People of Satiogen
Satiogen has been operating as a virtual company without employees or formal management team. The following individuals have played central roles in the company’s progress:
· Andrew Young, MD, PhD, conceived of the bile acid brake as a mechanism for treating diabesity, founded Satiogen, and personally funded its earliest exploratory research and patent filings. Andrew is an accomplished researcher in the diabesity field who is now head of Enteroendocrine Biology at GSK. From 1989 until 2008 he was in charge of physiology research at Amylin Pharmaceuticals where he elucidated most of the pharmacology of Amylin’s two marketed products, SYMLIN and BYETTA, and defined multiple novel targets for drug discovery. Prior to that Andrew was an academic researcher in the diabetes field with the US National Institutes of Health and the University of Auckland. Andrew obtained his BS in human biology, BS in physiology, Bachelor of Surgery (equivalent to an MD), and PhD in physiology from the University of Auckland.
· Howard (Ted) Greene has provided strategic advice and funding for Satiogen, is named on several patent applications, and serves as Chairman. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Ted was Chairman of Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company he co-founded in 1987 to pioneer research of the hormone amylin, which was discovered in the same year. He holds several patents directed to using the hormone amylin in diabetes therapy. Before starting Amylin, Ted co-founded Biovest Partners, a venture capital firm that in two years provided seed capital and management leadership for six medical technology start-up companies, including Amylin, all of which went public. Prior to Biovest, Ted was CEO of Hybritech Incorporated, essentially from inception until its acquisition by Eli Lilly and Company in 1986. At Hybritech he was co-inventor of its principal product line, a monoclonal antibody assay system that has led to a new generation of immunodiagnostics, including the PSA screening test for prostate cancer. Before Hybritech, Ted was an executive with Baxter Healthcare Corporation, and prior to that he was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. He is presently a director of several early stage startups in the biotech and internet fields. Ted holds a BA in physics from Amherst College and an MBA from Harvard University.
· Bronislava (Slava) Gedulin, MD, PhD, is a co-founder, has performed Satiogen’s preclinical research as a consultant, is named on all the patent applications, and serves as Chief Technical Officer. Slava has a broad range of preclinical and clinical experience in drug discovery and pharmaceutical development, including preclinical development and clinical design, technology transfer, and documentation for regulatory filings. Her extensive research, inventions, patents and publications were instrumental in allowing Amylin’s drugs SYMLIN and BYETTA to receive FDA approval and come to market. Prior to Amylin Slava was a professor of medicine on the infectious disease faculty and staff member at the state center for treatment of liver and gastrointestinal disorders, Latvian Medical Institute, Riga, Latvia. Slava received her BS from Latvian State University, MD from Medical Institute Riga, and PhD in biochemistry and metabolism from the Second Moscow School of Medicine.
· Rob Ayling has driven the biliary shunt project forward and serves as President and Chief Operating Officer. Rob co-founded Finistere Partners, LLC, in January 2004, originally as an agbio focused consulting business which now manages a small strategic investment fund. Prior to founding Finistere Rob spent 20 years with the Silicon Valley based technology law firm Gray Cary Ware Friedenrich, now DLA Piper Rudnick, representing a diverse client base in commercial litigation, intellectual property, venture capital and mergers and acquisitions. From 1997 through 2003, Rob was with GCWF Investment Partners, LP, a venture investment fund that has invested in more than 100 U.S. technology based businesses. He is a director of Kineticom, Inc., an INC 100 recognized San Diego based human capital company. From 1998-2003, he was a director of AgResearch Ltd., New Zealand’s largest government funded agricultural research entity. Rob is also the president and director of PhytaGro, Inc., a recently formed plant sciences company owned jointly by Finistere and AgResearch Ltd., which is focused on developing and delivering novel crops to major international agricultural markets and SENZR, Inc., a second Finistere-AgResearch start-up entity focused on commercializing food safety technologies into North America.
· Dan Wood has provided the largest portion of equity capital for Satiogen and serves as Chief Executive Officer. Dan is General Partner of Mesa Verde Venture Partners, an early-stage bioscience venture capital fund focused in the Southwestern United States. Prior to forming Mesa Verde in late 2006, Dan co-founded IngleWood Ventures which has made 14 bioscience company investments primarily in very early-stage companies in San Diego County. Prior to forming IngleWood in 1999, he had served as president of the Sorrento Corporation, a Registered Investment Advisory firm he formed in 1985 in San Diego. Dan is a Tufts University graduate and holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Connecticut.
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Scientific Advisory Board
· Tom Adrian serves as Chairman of Satiogen’s Board of Scientific Advisors and has been the principal investigator for Satiogen’s human study. Dr. Adrian is Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology on the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of United Arab Emirates. His primary research interests are the biology of pancreatic cancer, growth pathways, novel therapeutics, mechanisms of cachexia and metabolic disturbance, and diabetes mellitus. Professor Adrian has authored over 400 papers and done extensive development work with GI hormones including PYY and early studies of the GI effects of bile acids. Prior to UAEU, Professor Adrian was professor and director of GI oncology research at Northwestern University, professor, physiology division head, and director of cancer research at Creighton University School of Medicine, research associate in the department of surgery at Yale University School of Medicine, and lecturer in the department of medicine at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School. Professor Adrian received his MSc in applied immunology from Brunel University, and his PhD in biochemistry/physiology from London University, Royal Postgraduate Medical School.
