognitive impairment and the scientific exploration of the relationship of a variety of biomarkers across the continuum of Alzheimer’s disease. Her role at Lilly neuroscience also included registration experience, Phase 2 through Phase 4 clinical programs, and leading the Phase 2 program on mibampator for agitation and aggression in AD. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, General Hospital Psychiatry, and Psychosomatics. Additionally, Dr. Trzepacz has published and lectured extensively on delirium and neuropsychiatry. She was President of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine (APM) from 2004-2005, and President of the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA) from 2009-2011, and is a Fellow of both organizations. Dr. Trzepacz is the recipient of a number of honors and awards, including the 1997 Research Award from APM, and was listed in four editions of Best Doctors in America.
Board of Advisors
Dr. Adam J. Simon
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Simon is the founder and president of AJ Simon Enterprises, LLC, a consulting firm serving pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients, including Bristol Myers Squibb. He is also the founder and chief executive officer of Cerora, Inc., a healthcare information technology company focused on developing medical devices and services to assess brain health, including Traumatic Brain Injury. Earlier in his career he spent more than 13 years at Merck Research Laboratories, where he served as a Senior Research Fellow in Integrative Systems Neuroscience and Biomarkers and in Alzheimer's disease research. He has also been a visiting scientist at Princeton University. Dr. Simon received Bachelor's degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Rochester. He received a Doctorate in Physics from the University of Chicago. He holds four patents related to medical research, and has published more than 60 articles in scientific and medical journals.
Dr. Owen Garrick
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Garrick joins Amarantus with over 20 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology experience. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Bridge Clinical Research and is President of the American Medical Association Foundation. Prior to that, he was Director of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at McKesson Corporation. Dr. Garrick was Executive Director and Co-Head of Mergers & Acquisitions at Novartis Pharmaceuticals where he oversaw company acquisitions, hybrid equity/license rights deals, mature product divestments and venture investments in biotechnology companies. Prior to Novartis, Dr. Garrick was an associate at Goldman Sachs in New York. Dr. Garrick received his MD from Yale School of Medicine and earned his MBA from Wharton School of Business. He holds an AB from Princeton University, where he has served on the national fund raising board.
Dr. Colin Bier
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Bier is managing and scientific director of ABA BioResearch, an independent bioregulatory consulting company providing expertise for technology assessment, fairness evaluation, due diligence and technical representation. Dr. Bier has extensive regulatory experience in the strategic management and development of pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics. Dr. Bier received his doctorate in experimental pathology from Colorado State University in 1978 and then pursued additional training as a Medical Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow and the Dr. Douglas James Fellow in the Department of Pathology, McGill University. Dr. Bier has extensive management experience in the biomedical sector having held senior scientific and executive management positions in the contract research industry as well as private industry and is a Senior Advisor to several venture funds and global biopharmaceutical companies. Dr. Bier is Chairman of the Advisory Committee for Technology Transfer of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, is on the scientific advisory board of three companies and serves as a director of two private companies and is a member of the Board of Trustees of Mount Sinai Hospital in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Bier will be working closely with Dr. Adam Simon, current member of the Company's Corporate Advisory Board, to finalize and implement the Company's commercialization strategy for LymPro to both maximize potential revenue and position LymPro as a potential companion diagnostic for therapeutic Alzheimer's programs.
Dr. Louis Kirby
Corporate Advisor
Dr. Kirby, is a board certified neurologist, and is a specialist in the development of drugs, medical devices, and laboratory developed diagnostics over the course of his career in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. He previously founded Pivotal Research Centers, which became one of the nation's largest free-standing private clinical research operations, before being sold in 2005 to a public company. Dr. Kirby currently consults for various biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Kirby previously worked as Chief Medical Officer at Provista Life Sciences developing blood based biomarkers for breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Kirby also previously served as Director and co-Chair at the Critical Path Institute, working with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's biomarkers in the regulatory arena, working as a liaison between academia, industry and the FDA/EMA (EMEA) where he assembled international expert panels and managed their deliberations. Currently, Dr. Kirby is co-founder of ZettaScience (ZettaScience.com), a mission-based science infrastructure company offering a global scientific data search engine for researchers at universities, government and industry that promotes deeper scientific collaboration on pressing global challenges. Dr. Kirby sits on the Board of Directors of the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SARRC) and chairs their Medical Research committee. Dr. Kirby is also an author, writing science-based thrillers including Shadow of Eden, a medical and political thriller that currently is an Amazon bestseller. Dr. Kirby obtained his undergraduate degree in honors Liberal Arts at University of Texas (Austin) and his medical degree from the University of Texas (Galveston).
