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Leadership

Board of Directors

Julian Baines, MBE – Non-Executive Chairman

Julian is the Company’s Non-Executive Chairman and member of the nomination and remuneration committees.

Julian is the chief executive officer of EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc (“EKF”), having assumed the role in December 2009. During his tenure at EKF, he has successfully completed multiple fundraisings and the acquisition and subsequent integration of eight businesses in seven countries, building revenue from zero to over £40,000,000. Prior to joining EKF, Julian was group chief executive officer of BBI Holdings plc, where he undertook a management buyout in 2000, its AIM flotation in 2004 and was responsible for selling the business to Alere, Inc. (now part of Abbott Laboratories) in 2008 for c. £85,000,000.

In 2016, Julian was awarded an MBE (Master of the British Empire) for services to the life sciences industry.

Sir Ian Carruthers, OBE – Senior Independent Non-Executive Director and chair of the audit committee and nomination committee.

Sir Ian Carruthers holds a number of chair and non-executive board and advisory roles in the public and private sectors. He was previously Chief Executive of NHS South of England, comprising three health bodies: South West, South Central and South East and his career in the National Health Services spans over 40 years. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to health in 1997 and a Knighthood in 2003 for services to the NHS and in 2006 he took over as Interim Chief Executive of NHS England, amongst the largest organisations in the world with over 1.3 million employees and a budget in excess of £100 billion. He has been the lead author on several papers on reviewing and improving the NHS and is seen as an international expert on healthcare systems and service delivery.

He is currently Chancellor of the University of the West of England, and was formerly Chair of Healthcare UK, Chair of the Innovation Health and Wealth Implementation Board, Co-Chair of the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia and Non-Executive Director of Bioquell plc.

Sara Barrington – Chief Executive Officer

Sara is an Executive Director.

Sara has leadership experience both financially and operationally with a focus upon developing and commercialising life science products. She was the CEO of LungLife AI a diagnostic company for early stage lung cancer. Prior to that she was with Bruin Biometrics, a LA-based medical device company as EVP Business Operations and previously CFO. In her role at Exosome Diagnostics, a venture-backed personalised medicine company the focus was upon the development of non-invasive liquid biopsy diagnostics in cancer and the company was successfully sold to Bio-Techne Corporation in 2018. She was previously CFO at AusAm Biotechnologies developing diagnostics in kidney disease. Prior to working in the US, she worked for British Telecom in London in business development and strategy.

Sara received her B.A. from Lancaster University and she is qualified as a Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. She has also qualified with Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Dr. Erik Lium – Non-Executive Director

Erik is a Non-Executive Director and member of the remuneration committee.

Erik will represent Mount Sinai on the Board as part of the ongoing relationship between the Company and Mount Sinai.

Dr. Lium is President of Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP) and Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Innovation Officer, Mount Sinai Health System. He is also Non-Executive Director of Renalytix. Dr Lium represents Mount Sinai on several private company boards and previously served as a member of the investment review committee for the Accelerate NY Seed Fund. Dr Lium also serves as chairman of the board of managers of Kantaro.

Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Lium served as the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Innovation, Technology & Alliances at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the UCSF Principal Investigator for the Bay area National Science Foundation I-Corps node and Assistant Vice Chancellor of. Dr. Lium served as President of LabVelocity Inc. prior to its acquisition in 2004. He pursued post-doctoral research at UCSF in the laboratory of J. Michael Bishop, MD, and earned a PhD with honours from the Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular and Biophysical Studies at Columbia University in the laboratory of Dr. Saul J. Silverstein. Dr. Lium holds a BS in Biology from Gonzaga University.

James McCullough – Non-Executive Director and member of the remuneration committee

James is a Non-Executive Director and the CEO of Renalytix.

James has experience building emerging technology companies in both the public and private sectors with specific expertise in the life-sciences industry. His skills include equity and debt capital formation, strategic development and partnerships, executive team structuring, regulatory issues and marketing. The Renalytix IPO was completed in November 2018, raising over £22,000,000 for the company. Following successful progress in validatory development, regulatory discussions, reimbursement, pricing and insurance coverage determinations, a follow-on fundraise was arranged in July 2019 at over double the IPO price, enabling expansion of the team and acceleration of key workstreams. In July 2020, Renalytix successfully dual-listed on Nasdaq with a market capitalisation of [l]m after raising a further $85 million (approximately £68 million).

Prior to his role at Renalytix, James was Chief Executive Officer of Exosome Diagnostics, a venture backed personalised medicine company developing non-invasive liquid biopsy diagnostics in cancer. Exosome Diagnostics was acquired by Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH) in 2018. James is also a managing partner of Renwick Capital, LLC (“Renwick”), a management consulting firm specialising in assisting emerging healthcare technology companies with strategic planning and business execution.

