Compensated Awareness Post View
Disclaimer
In addition to the first-class management team, VistaGen has extensive support from the following Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board
Board of Directors
Jon S. Saxe, Chairman
Mr. Saxe has served as Chairman of our Board of Directors since 2000. He is also the Chairman of our Audit Committee. He is the retired President and was a director of PDL BioPharma served as,President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Synergen, Inc. (acquired by Amgen). Mr. Saxe also served as Vice President, Licensing & Corporate Development and Head Patent Law for Hoffmann-Roche. Mr. Saxe is a director of SciClone Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCLN), Durect Corporation (Nasdaq: DRRX), Arbor Vita Corporation and Arcuo Medical, LLC. He also has served as a director of several other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, including ID Biomedical (acquired by GlaxoSmithKline), Sciele Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (acquired by Shionogi), Amalyte (acquired by Kemin Industries), and Cell Pathways (acquired by OSI Pharmaceuticals)
Gregory A. Bonfiglio, J.D., Director
Mr. Bonfiglio joined our Board of Directors in February 2007. He has over 25 years experience working with technology companies. He is the Managing Partner of Proteus, LLC, an investment and advisory firm focused solely on regenerative medicine (RM). Prior to founding Proteus, Mr. Bonfiglio was a General Partner of Anthem Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund focused on both biotechnology and information technology. Prior to joining Anthem, he was a Partner with Morrison & Foerster LLP, an international law firm, where he worked extensively with technology companies. Mr. Bonfiglio is a Member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and is on its Advisory Board, as well as their Industry and Finance Committees. He is also a Member of the International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) and is on its Commercialization Committee.
Brian J. Underdown, Ph.D., Director
Dr. Underdown joined our Board of Directors in November 2009. Since September 1997, Dr. Underdown has served as the Managing Director of Lumira Capital Corp., having started in the venture capital industry in 1997 with MDS Capital Corporation (MDSCC). His investment focus has been on therapeutics in both new and established companies in both Canada and the United States. Prior to joining MDSCC, Dr. Underdown held a number of senior management positions in the biopharmaceutical industry and at universities. Dr. Underdown’s past and current board positions include: ID Biomedical, Trillium Therapeutics, Cytochroma Inc., Argos Therapeutics, Nysa Membrane Technologies, Ception Therapeutics and Transmolecular Therapeutics. He has served on a number of Boards and advisory bodies of government sponsored research organizations including CANVAC, the Canadian National Centre of Excellence in Vaccines, Ontario Genomics Institute, Allergen, the Canadian National Centre of Excellence in Allergy and Asthma.
H. Ralph Snodgrass, Ph.D., Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Snodgrass founded VistaGen in 1998 and has served on our Board of Directors since our inception. He served as our Chief Executive Officer until August 2009 and currently serves as our President and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Snodgrass has over 18 years of experience in senior biotechnology management, including as Chief Scientific Officer of Progenitor, Inc. He has more than 10 years of research experience as a profes¬sor at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and as a member of the Institute for Immunology, Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Snodgrass is a past Board Member of the Emerging Company Section of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), and is a published and recognized pioneering expert in stem cell biology with more than 20 years’ experience in the uses of stem cells as biological tools for drug discovery and development.
Shawn K. Singh, J.D., Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Singh, our Chief Executive Officer, joined our Board of Directors in 2000. He has over 20 years of experience working with public and private biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, serving in numerous senior management roles. Prior to becoming our Chief Executive Officer in August 2009, Mr. Singh served as Managing Principal of Cato BioVentures, a biopharmaceutical venture capital firm, Chief Business Officer of Cato Research Ltd., a global contract research and development organization (CRO), President of Echo Therapeutics (Nasdaq: ECTE), a medical device company targeting diabetes management and transdermal drug delivery, and Chief Business Officer of SciClone Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SCLN), a revenue-producing, specialty pharmaceutical company focused on cancer and infectious disease. Mr. Singh also serves as a director of Echo Therapeutics and Armour Therapeutics. He began his career as a corporate finance attorney in the Silicon Valley offices of Morrison & Foerster LLP, an international law firm. Mr. Singh is a member of the State Bar of California.
Scientific Advisory Board
Gordon Keller, Ph.D., Chairman, Director, McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University Health Network
Dr. Keller, recently named a “Top 25 Transformational Canadian” for his stem cell research, is the Director of UHN’s McEwen Centre, and Professor, Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Ontario. Dr. Keller is a world leader in the field of hematopoietic development with more than 100 publications relating to blood development and stem cells. Previously, he held an endowed Chair at the Carl C. Icahn Institute for Gene Therapy and Molecular Medicine, MSSM, was a Member of the NJH, Denver, Colorado, Associate Professor, Department of Immunology, University Health Sciences Center, Denver, Colorado, a Member, Basel Institute for Immunology, Basel, Switzerland, and a Visiting Scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria. He has served on several NIH study sections and is invited throughout the world to talk about his research on stem cells and blood development. Dr. Keller and Dr. Snodgrass are long-time collaborators who helped pioneer the use of stem cell systems for understanding hematopoietic development, cell biology, and as better biological systems for pharmaceutical discovery, rescue and development.
