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Scientific Advisory Board
Bassam Damaj, Ph.D.
Dr. Damaj is President and Chief Executive Officer of Bio-Quant, Inc., a company that seeks to translate scientific discoveries into safer, more effective treatments for people with immune and other life threatening diseases. Before joining Bio-Quant, Dr. Damaj served as President and CEO of BioSignature Diagnostics, Inc. He also served as the Group Leader for the Office of New Target Intelligence and a Group Leader for multiple immunological and inflammatory disease programs at Tanabe Research Laboratories USA, Inc. Previous appointments included serving as a senior scientist and a member of the senior staff board of the drug discovery department at New Jersey-based Pharmacopeia Inc. He also was a visiting scientist at Genentech Inc., Pfizer Inc. and the NIH (NIAID). Dr. Damaj is the inventor of over 12 patents and authored many peer reviewed publications. Dr. Damaj has also been a consultant to many companies including General Atomics, Diazyme, Genentech, Primedica, Celltek Biotechnologies, and Virocell. He is the co-founder of Celltek Biotechnologies, Biosignature Diagnostics and Mina Holdings. Dr. Damaj is the inventor of the AMT technology that won a U.S. Congress award for the Anthraz Mulitplex Diagnostic Test.
Dr. Christopher L. Marsh, M.D., F.A.C.S
Dr. Marsh is the chief of the Organ Transplantation Service in the Division of General Surgery & Organ Transplantation and Co-Director of the Center for Organ and Cell Transplantation at Scripps Green Hospital. Previously, Dr. Marsh was associate professor of surgery and urology, Director of the Kidney/ Pancreas Transplantation Program and associate head of the Division of Organ Transplantation at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Dr. Marsh attended medical school and completed a urologic surgery residency at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California, followed by a transplantation fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Marsh is certified by the American Board of Urology and is approved by the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. He is a member of the American College of Surgeons, American Society of Transplant Surgeons, American Society of Transplant Physicians, International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association, and American and International Liver Transplant Societies and American Urological Association. He has also served as president of the Urologic Society for Transplantation and Vascular Surgery. He currently chairs the medical advisory committee to LifeSharing, is a member of the UNOS liver an intestine committee and pancreas committee and is the chair of the regional review board for liver exceptions for Region V of UNOS. Dr. March has written more than 100 articles, chapters or abstracts and has held various positions on national and regional transplantation and organ procurement committees.
Dr. Marsh's active research activity includes clinical trials using new immunosuppressive drug regimens in liver and kidney transplants, pioneered steroid-free immunosuppression in organ transplantation and helped initiate new protocols in islet transplantation for the treatment of insulin requiring diabetes. He has expertise in liver, kidney, pancreas and pancreatic islet transplantation.
Dr. David W. Scharp, M.D.
Dr. Scharp trained and worked at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, as an academic surgeon and researcher in islet transplantation for nearly 30 years, producing over 200 publications with continuous NIH (National Institutes of Health) and JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) funding and 13 patents to date.
Collaborative studies with the late Paul E. Lacy, MD, PhD, pioneered much of the early progress in islet transplantation. Dr.'s Scharp and Lacy were also co-founding scientists of Cytotherapeutics in 1989 with Dr.'s Aebischer and Galetti and completed a clinical trial of encapsulated human islets in 1993.
Dr. Scharp served as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Novocell, Inc., a Company developing conformal PEG coatings of human islets as an allograft (human to human) product for diabetics.
In 2006, Dr. Scharp founded Prodo Laboratories, Inc. that focuses on delivering high-quality products and services to the diabetes research community. In addition, he founded Invenio Institute, a not-for-profit California public benefit company focused on performing diabetes research.
Dr. Miguel Carlos Riella, M.D., Ph.D.
Recently, Dr. Riella established an Islet Cell Lab at the Catholic University and has performed the first islet cell transplant in humans in southern Brazil.
Dr. Riella is Professor of Medicine at two institutions: the Evangelic School of Medicine and the Catholic University of Parana. He is Chief of Nephrology at the Evangelic University Hospital. Dr. Riella founded the Pro Renal Foundation of Brasil (www.pro-renal.org.br), a non-for profit organization dedicated to patient assistance, education and research. More than 1800 patients are currently assisted by the Foundation. Dr. Riella is also the past president of the Brazilian Society of Nephrology and served on the Council of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Federation of Kidney Foundations and will serves as the IFKF President for the period of 2009-2011. Dr. Riella is a member of the National Academy of Medicine in Brazil.
Dr. Riella is Board Certified in Internal Medicine by the American College of Physicians and Fellow of American College of Physicians-FACP 1998.
After graduation from medical school Dr. Riella did his Residency in Internal Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York from 1970-73 and a Renal Research Fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle (1973-75) under the supervision of Dr. Belding H. Scribner, a pioneer of chronic hemodialysis.
Dr. Riella organized the first Nephrology Division at the Evangelic University Hospital in Curitiba, Brasil. He helped start various other initiatives at the hospital such as the hemodialysis and kidney transplant programs.
In 1996 Dr. Riella received the Distinguished International Medal of the National Kidney Foundation-USA and he is an honorary member of numerous scientific societies.
Dr. John Logan, Ph.D.
Dr. Logan is a Founder and serves as Chairman, President and CEO of Fios Therapeutics Inc. (FIOS). Immediately prior to the formation of FIOS, Dr. Logan was a management consultant to the biotechnology industry and his major projects included work on the use of stem cells in cardiac disease, development of novel anti-virals for the treatment of HIV and as an advisor to Mayo Medical Ventures. Previous to that Dr. Logan was responsible for all of the activities of Nextran, Inc., a division of Baxter Healthcare. Nextran was focused on the development of genetically modified animals for use in xenotransplantation. As part of the activities of Nextran, Dr. Logan managed the world's first FDA cleared clinical trial of genetically modified organs for the treatment of patient's in fulminant hepatic failure. Before Nextran Dr. Logan was Chief Scientific Officer of DNX Corporation, the first commercial enterprise devoted to the development of biomedical and pharmaceutical applications of transgenic animal technology. Dr. Logan started his career in the biotechnology industry as a senior scientist at American Cyanamid Corporation. He holds a BSc (Hons) and PhD in biochemistry from the University of Glasgow and did post-doctoral training at Princeton University.
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