PHOTONIC PHARMA - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Founder
• President
• William F. Dietrich Chair

David D. Thomas holds the William F. Dietrich Chair, as Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota. He is a world leader in the development and application of site-directed spectroscopic probe methods for understanding the structure, function, and dynamics of proteins. This is a powerful approach, not only for understanding basic mechanisms that are crucial to protein physiology, but also for understanding how to control protein function and malfunction. "During the past decade, I have begun applying this biosensor technology to therapeutic development, specifically, using high-throughput screening (HTS) of small molecules for drug discovery. This process was greatly accelerated by a collaboration between my laboratory and Fluorescence Innovations, Inc. (Greg Gillispie, President), culminating in new technology that is revolutionizing the world of time-resolved fluorescence, increasing throughput in fluorescence lifetime (FLT) measurements by a factor of one hundred thousand. Fluorescence Innovations, Inc. has adapted this technology to produce the first truly high-throughput FLT plate reader, thus bringing the advantages of FLT detection (greatly improved resolution and precision) to HTS. In parallel, my lab has developed technology for engineering fluorescent protein biosensors in living cells. When combined with the new FLT plate reader, we have achieved a breakthrough in the quality, speed, and precision of small-molecule screening in drug discovery. In 2014, these results inspired us to establish Photonic Pharma LLC, a company that exploits a unique combination of biosensor engineering and fluorescence instrumentation (patent pending, based on work done by the Thomas lab), for a breakthrough in the early phase of drug discovery."

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder and Vice President of Operations​ & Business Development

Jennifer Jewell Thomas brings to Photonic Pharma over three decades of corporate and independent experience in strategic marketing management and new product development, including consumer goods, financial services, and biomedical products and services (CNS, National Marrow Donor Program - Be The Match, and Airborne).

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• Vice President of Research

Razvan L. Cornea leads research that is focused on the development and application of fluorescence-based methods for understanding the structure, function, and dynamics of protein complexes involved in the regulation of intracellular calcium homeostasis, particularly (but not exclusively) in striated muscle. "Dysregulated intracellular calcium fluxes are increasingly recognized as a hallmark of dysfunction in muscle and other cell types, and consequently a valid focus of therapeutic development. The targets I study are the SERCA pumps and the ryanodine receptor calcium channels (RyR). Both of these membrane protein complexes are prominent in the search for heart failure therapies using either biologicals or small-molecule strategies. The overall goal of my research is to further our understanding of the fundamental structural mechanisms underlying the functional regulation of SERCA and RyR, and to use this knowledge to help develop therapies for diseases of the skeletal and cardiac muscle. For many years, I have utilized the most advanced plate reader technologies to implement high-throughput features in my methods, in order to concurrently vary and monitor multiple experimental conditions. This has led to (1) high-throughput screening (HTS) methods to discover SERCA activators developed in collaboration with Dr. Thomas at the University of Minnesota (now patented), and (2) FRET-based biosensors of leaky RyR channels, developed in collaboration with Dr. Bers at University of California - Davis. These teams aim to apply these research tools to the discovery of compounds that can lead to therapies based on synergistic control of intracellular calcium uptake and release."​