Board of Directors
David A. Lowe, PhD
Dr. Lowe is President & CEO of NeuroAssets, Sarl, a Swiss-based neuroscience-focused consulting firm, providing advisory services to pharmaceutical, venture capital and biotechnology companies throughout the world. Dr. Lowe previously served as the Chief Scientific Officer of Psychogenics, Inc. and before that as Director and Chief Scientific Officer of Memory Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company pursuing innovative treatments for Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia. Prior to Memory Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Lowe served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Fidelity Biosciences Group, Fidelity Investments in Boston, MA, an investment firm focused on the healthcare industry.
He also served as President, CEO and Director of Envivo Pharmaceuticals, a Fidelity-funded pharmaceutical company pursuing new treatments for Alzheimer's disease now in Phase 3 development. Dr. Lowe also served as Vice-President and Therapeutic Area Head, Central Nervous System, at Roche Pharmaceuticals, Vice President & Global Therapeutic Area Head of Central Nervous System Research at Bayer AG., and Head of CNS Biology and Deputy Head of CNS Research at Sandoz Ltd (now Novartis). Dr. Lowe received his PhD in neurobiology from the University of Leeds, UK.
Joseph Rubinfeld, PhD
Independent Director
Dr. Rubinfeld is a renowned expert in the field of drug development, and a co-founder of Amgen, one of the most successful companies in the history of the biotechnology industry. He brings more than 40 years of biopharmaceutical leadership experience to Amarantus’ Board of Directors. Dr. Rubinfeld is currently a Board member of Regenicin, Inc. and CytRx Corporation. Earlier in his career, he served 12 years at Bristol Myers, where in addition to developing Amoxicillin and Cephadroxil, he was instrumental in licensing their original anti-cancer line of products, including Mitomycin, Etoposide, and Bleomycin. Dr. Rubinfeld is also credited with making a major scientific and public health contribution to society by inventing the first ever synthetic biodegradable detergent. In 1980, Dr. Rubinfeld was one of four co-founders of Amgen, Inc. and served as its Chief of Operations, where one of his primary efforts was the prioritization of erythropoietin (EPO) in Amgen’s pipeline due to its initial commercialization pathway under the Orphan Drug Act. In 1984, Dr. Rubinfeld won the prestigious Common Wealth Award for Science and Invention, which was a testament to his prowess for achieving major inventions, represented by the numerous patents obtained during his distinguished career. In 1991 he co-founded SuperGen, Inc., where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer until 2003 and as a Board member until 2005. He has also served as an advisor or Board member to a number of companies including AVI BioPharma and Quark Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Rubinfeld received a B.S. degree in chemistry from C.C.N.Y. and M.A. and Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University.
Donald D. Huffman
Independent Director
Chairman of the Audit Committee
Mr. Huffman currently serves as a Director of Dance Biopharm Inc., a diabetes company entering Phase 3 clinical development with an inhaled insulin program. Previously, Mr. Huffman served as the Chief Financial Officer of Wafergen Biosystems Inc., a publicly-held emerging genomic analysis company and was its Co-President from September 2011 to March 2012. Before that, Mr. Huffman served as the Chief Financial Officer of Asante Solutions, Inc., a medical device company with an approved wearable insulin pump. Mr. Huffman also served as Chief Financial Officer of Guava Technologies, Inc., a life science instrumentation company acquired by Millipore Corporation and then Merck & Co., Inc. Previous to that he served as Chief Financial Officer and principal of Sanderling Ventures, a biomedical venture capital firm. Mr. Huffman has also served as the Chief Financial Officer of three other public companies: Volcano Corporation (formerly known as EndoSonics Corporation), Microcide Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Celtrix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which was acquired by Insmed Incorporated in 2000. Mr. Huffman earned a B.S. degree in Mineral Economics from Pennsylvania State University and an M.B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He completed the Financial Management Program at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Robert L. Harris
Independent Director, Compliance Officer
Mr. Harris has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Amarantus since December 2010. Harris is a retired vice president of Environmental, Health, Safety, Technical and Land Services at Pacific Gas and Electric Company,where he worked from September 1972 to January 2007. In 1985, he became the first and only lawyer in PG&E's history to argue and win a case for it in the United States Supreme Court. In so doing, he became the first lawyer in the nation to convince the Supreme Court that a corporation, like an individual, has negative First Amendment rights.
