VISCIENT BIOSCIENCES - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Leader
• Member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation
• Vice Chancellor, Health Sciences / University of California

David Brenner, M.D., a distinguished physician-scientist, is Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, since February 2007. In this role, Dr. Brenner leads the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Wertheim School of Public Health, UCSD Medical Center and UCSD Medical Group. He has oversight of over 1400 faculty, 7,500 staff; over 800 medical and pharmacy students, and a health system that cares for approximately 35,000 inpatients and 850,000 outpatients annually. The annual budget of Health Sciences under Dr. Brenner has grown to $3.2 billion, including $750 million in research grant funding. Dr. Brenner is a leader in the field of gastroenterological research, specializing in diseases of the liver. He is widely respected as a translational scientist whose work bridges the laboratory and clinical settings. He has focused on understanding the molecular pathogenesis of fibrotic liver disease and the genetic basis of liver disorders as the foundation for improving prevention and treatment of liver disease. He is recognized as an outstanding clinician and teacher. For five years he was Editor-in-Chief of Gastroenterology, the premier journal in the field. He was recruited to UC San Diego from the Columbia University Medical Center College of Physicians and Surgeons; where from 2003-2007 he was Samuel Bard Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine, a Member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, a Member of the Columbia University Institute of Nutrition, and Physician-in-Chief of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia. He earned his M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine. After completing his residency at Yale-New Haven Medical Center, he served as a research associate in the Genetics and Biochemistry Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. He first joined UC San Diego in 1985 as a gastroenterology fellow, later joining the medical school faculty, and serving as a physician at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. He also was recognized as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and a Clinical Investigator in the VA system. In 1992 he became Professor and Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continued to earn accolades for his patient care and research. Dr. Brenner is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, for which he was the president, the American College of Physicians, the American Clinical and Climatological Association, and the National Academy of Medicine. He currently serves on the board of directors of UCSD Athletics, the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, the Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, CONNECT, the San Diego Opera, and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. He also serves on numerous editorial boards and scientific advisory boards.

Job Titles:

• Founding Director of the UCSD NAFLD Research Center
• Professor of Medicine, Director of Hepatology, at University of California

Dr. Rohit Loomba is a Professor of Medicine (with tenure), Director of Hepatology, at University of California at San Diego. He is an internationally recognized thought leader in translational research and innovative clinical trial design in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and non-invasive assessment of NAFLD using advanced imaging modalities. Dr. Loomba is the founding director of the UCSD NAFLD Research Center where his team is conducting cutting edge research in all aspects of NAFLD including non-invasive biomarkers, genetics, epidemiology, clinical trial design, imaging end-points, and integrated OMICs using microbiome, metabolome and lipidome. This integrated approach has led to several innovative applications such as establishment of MRI-PDFF as a non-invasive biomarker of treatment response in early phase trials in NASH, which has now been adopted in more than 25 clinical trials conducted worldwide. He holds two patents on non-invasive biomarkers of NAFLD and fibrosis. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health including R01, U01, P30 and P01 grant mechanisms, Foundation of NIH, National Science Foundation as well as several investigator initiated research projects funded by the industry. He is the Principal Investigator, UCSD, for the NIDDK-sponsored NASH Clinical Research Network. He served as the elected Chair of the NAFLD, Special Interest Group of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. And is the elected member to the National Board of Directors of the American Liver Foundation. He serves on the Editorial Board of Gastroenterology, Journal of Hepatology, GUT and Nature Reviews in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He is the Deputy Editor of HEPATOLOGY, the official journal of the AASLD. Dr. Loomba has published more than 250 manuscripts and has an H-index of 78. He is among the top 1% of the globally highly cited scientists across all fields in 2019 by Web of Science. He is an elected member of American Society of Clinical Investigation.

Job Titles:

• Chief Scientific Officer
• Founder

Job Titles:

• Chief Executive Officer
• Founder

Prior to founding Viscient, Mr. Murphy co-founded Organovo, the world's premier 3D bioprinting company of which he is the former CEO and Chairman Emeritus, in 2007, and led all company operations until 2017. He co-invented the NovoGen MMX bioprinter platform (named one of TIME magazine's "Best inventions of 2010") and grew Organovo through early investments and corporate partnerships, including major alliances with Astellas and Merck. Organovo received a number of accolades including being named one of the Most Innovative companies of the year in 2012 by MIT Technology Review and 2015 by Fast Company, and Most Audacious companies in 2013 by Inc. Magazine. Organovo went public and commenced trading on the NYSE in 2013 and NASDAQ in 2016. Organovo has since focused on the development of three-dimensional liver, kidney, and cancer tissues. The most advanced program, liver tissue, has grown to encompass a range of applications from commercial use for pharmaceutical toxicology prediction to the preclinical development of human 3D liver patches for transplant patients. Prior to co-founding Organovo, Mr. Murphy spent ten years at Amgen in roles of increasing responsibility, including four years as the Global Operations Leader of denosumab, now marketed as Prolia & Xgeva ($3B+ annual sales). He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an alumnus of the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Mr. Murphy serves on the Board of the California Life Sciences Association and Adgero Biopharmaceuticals. Prior to founding Viscient, Dr. Miner held research leadership positions at Ardea Biosciences, a member of the Astrazeneca group, and Ligand Pharmaceuticals. His responsibilities at Ardea covered the Biology program as it relates to discovery, preclinical, translational and clinical development. He was Head of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Ligand Pharmaceuticals. He is a Faculty Advisor and Molecular Biology Institute Associate at San Diego State University and is a Scientific Advisory Board Member for ARTA Bioscience. His Ph.D. graduate work was conducted in Virology at Oregon State University with a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco in glucocorticoid gene regulation. He has drug discovery experience in the Inflammation, Oncology, Endocrine and Cardiovascular drug discovery therapeutic areas and his work has led to or enhanced the development of multiple marketed compounds. His target areas of expertise include Nuclear Receptors, Kinases and Transporters. He has published over 60 peer reviewed articles and book chapters and is an inventor on multiple patents.