Management
| Paul Simon, Ph. D., Augmenta Biologicals’ founder, President and CSO has conducted and directed discovery research as Group Leader, Director and VP in large and small biopharma companies for over 25 years (DuPont, DuPont Merck, Neose, Nexell, VectraMed, Morphotek, HHS-BARDA) in immunotherapy, oncology, infectious, inflammatory, and other disease areas working with small molecules, biologics, oligosaccharides and cell therapy. |  |
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| Brooke Donaghy, MBA., Director of Finance and Corporate Strategy, has over 15 years of experience in finance and marketing. For the past four years, she has advised start-ups in technology and biotech including DreamIT Ventures (a pre-seed web 2.0 venture accelerator) and Aviana Molecular Technologies (a development stage diagnostics company, where she is the Treasurer). Prior to advising start-ups, she spent over 11 years at Morgan Stanley raising capital, developing new products and introducing products to new distribution outlets as a result of mergers and acquisitions. Her last role was as a Portfolio Specialist with Morgan Stanley.s Alternative Investment Partners, a group founded in 2000 with $3B in assets that increased to $21B during her 8 year tenure, developing a $400M pipeline during her final 6 months and client specific modeling. Ms. Donaghy also owns and manages the financial operations of three small businesses with annual sales in excess of $1.5M. She has an MBA (focus Finance) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BS from the University of Pennsylvania. |
Advisors
Bernard C. Rudnick is Founder and Executive VP of KSR Associates, LLC and Managing Partner of CapGenic Advisors. He has 35 years of experience in executive-level strategy, finance, and management. He has held positions of CEO, COO, CFO, President, and Executive VP in a number of companies, has assumed multiple interim management positions while guiding companies through transition, and has been instrumental as a financial advisor to many more. Bernie has substantial experience investing and guiding investments in entrepreneurial companies and has led or co-led capital formation totaling over $270 million in the past several years. He is a founding member and principal of Mid-Atlantic Diamond Ventures, and has served on many corporate, charitable and governmental boards throughout his career. He was part of the HealthStar Communications team which planned and executed a $250M industry consolidation in the pharmaceutical services and communications sector. Bernie received his BS in Biochemistry from Pennsylvania State University and was conferred a postgraduate degree in administration at Northwood University. His educational development work has included presentations to the Wharton Executive MBA alumni group as well as guest lectures at Weidner University.
Ronald J. Saldarini, Ph.D., During his tenure as President of the global vaccine business of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (1986-1999), the company introduced several new vaccine products, including Prevnar, HibTiter, Tetramune, Acel-Imune, PnuImune 23, Meningicoccus C conjugate and Rotavirus. Subsequent to his retirement, Dr. Saldarini founded Biological Initiatives, a private consulting firm providing service to the vaccines and pharmaceutical industry. Until September, 2009, when the sale of Medarex to Bristol Myers (BMS) was concluded he served as Lead Director of Medarex, Inc. He is Second Vice Chairman and member of the Board of Trustees of Community Blood Services of Paramus, N.J. where he the Chairman of the New Jersey Umbilical Cord Blood Bank Scientific & Medical Advisory Panel. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of CTI Life Sciences, an associate at Naimark & Associates, consultants to the healthcare industry. He has been Chairman and member of the following boards, Idun Pharmaceuticals until its sale to Pfizer Inc. in 2006, Therion Biologicals, Cellegy Pharmaceuticals, Alphavax and Medavante, Inc. He has served as a consultant to several vaccine companies, three committees of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, the Malaria Vaccine Initiative and has been a member of several committees/boards as the National Vaccine Advisory Commission, the Blue Ribbon Search Committee for the selection of the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, the Board of Trustees of the National Foundation of Infectious Disease, the Immunization Advisory Council of the New York Department of Health, the Policy Board of the Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Foundation, and the Corporate Council for the Children.s Health Fund. Dr. Saldarini has a B.A from Drew University and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas.
