TRELLIS BIOSCIENCE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Antibody Discovery
Dr. Estellés is currently leading the CellSpot team at Trellis. She holds a B.S. in Pharmacy from the University of Valencia, and a Ph.D in Medicine from the University of Alicante, both in Spain. She did post-graduate work in cell and molecular biology at Harvard Medical School, Stanford University and College de France in Paris.
She has 16 years of experience in various aspects of antibody development from antibody discovery to generating commercial cell lines for antibody production. She has worked in small start-up companies, such as Reconstructive Technologies, Anosys, Genitope and SeaLane Biotechnologies, as well as at Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Leighton is an infectious disease doctor who has held clinical development and leadership roles at Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis), Roche (US Head Infectious Diseases and Inflammation), and Chiron. He has since established his own consulting company and supported a number of early phase antibiotics and biologics, during which he was involved in the selection of lead candidates, development of regulatory strategy, interaction with regulatory authorities, and setup and conduct of ICU-based clinical studies regarding serious infections and sepsis.
He currently is a consultant to several biotech companies in the San Francisco Bay area. His clinical experience includes the following IV antibiotics: iclaprim, dalbavancin, doripenem and eravacycline. His experience with biologics includes a TNF receptor fusion protein and tifacogin. Dr. Leighton has a medical degree from the University of Mainz, certification in internal medicine from university-affiliated hospitals in Germany, a degree in pharmaceutical medicine from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and a Healthcare Executive MBA from the University of California, Irvine.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Preclinical Development
Dr. Tenorio has worked in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical sector for more than 17 years as a Research Scientist, Associate Director Preclinical Development, and most recently as a Nonclinical Pharmacology/Toxicology/Bioanalytical consultant. Dr. Tenorio has worked on developing biologics (peptides, proteins, and monoclonal antibodies) and small molecules in a variety of therapeutic areas (vaccines, inflammation, pain, autoimmune diseases, oncology, infectious diseases, Alzheimer's, and Cystic Fibrosis).
For the last 8 years he has been responsible for taking lead therapeutic candidates from preclinical to first in man (Phase 1) and follow-up clinical trials (Phase 2 and 3). He has worked at Neurex, Elan, Pepgen and KaloBios. Dr. Tenorio holds a BS in biomedical science from Texas A&M University, a DVM from the National University of Mexico, and a Masters in Preventive Veterinary Medicine from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Tenorio was an NIH post-doctoral fellow in comparative pathology and immunology at the University of California, Davis.
Mr. Anthony has spent over 44 years in the healthcare industry. He is currently the Founder/Principal of BioMentorz, a small company bio-consulting firm. He was formerly the CEO of Osprey Pharmaceuticals USA and of Pharmix (now Numerate). He has also served as a member of the Board of Vaxgen, a public US company. Prior to his CEO roles, Mr. Anthony spent over 15 years conducting biotech business development and marketing at a variety of biotech companies. He was Senior Vice President of Business Development at Saegis Pharmaceuticals (now Lundbeck). He was a key player in the buyout of Tularik (by Amgen) where he led the Business and Commercial Group. In the fifteen years prior to Tularik he was the senior executive business development officer at FibroGen, Inc., Cell Therapeutics, Inc., Inhale, Applied Immune Sciences (now at Sanofi-Aventis) and General Manager of ExViT, the AIS subsidiary focused on the delivery of ex-vivo cell therapies.
Mr. Anthony began his life sciences career at Baxter Healthcare Corporation and for 17 years held various sales, marketing and general management positions in the U.S. and internationally. He departed Baxter as Vice President of the Blood Therapy Group. Jack holds a BS in Zoology from Allegheny College and served as a U.S. Navy Officer for five years.
Job Titles:
- Executive Chairman
- Founding and Managing Partner of Easton Capital Group
John H. Friedman is the Founding and Managing Partner of Easton Capital Group. Prior to founding Easton Capital, he was the founder and Managing General Partner of Security Pacific Capital Investors, a $200-million private equity fund geared towards recapitalizations and expansion financings. Prior to joining Security Pacific, he was a Managing Director and Partner at E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., Inc., where he spent eight and a half years.
