Scientific Advisory Board
David Ludvigson
Mr. David Ludvigson is a financial and operating executive and entrepreneur, with over 35 years of international experience in life sciences and technology companies including IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Matrix Pharmaceutical, Nanogen, and MIPS Computer Systems. He has over 20 years of Life Science experience including more than 15 years in the diagnostics arena and has led numerous new product efforts from concept to market launch. Mr. Ludvigson has concluded many successful strategic transactions including multiple acquisitions, corporate partnerships, technology and intellectual property licensing agreements, and OEM relationships and his financing experience includes venture capital, corporate, mezzanine, lease, bank credit line, LBO, IPO and secondary public sources. Mr. Ludvigson holds both a BA and MAS from the University of Illinois.
Dr. Robert C. Doss, PhD
Dr. Robert C. Doss is an exceptional High level Executive with over 25 years of leadership experience in the diagnostic inductry, product development and in the Global Diagnostics and related Health Care fields as whole. Dr. R.C. Doss spent 15 years at Abbott as Division Vice President of Diagnostics R&D. He led Abbott Global Diagnostics R&D of new Immunoassay and Clinical Chemistry Products. He has an exemplary record in delivering over 80 new products to market with a total sale of $3 billion revenue at Abbott Diagnostics. His areas of focus included Infectious Diseases, Blood screening for infectious diseases, Cardiovascular, Renal, Oncology, Metabolic and Endocrine diagnostics. His R&D responsibility included managing international R&D groups in Germany, Japan and the UK. He excelled in creating a global network of external collaborations with Academic Health Centers and integrated these collaborations with the research and development of new innovative diagnostic tests. Reported directly to Division President. He represented Diagnostics R&D on Abbott’s Corporate Scientific Governing Board. At Abbott Park IL, Dr. R. Doss represented all of Abbott Diagnostics Global R&D and Manufacturing Operations Sites as the Division Quality Management Representative. In his position of VP at Abbott, he was involved and interacted with customers and Regulatory Agencies worldwide. He held senior management positions in domestic and international R&D, Quality Assurance, Regulatory Affairs and Technical Product Support. Dr. Doss has proven experience in organizational assessment, organizational design, talent management and talent acquisition, and has earned a reputation as results-oriented, practical, analytical, innovative and collaborative. Dr. R. Doss holds a Doctoral degree of Biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma State University.
Dr. Olle Nilsson, PhD
Dr. Olle Nilsson is a Swedish serial entrepreneur who has devoted more than 25 years to science and business, working on developing new products for cancer diagnosis and cancer management. Dr. O. Nilsson is currently the CEO of a consulting company that invests and helps start-up companies to reach their commercial stage. He was the Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Fujirebio Diagnostics AB. He played a major role in the company strategies and partnerships that led to substantial increase in revenues and in the commercialization of ovarian cancer products that were developed under his leadership and received FDA approval. Throughout his career, Dr. O. Nilsson published more than 75 scientific peer reviewed scientific articles and he is the author of several patents with fundamental diagnostic clinical applications. Dr. O. Nilsson was also the Founder of CanAg Diagnostics AB that was ultimately acquired by Fujirebio Inc. He was also the Co-founder of Got-A-Gene AB, among others. Dr. O. Nilsson holds a Bachelor of Sciences from the University of Uppsala and a Doctoral Degree from the University of Göteborg.
Mrs. Carole McNeil
Carole McNeil is Chairman and Strategic Director of McNeil Capital, which invests in a wide range of real estate, venture capital, and biotech interests. She is also a member of the Policy Advisory Board at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Additionally, she endowed a joint chair between the Hoover Institution and the Economics Department at Stanford University, a first-ever creative association. She is also on the Overseers Board at the Hoover Institution. Mrs. McNeil, a San Francisco Bay Area native was appointed to the Presidio Trust Board of Directors in 2019.
Dr. Frank L. Greenway, MD
Dr. Frank L. Greenway is Chief Medical Officer and Professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Head of the Clinical Trials Unit. Dr. Greenway is a highly distinguished scholar who is recognized and respected worldwide for his contributions to understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms in the fundamental biology that governs disease development and complication. For many decades, Dr. Greenway devoted all his time and talent to fostering a collaborative and interactive research environment that places a strong emphasis on mentoring and developing young scientists who will power the discovery process and providing them with knowledge and cutting-edge technology that is needed to make fundamental discoveries of the underlying mechanisms of metabolic disease. Dr. Greenway's area of interest is developing obesity treatments including diets, herbal supplements, medical foods, devices, obesity surgery, and obesity drug development. His laboratory uses human fat cells in culture to discover food components with pharmacological properties for using food as medicine. He directs the outpatient research clinic. He earned a BA in Biology from Stanford University, an M.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles, and completed his Internal Medicine Residency and Endocrinology/Metabolism Fellowship at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Dr. Matthew Rettig, MD
Dr. Matthew Rettig, MD, is the Chief of Hematology-Oncology at the VA Medical Center in Greater Los Angeles and a Professor of Medicine and Urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also serves as the Medical Director of the Prostate Cancer Program of the Institute of Urologic Oncology at UCLA. He is the national Co-Director of the VA Precision Oncology Program for Cancer of the Prostate (POPCaP), which aims to select treatments for advanced prostate cancer patients based on the genetic profile of their cancer. Dr. Rettig received his medical degree from Duke University and completed an internal medicine residency at the University of Washington before going on to a hematology-oncology fellowship at UCLA. Dr. Rettig’s focus is on management of genitourinary malignancies, with a clinical emphasis on advanced prostate cancer and research emphasis on identifying biochemical targets for therapeutic development.
Dr. Stanley Lewis, MD MPH
Dr. Stanley Lewis is a Founder and the CEO of A28 Therapeutics. a company specializing in the development of lytic protein technology for the treatment of cancer. Dr. Lewis is also the Founder of Eselle Health, Inc., a company developing technology to treat complications of diabetes and other metabolic disorders. Previously, Dr. Lewis held the position of Chief Medical Officer at Ansun Biopharma, TaiMed Biologics, Diabetes Relief, and the St. Hope Foundation. Dr. Lewis was also the Director of Drug Development at Tanox and Medical Director with Genentech Inc./Tanox. Prior to his career in biotechnology, Dr. Lewis was Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at the McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston Texas.
Dr. Shesh N. Rai, PhD
Dr. Shesh N. Rai is part of the American Statistical Association, member of the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health and Director of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Facility at the Brown Cancer Center. He is professor of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics at Louisville University. He was awarded the Wendell Cherry Chair in Clinical Trial Research in 2009. In 2014, he was awarded the Fellowship of American Statistical Association for developing methods for clinical trial research and for outstanding collaboration with basic scientists and clinicians. With his more than two decades of collaborative experience with basic scientists and clinical researchers, he has collaborated on ~45 funded grants and he is a co-investigator (Co-I) on ~25 NIH grants as of 2022. Dr. Rai has also served on several committees, including ASA chapters, St. Jude Institutional Review Board, St. Jude Safety Board and Biostatistics Protocol Review Panel. He currently sits on Clinical Scientific Review, Data and Safety Monitoring Committees of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center. He serves as a statistical reviewer for many national and international scientific journals, including editorial board members in five journals. As of 2022, he has written ~300 manuscripts dealing with pre-clinical data, longitudinal data involving prospective studies, prospective clinical trials, retrospective studies and survey studies.