He graduated from San Francisco State University in 1965 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University Of California School of Law at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 1972. He was admitted to the California State Bar in December 1972 and argued and won a case in the United States Supreme Court in 1985. Harris also completed the Harvard Graduate School of Business Advanced Management Program and the Management Development Program at Duke University's School of Business.
Iain Ross
Independent Director
Mr. Ross is currently Chairman of the Board of Ark Therapeutics Group PLC and Biomer Technology Ltd, and is also a Non-Executive Director of Benitec Biopharma Limited , Novogen Limited and Tissue Therapies Ltd each of which is traded on the Australian Securities Exchange. He is a Qualified Chartered Director of the UK Institute of Directors and Vice Chairman of the Council of Royal Holloway, University of London.
Following a career with multi-national companies including Sandoz, Fisons plc and Hoffman La Roche, Mr. Ross joined the Board of Celltech Group plc in 1991 and was responsible for building Celltech Biologics, the contract manufacturing division which was later sold to Alusuisse Lonza. For the last 18 years he has undertaken a number of start-ups and development stage companies as a board member on behalf of private equity groups and banks, including Quadrant Healthcare plc, Allergy Therapeutics Ltd, Eden Biodesign Ltd, Phadia AB and Silence Therapeutics plc.
Gerald E. Commissiong
President & CEO
Mr. Commissiong is President, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of Amarantus, the company he co-founded with John Commissiong, PhD in 2008. From the inception of the Company, Mr. Commissiong attracted seed capital, acquired the intellectual property rights to MANF and recruited scientific and executive talent to Amarantus to allow for the further development of the technologies. Prior to becoming CEO in October 2011, Mr. Commissiong was the Chief Operating Officer where his duties included strategic transactions, licensing, research collaborations, mergers and acquisitions, and fund raising. From August 2009 until March 2011, he served as Chief Business Officer where he was responsible for business and corporate development. Prior to co-founding Amarantus, Mr. Commissiong played professional football for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. Mr. Commissiong received a B.Sc. in Management Science and Engineering with a focus on Financial Decisions from Stanford University.
Robert Farrell, J.D.
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Farrell served as Chief Financial Officer of Titan Pharmaceuticals from 1996 to 2008, and as President and CEO from 2008 to 2010. During his tenure at Titan Mr. Farrell was responsible for all SEC filings, fund raising, financial and tax planning strategies, mergers & acquisitions, corporate partnerships, licensing transactions and financial operations, where he raised over $390M via public equity and non-dilutive financings, including seven corporate partnerships. Mr. Farrell most recently served as CFO at Sanovas, Inc. Mr. Farrell previously served as CFO, Corporate Group Vice President and General Counsel at Fresenius USA and Fresenius Medical Care where he completed 6 corporate partnership and M&A transactions totaling over $4B. Mr. Farrell also previously served as the CFO for the Institute for One World Health in San Francisco and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Prime Genomics, Inc. Mr. Farrell holds a J.D. from the University of California's Hastings School of Law.