Peter Backx, D.V.M., Ph.D., Professor, University of Toronto, Departments of Physiology and Medicine
Dr. Backx brings more than 20 years of research experience relating to electrophysiology, ion channels biochemistry, and heart disease with more than 200 publications. He has served on several NIH grant study sections, is a reviewer for 69 multiple scientific journals, and has been a past Chair of multiple committees of the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada.
George Clay, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer (retired), Kyowa Pharmaceuticals
Dr. Clay brings more than 13 years experience in worldwide registration of drugs and biologics, 15 years experience in preclinical research in the fields of neuronal and gastroenterology, and 6 years of consulting relating to drug development and regulatory affairs. In addition to his work at Kyowa, Dr. Clay was former Deputy Vice President, Worldwide Regulatory Affairs, Sanofi Pharmaceuticals, and former Senior Vice President, North American Regulatory Affairs, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals, and has been responsible for more than 12 new drug approvals. Dr. Clay’s experience with regulatory and commercial drug development issues will contribute significantly to our drug rescue programs.
Arthur Fetter, D.V.M., Ph.D., Sr. Vice President (retired), Worldwide Drug Safety, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer
Dr. Fetter brings over 20 years of veterinary pathology/toxicology and senior management experience in preclinical safety assessment of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and surgically related products to meet international registration requirements.We expect Dr. Fetter’s experience with preclinical safety assessment to contribute to our drug rescue efforts by helping us understand the toxicology of compounds and identify and select safer lead drug rescue variants.
Jack Gauldie, Ph.D., Director, Centre for Gene Therapeutics, McMaster University
Dr. Gauldie is recognized internationally for his work in defining the molecular regulation of the acute phase inflammatory response and is a world expert in the areas of cytokine biology and the molecular regulation of inflammation and immunity. He is Professor of the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He also holds the title Distinguished University Professor at McMaster, he is director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine and Health, and director of both the Centre for Gene Therapeutics and MOBIX. Dr. Gauldie holds patents in immune regulation and vaccine development.
John Lowe, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow (retired), Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery, Pfizer Global R&D
Dr. Lowe has authored 88 publications in the fields of chemistry, pharmacology, and drug design. He is an inventor or co-inventor on over 60 patents. For his discovery of the drug Geodon®, Dr. Lowe was awarded the 2005 Northeast Regional Industrial Innovation Award and the 2007 ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award. Since 2007, he has served on the SAB for the CHDI Foundation. We expect Dr. Lowe’s medicinal chemistry experience and background to contribute significantly to our drug rescue projects and new drug rescue variant design.
David Patterson, M.S., Senior Fellow (retired), Computational Chemistry and Compound Library Design, Tripos International
Mr. Patterson has more than 30 years experience in research and commercial development of software and tools involving systems science, mathematics, and computational chemistry. He has invented and patented methods for validation of molecular descriptors, design of optimally diverse compound libraries (LeadQuest™), rapid searching of virtual libraries containing billions of chemical compounds (ChemSpace™), and interactive graphical displays of the 1000-D chemical descriptor space (SARNavigator™).We expect Mr. Patterson’s computational drug design expertise to be instrumental to our drug rescue programs and new drug rescue variant design.
James E. Sanders, D.V.M., Ph.D., Senior Director and Preclinical Development Leader (retired), Johnson & Johnson
Dr. Sanders has more than 30 years experience in toxicology, safety assessment, drug development and regulatory affairs in senior global positions at world-leading pharmaceutical companies. We expect his experience in absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion, safety pharmacology, and toxicology to contribute significantly to our drug rescue programs by helping us select new lead drug rescue variants. In addition, Dr. Sanders’ experience in interacting with World Health Regulatory Agencies from pre-IND through product registration will contribute to our drug development efforts.
Ron Wester, Ph.D., Vice President (retired), Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery, Pfizer Global R&D
Dr. Wester has nearly 25 years experience in medicinal chemistry and drug development, with strategic leadership responsibilities for drug discovery technologies across chemistry, biology and computational disciplines. He has extensive senior leadership experience with organizational responsibility for large research global teams across multiple therapeutic areas (atherosclerosis, cardiovascular, diabetes, obesity, and osteoporosis). We expect Dr. Wester’s extensive experience in delivering successful drug candidates and driving the use of new chemistry and computational technologies to contribute significantly to our drug rescue campaigns.