James received his B.A. from Boston University and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. James is currently Chairman of BalletNext, a performing arts company in New York City. He currently holds Series 79 and Series 63 securities licenses from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) in the US.

Dr. Lorenzo Gallon – Non-Executive Director and chair of the science advisory board

A Professor of Medicine (Nephrology and Hypertension) and Surgery (Organ Transplantation), Dr. Gallon is currently the Medical Director of the Translational Medicine Programme, the Director of International Relations and the Director of the Renal Transplant Fellowship at Northwestern University. He is an alumnus of the University of Padua Medical School, Italy and Harvard Medical School.

An expert in nephrology and hypertension as well as organ transplantation, Dr. Gallon’s primary research interests include: 

  • The role of immunosuppressive medications in modulating the immune system, 
  • Genomics of chronic renal allograft rejection, 
  • Prednisone-free and calcineurin inhibitors-free immunosuppressive protocols,
  • New immunosuppressive strategies,
  • Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), and
  • Aging and impact of physical exercise after kidney transplantation.

With nearly 20 years’ experience in the life sciences industry, focusing largely on nephrology and organ transplantation, Dr. Gallon is excellently placed to provide insight and guidance in the development of Verici’s two lead products, Clarava™ and Tuteva™.  He was a collaborator and co-author with Verici’s previous SAB Chair, Dr. Barbara Murphy, in the GoCar study1 which was foundational in the development of Verici’s products. He has also been a member of the Editorial Board at the journal Nephron since 2019. 

In 2012, Dr Gallon was part the Northwestern Medicine transplant team that conducted the first successful removal and implantation of a kidney from one patient to another after the organ failed in the first recipient. The findings of the case were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27452608/ 

Salim Hamir – Company Secretary

Salim is a Chartered Accountant with leadership experience in a number of companies. Salim has been with EKF over the last 10 years serving in various capacities, currently as Company Secretary and Head of Corporate Affairs dealing in all matters in respect to M&A, investor relations and governance. Salim has played instrumental roles in the public listings of RenalytixAI, Verici Dx and Trellus Health and serves as Company Secretary for all these companies. Salim also serves as Chief Financial Officer for Trellus Health. Salim has extensive experience providing strategic advice on mergers and acquisitions, fundraising and AIM listings, cost reduction, tax planning, and implementation of new systems and processes. Prior to these roles, Mr. Hamir served as the Finance Director for Quotient Diagnostics and the Wilton Group

Advisory Board

Professor Anthony Dorling

Professor Dorling qualified in Medicine from the University of London in 1987 and gained membership of the Royal College of Physicians in 1990. He gained his PhD in Immunology from the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in 1996, before finishing specialist training in nephrology prior to being appointed Senior Lecturer in Immunology at Imperial College London in 2000. He moved to King’s College London as a full Professor in 2009.

Professor Dorling’s area of research is vascular inflammation, focusing on the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in vascular rejection. He is co-inventor of several novel therapeutics targeting coagulation proteases that are undergoing pre-clinical testing. Clinically, he focuses on patients undergoing antibody-incompatible transplantation and those with chronic rejection. Prof. Dorling is CI of the large UK RCT OuTSMART trial, a combined screening/treatment program to prevent premature failure of renal transplants due to chronic rejection in patients with HLA antibodies, and CI of the early phase 2 study ‘GAMECHANgER-1’, to assess whether adoptively transferred regulatory T cells can suppress cellular immunity in sensitized patients prior to transplantation.

Professor Richard Formica

Dr. Formica is Professor of Medicine (Nephrology) and Professor of Surgery (Transplant); Director of Transplant Medicine; Director Outpatient Transplantation Service and Medical Director Adult Transplantation at Yale University School of Medicine. He received his medical education at Boston University School of Medicine and completed his training in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital before arriving at Yale to train in nephrology in 1997. In addition to treating patients, Dr. Formica is involved in public policy work related to kidney transplantation. He helped develop the kidney allocation system for the country that went into effect in 2014 having served as the Chairman of the OPTN/UNOS Kidney transplantation Committee. In addition, he developed and implemented the simultaneous liver kidney allocation policy. He is also an active member in the Clinical Trials in Transplantation consortium, having participated in CTOT 01, 09, 17 and 19. Currently he is the President of the American Society of Transplantation, the Associate Regional Councilor for the OPTN/UOS region 1, a member of the OPTN UNOS Membership and Professional Standards Committee and a member of the Visiting Committee for the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

Professor Roslyn Mannon

Dr. Mannon completed her undergraduate studies in biology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and then went on to complete her MD at Duke University where she also completed her residency and nephrology fellowship. Dr. Mannon previously served as Director of Research for the Comprehensive Transplant Institute at University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is currently Professor of Internal Medicine, the Vice Chair of Research Mentoring and Academic Development in Internal Medicine and Associate Chief of Research, Division of Nephrology at University of Nebraska.