Charlotte Keywood, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Therapeutics Division
Dr. Keywood's experience in the pharmaceutical industry includes running European and US pre- and post-registration clinical development programs across a broad range of therapeutic areas, as well as medical marketing and pharmacovigilance activities. Most recently, she was CMO at Addex Pharma, for ten years, overseeing clinical development of the company's allosteric modulator programs. Dr. Keywood served from 2001 to 2003 as medical director for Axovan, a Swiss biotech company that was acquired by Actelion in 2003. From 1996 to 2001 she was medical director at Vernalis, where she helped bring a new migraine drug, Frova frovatriptan, to the market. From 1991 to 1996 she was medical director of the European subsidiary of US biotechnology company Gensia. Dr Keywood is a cardiologist who completed her post-graduate training at St Thomas' Hospital, London.
Elise Brownell, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President of Operations and Project Management
Dr. Brownell has more than 20 years of biotechnology and pharmaceutical project management experience with a proven track record of advancing programs through clinical development. She serves as a Life Sciences entrepreneurial advisor for ASTIA, the nation's premier entrepreneurial organization focused on women-led businesses. Dr. Brownell is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Contract Pharma Magazine, and previous Chair of the Leaders Network program of Women in Consulting. She is the co-founder of ZephyrBiotech LLC, a project management firm dedicated to advancing therapeutic candidates through development to key inflection points for clients. Earlier, Dr. Brownell was a founding member, head of project management and senior director of Aerovance, Inc., a venture-backed biotechnology company spun out from Bayer Healthcare, where she created and managed effective team processes to bring product candidates into full scale clinical Phase 1 and 2 development. Prior to Aerovance, Dr. Brownell acted as head of project management for Bayer's Biotechnology Unit, where she integrated project strategies to meet therapeutic and market needs. Other roles included building and negotiating partnerships with third parties to support development programs, leading research teams through early bench-to-clinic development phases, as well as entrepreneurial investment experience with Angel’s Forum (www.angelsforum.com). Dr. Brownell received her M.S., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in biology from Yale University and her B.S. in biology from Allegheny College.
Marc E. Faerber
Corporate Controller and Vice President of Financial Operations
Mr. Faerber has over thirty years of experience with over nineteen of those in life sciences. His experience has spanned Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, and everything in between. During the past ten years Mr. Faerber has been providing financial, business and advisory services to a broad base of start-up companies primarily in the fields of cardiology, gastroenterology, orthopedics, diagnostics and biotechnology.
Mr. Faerber has extensive experience managing transactions including the establishment of international organizations throughout Europe and parts of Asia, international technology licensing and distribution, mergers and acquisitions, and numerous funding transactions including an initial public offering as well as other international business structural issues. During Mr. Faerber's career he has held various positions in finance and corporate management including CFO, CEO and Director. Mr. Faerber started his career at KPMG as a certified public accountant, and he has a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Business Administration from Providence College.
Tiffini Clark
Regulatory Operations
Ms. Clark brings over 20 years' experience to Amarantus, with over ten years of professional multidisciplinary biotech and pharmaceutical experience, primarily in regulatory, research and development. Ms. Clark recently served as Regulatory Affairs Specialist, Project Management & Regulatory Operations at Pharmacyclics. Previously, she served as Drug Safety Coordinator and Senior Archivist at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development. At Pharmacyclics, she was a team member that brought IBRUTINIB from discovery, IND and into Phase 3 clinical development and an integral member of the business development team that executed $975M BTK transaction with Janssen Biotech, Inc. (IBRUTINIB). Ms. Clark was also an integral member of business development team that completed transactions with Novo Nordisk for the Factor VIIa inhibitor, PCI-27483, and the pan-HDAC deal with Les Laboratoires Servier (ABEXINOSTAT). Ms Clark has prepared, submitted and maintained 7 IND's, 1 NDA, several Orphan Drug Applications, FDA meeting packages and Fast Track designations.