· Steve Bloom is the Head of Division for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Chair of the academic Section of Investigative Medicine at Imperial College London and Chief of Service for Pathology at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He heads a 40 strong research team investigating the physiology of regulatory peptides in CNS and periphery. Professor Bloom received his undergraduate medical training at Cambridge University. His house officer, senior house officer and registrar posts were largely undertaken at The Middlesex Hospital where he also received his MRC Clinical Research Fellow training. He moved to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital in 1974 where his roles have included Senior Lecturer (Consultant Physician), Reader in Medicine, Chairman of the Higher Degrees Committee and Academic Board, Professor of Medicine (Honorary Consultant Physician), Director of the Endocrinology Clinical Service and Deputy Director, Department of Medicine, Director of Chemical Pathology (renamed Metabolic Medicine and later Investigative Medicine), Chief of Clinical Service Chemical Pathology and Chief of Service Endocrinology and Diabetes. His research work over the years falls into five related categories: endocrinology clinical research, physiology and pathology of gut hormones, control of insulin release and insulin resistance, role of neuropeptides in organ control and the role of neuropeptides in CNS regulation of appetite and related hypothalamic functions. He currently leads a research group investigating hypothalamic appetite control systems and gut hormones. This group’s discovery that oxyntomodulin reduces appetite offers a potential new treatment for obesity and in 2005 Steve co-founded the spin out company ‘Thiakis Ltd’ to commercialize these findings. In the past Steve has been a member of the Main Scientific Board for AstraZeneca and advisory boards for Upjohn and Novartis. He has published over 1000 papers (excluding review articles) in journals such as Nature, J Biol Chem, PNAS, JCI and NEJM.
· Michael Horowitz was appointed to a Personal Chair at the University of Adelaide in 1995, and has been the Director of the Endocrine and Metabolic Unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital since 1997. His research activities are almost exclusively clinically based and relate primarily to gastrointestinal motor, sensory, and hormonal function, particularly in the context of appetite regulation, diabetes mellitus, glycemic control, critical illness and aging. Professor Horowitz leads the NHMRC Centre of Clinical Research Excellence (CCRE) in Nutritional Physiology, Interventions and Outcomes (2007-11). He is a co-author of 472 peer-reviewed papers and 32 book chapters and is co-editor of a multi-author book entitled Gastrointestinal Function in Diabetes Mellitus, published in 2004, which represents the most comprehensive treatise on this subject. He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Elder Prize for Scholarship at the University of Adelaide in 1995, the Distinguished Research Prize of the Gastroenterological Society of Australia (1999), the Eric Susman Prize of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (2000) and the Kellion Award of the Australian Diabetes Society (2009) and a Masters Award for Sustained Achievement in Digestive Sciences from the American Gastroenterological Association (2010).
· Jay Skyler MD, MACP is Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, & Psychology, in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, & Metabolism, Department of Medicine, University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida. He served as Director of that Division from 2000 to 2004. He is Associate Director for Academic Programs in the Diabetes Research Institute, University of Miami. He was also Program Director of the UM’s General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) from 2001 to 2006. He was chairman of the Planning Committee for the University’s new Clinical Research Institute, a 336,000 square foot facility which opened in 2006. He is Chairman of the NIH (NIDDK)-sponsored Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet, a nationwide network conducting clinical trials to interdict type 1 diabetes. Dr. Skyler is a scientific advisor to the pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries, as a member or chair of their Medical Scientific Advisory Board. He has chaired advisory committees for Alinea, Amylin, Aventis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Eli Lilly, Glaxo-Wellcome, Kos, Lipha, MannKind, MiniMed, Novartis, Novo-Nordisk, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, and Wyeth. He was a Founder and on the Board of Directors of Mega Technologies, Inc., which became a part of Biogenix Corporation/Exact Science, Inc., which was acquired by Abbott Laboratories in 1990. He was on the Board of Directors of MiniMed Inc. (a NASDAQ listed company), until that company was acquired by Medtronic in 2001. Since 1999, he has been on the Board of Directors of Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ – AMLN), which in 2005 had two first-in-class products approved – Symlin, the first amylin agonist, and Byetta, the first incretin mimetic. Since 2002, he has been on the Board of Directors of DexCom, Inc., which had a successful IPO in April 2005 to become a NASDAQ listed company – DXCM, and which had its STS Continuous Glucose Sensor approved in 2006.
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SSatiogen is using additional advisors to help guide the company in specific product development areas:
Mark Lane MB ChB FRACP is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Auckland with specialties in inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, hepatobilliary disease, colon cancer screening, and he has extensive clinical experience in diagnostic and therapeutic upper and lower endoscopy and ERCP procedures. Professor Lane is playing a key role in the preclinical development of Satiogen’s billiary shunt.