Dr. Mannon’s research focuses on mechanisms of chronic graft injury using in vitro and in vivo models of drug toxicity and kidney transplantation.

Professor Peter Nickerson

Dr. Nickerson is a Distinguished Professor of Internal Medicine and Immunology and the Vice-Dean for Research, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. He is the Medical Director of Transplant Manitoba and the Medical Advisor, Organ Donation and Transplantation Division, Canadian Blood Services (CBS). Dr. Nickerson holds the Flynn Family Chair in Renal Transplantation at the University of Manitoba.

Dr. Nickerson’s research focuses on mechanisms underlying acute and chronic transplant rejection; developing non-invasive techniques for the diagnosis of renal allograft rejection; and health care system design to enhance access to transplant.

Professor Philip O'Connell

Dr. O’Connell completed his undergraduate degree at University of New South Wales and his PhD in experimental transplantation at the University of Melbourne. He went on to complete a postdoctoral research fellowship in transplant immunology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. O’Connell is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Dr. O'Connell is Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. Recently he was appointed the Executive Director of the Westmead Institute for Medical Research and is the Director of the Centre for Transplant and Renal Research. He is a trained nephrologist and formerly was the Director of Transplant Medicine and the Clinical Islet Transplant Program at Westmead Hospital. He is also past President of The Transplantation Society. He has previously served as President of the Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand; Chairman, Program Committee of the World Congress of the Transplantation Society; Councilor, The Transplantation Society.

Dr. O’Connell established Australia’s first successful clinical transplant program and has been involved in research in developing biomarkers for transplantation and precision medicine. He is internationally acknowledged as a pioneer in the fields of islet and kidney transplantation, and has been instrumental in developing an effective procedure to transplant pancreatic islets into patients living with type 1 diabetes.

Professor Emilio Poggio

Dr. Poggio completed medical school at University Del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and clinical training in Nephrology and Hypertension at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Poggio is a physician in the Department of Nephrology and Hypertension of the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic and a Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of CWRU. He also has a joint appointment with the Transplant Center and the Department of Immunology at the Lerner Research Institute, and he is currently the Medical Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Poggio is interested in the development of tools to risk-stratify transplant subjects and the development of novel non-invasive immune monitoring techniques that permits the clinician to more accurately risk-stratify kidney transplant recipients.

Professor David M. Rothstein

Dr. Rothstein received his BA from the University at Buffalo and his MD from The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine where he also completed his internal medicine residency. Dr. Rothstein went on to complete his renal fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rothstein completed a research fellowship at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He is currently the Pittsburgh Steelers Chair in Transplantation at University Pittsburgh where he holds professorships in the Department of Surgery, Department of Medicine, and Department of Immunology.

Dr. Rothstein studies immunoregulation and tolerance in allograft and autoimmune models. He received the Fujisawa Achievement Award in Transplantation in 2013 and the AST Basic Science Established Investigator Award in 2020 from the American Society of Transplantation.

Professor Kathryn Wood

Dr. Wood completed her undergraduate in Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham and received a DPhil from the University of Oxford, focusing her research on the complement system. She was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2002.  Dr. Wood is currently Professor of Immunology Emerita in the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at University of Oxford where her research focuses on transplantation, particularly the immune response that leads to rejection and immune regulation as a strategy to achieve immunological tolerance. She holds a Khoo Oon Teik Visiting Professorship at the National University of Singapore School of Medicine. 

Dr. Wood is the former President of The Transplantation Society and served as a Councilor for The British Transplantation Society, The British Society for Immunology, and European Society of Organ Transplantation. She is a recent Past President of The Transplantation Society (International), a former editor of Transplantation and a former Trustee of Kidney Research UK. Dr. Wood is a member the Network Steering Committee for the Immune Tolerance Network and served the NIH Expert Panel on Transplantation Research and the Better Biomarkers in Transplantation Advisory Board.  

Dr. Weiija Zhang

Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Immunology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and MS in Computer Science from City University of New York. He is a professor of bioinformatics and the Director of Bioinformatics Center of the Department of Medicine of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He has extensive experience in genomic analysis of high-throughput data including gene expression, copy number and SNP. He is actively engaged in clinical investigations of kidney transplant using cutting-edge gene chip and deep sequencing technologies and AI deep learning computational skills.

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