F. Randall Grimes
Head of Sponsored Research
Mr. F. Randall Grimes has more than 20 years of marketing, business development, financial and R&D leadership experience in early stage life science companies. He founded The Randall Group in 2001 to help small to medium-sized technology companies raise funds using state and federal competitive grants. He has garnered over $25 million in non-dilutive capital for clients and employers, including more than $1.5 million for LymPro Test development. Mr. Grimes has previously served as the Vice President of Technology Development at Provista Diagnostics, Inc., Vice President of Operations at RCP Diagnostics, Biomarker Technologies LLC and GW Medical Technologies LLC. Mr. Grimes has authored eight issued patents and has published articles in major technical and trade journals. He holds a B.S from University of Arizona in Material Sciences and Engineering and M.B.A from University of Michigan Business School with an emphasis in new product development and operations management.
Paul Jorgensen
Head of Diagnostics Product Development
Mr. Jorgensen is a biotechnology executive with over twenty years' experience in the areas of *in-vitro* diagnostics development, validation and manufacturing. He has worked at a number of large biotech and diagnostics firms including Boehringer-Mannheim, Chiron Corporation and the diagnostics division of Bio-Rad Laboratories. In 2000 he helped found and served as Director, Operations for AcroMetrix Corporation which manufactured products for molecular diagnostics and was a pioneer in standardizing viral load assays. The company was sold to Life Technologies in 2009. Most recently Mr. Jorgensen was Director of Development and Laboratory Operations for Tethys Bioscience where he established Tethys' CLIA clinical lab and was responsible for the launch of the company's PreDx Diabetes Risk Score product. Mr. Jorgensen has a degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of California at Davis.
Mark Wakefield
Head of Clinical Development
Mark Wakefield brings over 15 years of experience to Amarantus across large pharma, vaccines & biotech, of which the last 8+ years were focused on establishing and implementing development strategies, as Head of Clinical Development Operations at Addex Pharma SA (Switzerland), where he was responsible for the execution of multi-national (US & EU) trials. Between 2000 and 2005 he coordinated the public-private partnering between Chiron Vaccines (Italy), Norwegian Institute for Public Health and the New Zealand Ministry of Health and was responsible for the operational execution of the clinical development program, which lead to the successful development and roll-out of MeNZBTM vaccine. From 1998-2000, he was involved in running a large phase 3b cardiovascular study, for Astra, in the Netherlands.
Mr. Wakefield graduated from the University of Amsterdam, where he studied chemistry, with a specialization in biochemistry, in the section Medical Enzymology and Metabolism, E.C. Slater Institute for Biochemical Research, under Prof. J.M. Tager, with an emphasis on the routing of newly synthesized molecules and organelle formation. PhD research on neurotrophic factors during brain development, were done under Dr. R. Balázs, at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research (now NINS).
The Research Programs team, made up of PhD and MD neuroscientists paired with business-trained project managers, manages the Foundation’s research portfolio of approximately 250 active grants. This team works closely with Foundation peer reviewers to make funding decisions, direct research goals and troubleshoot issues as they arise.
Maurizio Facheris, MD, MSc
Senior Associate Director
Research Programs
Howard J. Federoff, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Federoff is Executive Dean, Georgetown University School of Medicine as well as Executive Vice President, Georgetown University Medical Center. Dr. Federoff formed and leads the US national consortium "The Parkinson's Disease Gene Therapy Study Group" whose mission is to establish a rigorous basis for moving novel gene therapeutics from preclinical studies to clinical trials.
Christopher U. Missling, MS, PhD, MBA
Dr. Missling, President and CEO of Anavex, has over 20 years of healthcare industry experience within large pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industry and investment banking. Prior to joining Anavex, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of Curis and ImmunoGen. In addition, at Aventis (now Sanofi), Dr. Missling worked as head of financial planning on all aspects of financial strategy and M&A. His career experience also includes working as an investment banker in the healthcare practice at Deutsche Bank, serving pharmaceutical, biotech, and diagnostic companies, as well as serving as the head of healthcare investment banking at Brimberg & Co. in New York.
Dr. Missling has an MS and PhD from the University of Munich in Chemistry and an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.