Previously, he was an attorney with Sullivan and Cromwell. During his career he has invested in six transactions that generated 100X-to-1 returns (including a company he co-founded). John currently serves on the Boards of several portfolio companies. He holds a JD degree from Yale Law School and a BA degree, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale College. He has also served as co-chairman of the President's Council at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and as a Trustee of The New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Mr. Saxe holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and a J.D. from George Washington University School of Law. He also received an L.L.M. from New York University School of Law. He worked for Hoffmann-LaRoche Inc. from 1960 to 1989 where he rose to the position of Vice President of Licensing and Corporate Development, Head of Patent Law and Associate General Counsel. He served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Synergen Inc. from 1989 to 1993 and as President of PDL Biopharma Inc. (formerly Protein Design Labs Inc.), a leader in the field of humanization of antibodies, from 1995 to 1999.
Mr. Saxe has been a Consultant in the fields of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology since 1999, including serving as Chairman of several companies (VistaGen Therapeutics, Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Lumos Pharma, SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Iconix Biosciences, Entelos, POINT Biomedical). He has been a Director of numerous additional companies, notably including: Incyte Genomics, Insite Vision, Questcor, Durect, and Sciele Pharmaceuticals.
Job Titles:
- CSO
- Founder
- Senior Vice President
Dr. Kauvar is an entrepreneur and scientist who founded Trellis and was previously the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Telik, a small molecule drug company focused on oncology. He holds 60 US patents for methods, tools and drug compounds and is one of the inventors of CellSpot, Trellis's core technology.
Dr. Kauvar holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from Yale in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. He conducted postdoctoral research at Caltech and University of California San Francisco before founding Telik. He is also a co-founder of Promedior, Inc. and of Shimojani, LLC.
Job Titles:
- CSO
- Founder
- Senior Vice President
- VP R & D
Dr. Gishizky is an entrepreneur and scientist who co-founded Sugen, where he served for 18 years in various positions including VP of Research and Target Discovery. He worked through the acquisitions of Sugen by Pharmacia and Pfizer.
He then served as CSO of Entelos, a leading in silico pathway analysis company. Dr. Gishizky received a BA from UC Berkeley, holds a PhD in endocrinology from the University of California, San Francisco, and did postdoctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Managing Partner of New Science Ventures
Mr. Somu Subramanian is the co-founder and Managing Partner of New Science Ventures. He serves on the Board of Directors of several portfolio companies. Prior to founding NSV, he was a director at McKinsey & Company where he advised leading multinational companies in the pharmaceuticals, medical devices, biotechnology, photonics, software and semiconductor industries.
At McKinsey, he was leader of the Strategy Practice, the Technology Practice, the Biotechnology Group, and the Healthcare Practice. He also served on the firm's Investment Committee and led its Equity Portfolio Committee. Somu holds a B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Dr. Ryser has held senior management positions of increasing responsibility at F. Hoffmann-La Roche, ending as Chief of Staff for the President of Global Research and Development, Dr. Juergen Drews, operating out of both Nutley, NJ and Basel, Switzerland. While at Roche, he led initiatives to assess the impact of emerging technologies on pharmaceutical research and development, and assisted in establishment and management of strategic research and development alliances. He was a member of the joint steering committee with Millennium Pharmaceuticals and a liaison for new research projects with Genentech. In 1998, he founded International Biomedicine Partners with Juergen Drews, a biotech fund whose IPO successes led to him becoming managing partner in 2000 of Bear Stearns Health Innoventures, a $212 million private equity fund.
Dr. Ryser has served on numerous boards of directors in both public and private biotechnology companies, including Arena Pharmaceuticals, Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Entelos, Raven Biotechnologies, Tolerx, and Telik, as well as in the R. Geigy Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel. Prior to joining Trellis Bioscience, Dr. Ryser was CEO at A-Cube (now part of Trellis), a biotech company focused on identifying B-cell epitopes. Prior to A-Cube he was SVP for corporate strategy at Telik, and VP of Business Development at Aridis Pharmaceuticals, a leading infectious disease company. Dr. Ryser earned his undergraduate degree in molecular biology and biochemistry and his Ph.D. in immunology at the University of Basel's Institute for Immunology.
Mr. Ellsworth has spent his career bringing high technology systems solutions to the life science industry. He joined Trellis in 2003 where he led the reduction to practice of the company's CellSpot platform. He served as the Company's CEO from 2008 to 2012.
Prior to Trellis, Mr. Ellsworth was the VP R&D and Chief Operating Officer at First Medical, a point-of-care cardiac diagnostic company acquired by Sigma in 2000. This was preceded by a role as Vice President of Engineering at Becton Dickinson where he was responsible for developing through commercial release numerous flow cytometry products, which now dominate that market. He holds a degree in bioscience technology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, a BA from Dartmouth in engineering and mathematics, and an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford University.