Joy Cavagnaro, Ph. D., DABT, RAC, ATS Fellow, RAPS Fellow, is an internationally recognized expert in toxicology specializing in the design and analysis of preclinical studies to support novel technologies and products. Specific product areas of expertise include vaccines, cellular and gene therapies, animal-based and plant-based biotherapeutics, biotechnology-derived and tissue engineered products. Dr. Cavagnaro received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the UNC Chapel Hill followed by postgraduate work at Duke and Boston University Medical Centers. She has over 25 years experience in biotech spanning the CRO and biotechnology industries (VP Regulatory Affairs, Human Genome Sciences) and government (FDA/CBER). She has held leadership positions in various organizations including SOT, BIO, DIA, and RAPS. Dr. Cavagnaro currently serves on a number of scientific advisory boards and lectures globally on the importance of a case-by-case science-based approach to facilitate clinical development.
Elizabeth Song, Ph. D., has over 15 years of progressive experience in business and corporate development in both established and emerging biotechnology companies. She obtained her Ph.D. in immunology from Berkeley and then worked as an immunologist for more than a decade at The Scripps Research Institute and Chiron before becoming a business developer. She has been responsible for business development activities at companies at all developmental stages including start-up (Dios, Virologix), mid-stage (EGeen) and public companies (Lynx Therapeutics). She is currently the Vice President of Business Development at EGeen, a clinical CRO company and Advisor to several biotechnology companies, and Astia, innovative not-for-profit organization to foster women entrepreneurship.
Scott Dessain, M. D., Ph.D. Dr. Dessain is an academic entrepreneur. He is Associate Professor and Assistant Director of Clinical Research at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research. He is also the Chief Scientific Officer of Immunome, Inc., a start-up biotechnology company developing human monoclonal antibodies against infectious and other diseases by isolating "native" antibody-producing memory B cells and immortalizing them by fusion with a proprietary cell line. Dr. Dessain's NIH-supported academic research focuses on human monoclonal antibodies that target toxins of biodefense relevance for clearance from the blood, a project benefiting from a collaboration with Augmenta Biologicals. Dr. Dessain received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University and completed his medical training at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and conducted post-doctoral research at MIT before being appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Dr. Dessain is certified in Medical Oncology. He is also a member of the Main Line Health Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Michael K. O’Hara, Ph.D. worked for 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on the research and development of veterinary vaccines. As a senior scientist in Biologicals Discovery at Pfizer, Inc, he served on the Discovery Management Team, managed a team of scientists, and led multiple project teams. He was involved in the licensing and registration of multiple vaccines in the U.S. and Europe and has experience with a wide variety of vaccine technologies. Previous to Pfizer he worked at SmithKline Beecham and SmithKline Beckman. He currently functions as a consultant/subject matter expert at the Department of Health and Human Services/Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (HHS/BARDA) in the Influenza and Emerging Diseases Division. At HHS he is involved in the program management and advanced development of influenza vaccines in the U.S. Government’s pandemic influenza preparedness programs. Dr. O’Hara obtained his Ph.D. in virology/immunology at the University of Iowa, College of Medicine, and was an NCI postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine.
Bernard Selling, Ph.D. founded Impact Biologicals Inc. in 2002. Impact Biologicals produces recombinant proteins for biomedical researchers in the biopharmaceutical industry and university laboratories. Prior to founding Impact Biologicals, Dr. Selling was Director of Protein Expression in the Applied Biotechnology Division of DuPont Pharmaceuticals, where he managed protein expression activities in support of high-throughput screening, lead optimization, structural analysis (x-ray crystallography, NMR) and safety assessment for dozens of programs in five therapeutic divisions. From 1989 to 1999 Dr. Selling worked at Wyeth, initially on projects in virology (vaccines and antivirals), and osteoporosis, and later he became Director of the Core Biotechnology Department. Dr. Selling earned his bachelor's degree (cum laude) from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He conducted postdoctoral research in molecular biology at the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
William Wong, Ph. D., is a 25-year veteran of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, diagnostics and device industries. Currently, he serves as the Chief Scientific Officer at TREVENTIS Corporation, a biotechnology company focused on disease-modifying drugs and in-vivo imaging reagents for Alzheimer's Disease. Previously, he served as Chief Scientific Officer at Neuro-Hitech, Inc. Over his career he has served as a senior manager at Becton-Dickinson Corporation, E. I. Du Pont Company, and Zynaxis, Inc., Intracel Corporation, Nexell Therapeutics, Inc. and Lynx Therapeutics, Inc. Dr. Wong received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, School of Medicine in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.
Status
Proof of principle was recently demonstrated in vivo in mice. Funding, collaborations and licensing opportunities are being sought.