Tasos Zografidis, MS, PhD
Dr. Zografidis, the Vice President Clinical Operations of Anavex, has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, including 12 years at Wyeth (now Pfizer) in clinical project management and prior to joining Anavex most recently served as clinical and pharmaceutical consultant. He has been involved in more than a dozen clinical trials and has co-authored numerous publications. At Wyeth, Dr. Zografidis spearheaded population pharmacokinetics analysis and its implementation in the clinical setting and positively differentiated compounds. His work resulted in increased sales and he received several clinical awards for his accomplishments. Dr. Zografidis first joined Wyeth in 1998 as a Product Manager. During his tenure until 2010, he had increased responsibility as Medical Liaison for the transplantation, haemophilia and oncology divisions where he was instrumental in driving sales in assigned European territories.
Bernd Metzner, PhD
Bernd Metzner, PhD, a director of Anavex, is currently Chief Financial Officer of the Doehler Group, a global producer and provider of technology-based natural ingredients for the food and beverage industry with sales activities in more than 130 countries. Previously, he was Chief Administration Officer and member of the Board of Management of Bayer Schering Pharma AG, the pharmaceutical division of $100+ billion market cap company Bayer AG. In this position, Dr. Metzner had worldwide financial responsibility for the Bayer Pharma Group. During his almost 10-years with Bayer AG, Dr. Metzner also held several senior international management positions in the corporate finance organization of Bayer AG, including Chief Financial Officer of Bayer S.p.A. Italy and heading the coordination of the successful spin-off of Lanxess, a specialty chemicals group. Dr. Metzner started his career at the law firm Flick Gocke Schaumburg and has a degree in business administration from the University of Siegen. After obtaining his doctorate, he became a chartered accountant.
Elliot Favus, MD
Elliot Favus, MD, a director of Anavex, is Chief Executive Officer of Favus Institutional Research, a healthcare research firm serving institutional investors. He has been a healthcare equity research analyst on Wall Street since 2006, starting at Lazard Capital Markets and subsequently at Och-Ziff Capital Management Group. Prior to working on Wall Street, Dr. Favus was an Instructor in medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He attended the University of Michigan (BA, 1996), the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine (MD, 2001) and the NYU-Bellevue Hospital Internal Medicine Residency Program (2004). He is board-certified in Internal Medicine (2004) and has 10 years of basic science laboratory experience working on human genetics projects at Harvard Medical School, the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh.
Tom Skarpelos
Mr. Skarpelos, a director of Anavex, is a self-employed investor with 17 years of experience working with private and public companies. For the past 10 years, he has been focused on biotechnology companies involved in drug discovery and drug development projects.Mr. Skarpelos was engaged as a consultant to Anavex Life Sciences for one year effective August 2, 2010. His experience has led to relationships with researchers at academic institutes in Europe and North America. Mr. Skarpelos is a founder of Anavex Life Sciences, and is its largest shareholder.
Abraham Fisher, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Fisher has nearly 40 years of experience in drug design and discovery. He has taken lead compounds including AF102B (EVOXAC®, cevimeline HCl) from concept to approval. AF102B is the first muscarinic agonist approved for sale in the U.S. (2000) and in Japan (2001) to treat dry mouth in patients with Sjoergen’s Syndrome. Dr. Fisher is also the inventor of AF710B (renamed ANAVEX 3-71). Dr. Fisher is co-founding Chairman and President of the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases Conference,is on the scientific review board of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and is a reviewer of the Alzheimer’s Association. He is named on 21 patents worldwide, is the author of numerous peer-reviewed papers and academic book chapters and is associate editor of Current Alzheimer Research. He also serves on the editorial board of Neurodegenerative Diseases and was on the editorial boards of CNS Drug Reviews, Japanese Journal of Pharmacology and Drug Development Research. Currently Dr. Fisher is a visiting professor at the Department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Previously he was senior scientist at the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) and held faculty appointments as adjunct professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, Southern Illinois University and in the School of Medicine, Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology, University of Miami.
Norman Relkin, MD, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Relkin is an internationally recognized expert on Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. An American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology-certified neurologist, he graduated from Yale and earned MD and PhD degrees from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Relkin is an Associate Professor of Neurology at the Weill Cornell Medical College and Founding Director of the Weill Cornell Memory Disorders Program. He has 20+ years of clinical trials experience, serving as principal investigator in over 20 therapeutic studies, including multi-center trials he designed. Over the past decade, Dr. Relkin pioneered the study of naturally occurring human antibodies for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. He led all three clinical trial phases of Intravenous Immunoglobulin as a potential Alzheimer’s treatment, including the pivotal National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Baxter co-sponsored study carried out at 45 sites (US and Canada). The author of numerous publications on neurodegenerative and traumatic disorders of the brain during the past 25 years, Dr. Relkin sits on editorial boards for three scientific journals. Additionally, he has been a reviewer for NIH and funding agencies in Europe and Australia, and has been a long-standing member of the Weill Cornell Institutional Review Board. In 2012, he was elected to the Board of Directors of The American Federation for Aging Research.
Michael Gold, MD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Gold has over 20 years of experience in the clinical development of Alzheimer’s and other central nervous system (CNS) drugs, and currently serves as Vice President of the CNS practice at UCB, Inc., a global biopharmaceutical company. His background also includes leadership roles with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). At GSK, Dr. Gold was responsible for the late-stage CNS and pain portfolio. He also led several clinical Phase II and Phase III Alzheimer’s disease-related project teams. At J&J, Dr. Gold served as the Compound Development Team Leader for Galantamine, an Alzheimer’s drug, culminating in FDA approval of Galantamine CR (Razadyne® ER). Prior to joining UCB, Dr. Gold served as the Chief Medical Officer of Allon Therapeutics, where he led a large pan-US and European clinical study for a neurodegenerative disease. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Gold was an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida (USF) College of Medicine Department of Neurology and Director of the USF Memory Disorders Clinic. During this time, he was the Principal Investigator for several clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease. He has also authored multiple publications related to Alzheimer’s and dementia. Dr. Gold also holds an academic appointment as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
John Harrison, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Harrison is an internationally acknowledged specialist for design of human clinical outcome measurement in Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive impairments. Dr. Harrison has successfully integrated cognitive testing into drug development programs for many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including eight of the current ‘Fortune’ top 10 pharmaceutical companies. He is Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College in London, focusing on investigating cognitive change that may show disease progression in Alzheimer’s and other related indications. Dr. Harrison is a member of the American Psychological Association, holds Chartered Psychologist status with the British Psychological Society and Chartered Scientist status with the UK Science Council. He has authored/co-authored more than 60 books and scientific articles and has been invited as a specialist for cognitive tests at many international meetings, including the European Task Force for Alzheimer’s disease and American Alzheimer’s Association roundtable events. Dr. Harrison’s background also includes prior positions as Head of Neuropsychology at CeNeS Pharmaceuticals, Principal Consultant at CPC Pharma Services, and Principal Scientist at CogState Ltd. In addition to his current academic appointment, he is principal consultant at Metis Cognition Ltd and holds a PhD in neuroscience from the University of London.
Ottavio Arancio, MD, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Arancio is a cellular neurobiologist who has pioneered the field of mechanisms of synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease. He is Associate Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Columbia University Medical Center and The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Arancio has raised more than $25 million in grant funding and published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Dr Arancio’s honors include the “G. Moruzzi Fellowship” (Georgetown University), the “Anna Villa Rusconi Foundation Prize” (Italy), the “INSERM Poste vert Fellowship” (France), the Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation Award (2010), the Margaret Cahn Research Award (2008), the American Health Assistance Foundation Centennial Award (2007) and the Zenith Award (2007). He also founded Citta Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company for development of small molecules to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Tangui Nicolas Maurice, Ph.D.
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Maurice has spent 15 years in the field of neurosciences, including behavioral and molecular neuropharmacology, sigma receptors, neuropeptides, neurosteroids, neurotrophic factors, normal/pathological aging models for Alzheimer’s and related disorders, and behavioral phenotyping of rodent models. Dr. Maurice is a researcher at the Institut national de la sante et de la recherche medicale (INSERM) U710 at Montpellier. He has also held research positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), INSERM U336, the department of neuropsychopharmacology and hospital pharmacy at Meijo University (Nagoya, Japan), and Jouveinal Research Institute (Fresnes, France).
Jeffrey Cummings, MD
A clinical expert on the Anavex Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Jeffrey Cummings is Professor of Neurotherapeutics and Drug Development in the Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic. He is Director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas, Nevada and Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Jeffrey Cummings graduated magna cum laude from the University of Wyoming, Laramie and obtained his MD degree (with thesis) from the University of Washington, Seattle. He completed internship at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut and did his Neurology residency at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Cummings was formerly the Augustus S. Rose Professor of Neurology and Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA. He was the Director of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA and Director of the Deane F. Johnson Center for Neurotherapeutics at UCLA. Dr. Cummings has expertise in neuropsychiatric assessment, outcomes in clinical trials, clinical trial design and analysis, and global clinical trials. He is a frequent consultant to industry. Dr. Cummings has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and 30 books on Alzheimer’s disease, neuropsychiatry, and clinical trials. Dr. Cummings’ interests embrace the neuropsychiatry of neurologic disorders, biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases, and clinical trials and drug development for neurologic diseases.
Paul Aisen, MD
A clinical expert on the Anavex Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Aisen is a leading clinician and researcher in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials and is on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine’s Department of Neurosciences. His primary research interests focus on the development of new strategies for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Since 2007, Dr. Aisen has been Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study, a consortium funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to develop assessment instruments and conduct clinical trials. Dr. Aisen is Associate Editor of Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, a major international peer-reviewed journal, and sits on the editorial board of BMC Medicine. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed papers.
Corinne Lasmézas, DVM, PhD
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Professor at The Scripps Research Institute for the past 10 years and frequent TED Speaker, Dr. Lasmézas is an internationally recognized expert in the field of neurodegenerative diseases with a focus now on studying the mechanisms of neurodegeneration. Since her appointment at Scripps in 2005, Dr. Lasmézas has focused on how misfolded proteins lead to neuronal dysfunction and loss in diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and prion diseases. Additionally, Dr. Lasmézas is a reviewer for national and private funding agencies worldwide, including the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the UK Medical Research Council, and an advisor for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). She has published more than 60 original scientific papers. Earlier in her career, Dr. Lasmézas’ research provided the first experimental evidence that the prion disease “mad cow disease” had been transmitted to humans, causing variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This fatal disease belongs to the same group of age-related neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer and Parkinson’s diseases, caused by aggregates of misfolded proteins. At the peak of the mad cow crisis, Dr. Lasmézas became an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as several governmental and public health committees. Dr. Lasmézas holds a PhD in Neurosciences from the University Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris and obtained her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and Diploma of Aeronautic and Space Medicine from the University of Toulouse, France.
Jacqueline French, MD, FAAN
A member of the Scientific Advisory Board, professor in the Department of Neurology at New York University (NYU), Co-Director of Epilepsy Research and Clinical Trials at NYU’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and Director of the Epilepsy Study Consortium, Dr. French is an award-winning, internationally recognized expert on epilepsy, new therapeutic interventions and clinical trial methodology. She plays an ongoing leadership role in the area of development of new therapeutics for epilepsy, including co-directing a bi-annual symposium on trial design and its implications and holds positions on committees of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), where she has also co-authored several AAN clinical practice guidelines. Broadly published, including numerous research articles, editorials and chapters, her writings have been featured in respected publications including The New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron, Neuro Image, Epilepsy Currents and Lancet Neurology. She has also edited two books on epilepsy and is an in-demand global speaker on antiepileptic drug therapeutics and related topics. Previously, Dr. French was Assistant Dean for Clinical Trials at the University of Pennsylvania, a recent President of the American Epilepsy Society, Secretary of the American Society of Experimental Neurotherapeutics, and worked with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) developing new trial designs for the approval of antiepileptic drugs. Dr. French trained in Neurology at Mount Sinai Hospital (New York), and did her fellowship training in EEG and epilepsy at Mount Sinai Hospital and Yale University. She was the recipient of the Epilepsy Foundation’s 2013 Hero of Epilepsy Award, honoring her longtime contributions to epilepsy research and clinical trials, alongside her significant impact on the epilepsy community.
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