LEADERSHIP

Management

David L. Lucchino - CEO and Co-Founder

Dr. Christopher Loose, Ph.D - CTO and Co-Founder

Laurence A. Roth - Vice President of Product Development

Donald G. Anderson - Vice President of Business Development

 

Board of Directors

Dr. Scott Rocklage, Ph.D. - Chairman

Mark Colella - Director

Dr. Robert S. Langer, Sc.D. - Director and Co-Founder

David L. Lucchino - CEO and Co-Founder

Dr. Purnesh Seegopaul, Ph.D. - Director

 

Management

David L. Lucchino
Chief Executive Officer – Semprus BioSciences

Prior to co-founding Semprus BioSciences, Mr. Lucchino worked at Polaris Venture Partners, a $3 billion private equity and venture capital fund based in Boston, with an expertise in health care-related investments. In 2000, Mr. Lucchino co-founded LaunchCyte, a commercialization engine for early stage biomedical IP which was backed by the University of Pittsburgh and its Medical Center. As Managing Director, Mr. Lucchino helped secure funding for LaunchCyte and its portfolio companies and led corporate development initiatives, including securing an exclusive "disruptive technology" program with Boston Scientific.

Mr. Lucchino earned an M.B.A from MIT's Sloan School of Management as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, an M.S. from Syracuse University, and a B.A. from Denison University. He is a Trustee of Mt. Auburn Hospital – a Harvard Medical School teaching facility in Cambridge, MA – where he serves on the hospital’s Audit/Compliance and Nomination Committees. He also serves on the Audit Committee for CareGroup, the parent organization of Mt. Auburn, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and The New England Baptist Hospital, which collectively have annual revenues of >$1 billion. Additionally, Mr. Lucchino is a member of the Board of Governors for the Alfred P. Sloan Fellows program at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and has served as a guest lecturer both at MIT and at Harvard Business School. Mr. Lucchino is a member of AdvaMed’s (Advanced Medical Technology Association) 2010 Program Committee, a distinguished group of medical device industry executives who develop high quality content for the premier MedTech conference for CEOs, business executives, policy-makers, financiers, media, and industry stakeholders from around the world. He serves on the committee’s "Hot Technologies: The Latest in MedTech" and "Business Development & Finance" subcommittees.

Mr. Lucchino was recently honored by the Boston Business Journal as one of Boston's "40 under Forty" leading executives.

Dr. Christopher Loose, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer

Before co-founding Semprus BioSciences, Dr. Loose earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with Robert Langer and Gregory Stephanopoulos at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received the Hertz Foundation Fellowship, awarded to fifteen of the top doctoral students in the U.S. across all applied sciences, and was selected as having the outstanding thesis among the Fellows. During his Ph.D. work, Dr. Loose developed a range of antimicrobial agents and materials for application to medical devices, as featured in Nature. He was also selected by Technology Review as a member of the TR35, representing 35 leaders under 35 years old most likely to impact the future of technology. Dr. Loose continues to work with Mr. Lucchino to commercialize next-generation surfaces for medical devices, and has overseen the expansion of the company’s IP suite and technology development.

Prior to MIT, Dr. Loose was a Chemical Engineer at Merck Research Labs, executing pilot plant production of agents for clinical trials. His interest in material and active agent design began at Princeton University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude, with a B.S.E in Chemical Engineering and developed a force field for predicting protein structure which has been used to redesign peptide agents currently in the clinic. Dr. Loose actively participates in a range of entrepreneurial events for students at Princeton, Harvard Business School, and MIT, encouraging promising technologists to enter the start- up world.

Laurence A. Roth
Vice President of Product Development

Mr. Roth brings more than 30 years of medical device product development, clinical trial and operational experience to his role as VP of Product Development. Throughout his career, he has led the development and clinical evaluation of numerous products in the cardiology, surgery and biomaterials fields. Before accepting his position at Semprus BioSciences, Mr. Roth held executive roles at three venture-backed device companies in the Boston area – Arsenal Medical, Percardia and Focal, which went on to be purchased by Genzyme. As the VP of Development at Percardia, he led development from concept through clinic trials for surgical and percutaneous cardiology products. At Focal, Mr. Roth assembled and led cross-disciplinary teams to identify new product opportunities which led to collaborations with companies such as Roche, Novartis and Genzyme.

Mr. Roth began his career at C.R. Bard, where he held a variety of engineering and project management positions over 13 years working on innovative interventional products such as balloon catheters. He earned a BS and a ME in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a MBA from Babson College.

Donald G. Anderson
Vice President of Business Development

With over twenty five years of experience in the medical device industry, including twelve years in the vascular access field, Mr. Anderson has led the launch of numerous innovative products. In particular, he has specialized in managing the alignment between market requirements and clinical endpoints to maximize commercial impact. His most recent entrepreneurial experience was as the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Biosphere Medical, where he successfully launched products and coordinated clinical trials that resulted in Biosphere being named the 8th fastest growing company in Massachusetts. Previously, Mr. Anderson co-founded two medical device start-up companies; one that went public and another, Implemed, which sold its antimicrobial catheter technology to Edwards Lifesciences and spun off CyroCath Inc., which was recently sold to Medtronic for $400 million. At Implemed, Mr. Anderson was responsible for raising $18M in financing while developing the company’s corporate strategy and negotiating successful partnership agreements. He has also held senior executive positions in sales and marketing with Wyeth and a vascular access division of Pfizer.

Mr. Anderson holds a BA in economics from Dartmouth College, and a MBA with high distinction from Babson College. He has also completed the Executive Management Program at Columbia School of Business.

 

Board of Directors

Dr. Scott Rocklage, Ph.D.
Chairman

Dr. Scott Rocklage joined Semprus as its Chairman upon closing on its seed investment. He has been a partner at 5AM Ventures since 2003 and became a Managing Partner in 2004. Dr. Rocklage has more than 20 years of healthcare management experience with strategic leadership responsibilities that have resulted in the successful approval of three U.S. New Drug Applications by the FDA (Omniscan™, Teslascan® and Cubicin®), and entered six drug candidates into clinical trials.

Dr. Rocklage has served as Chairman & CEO of Cubist Pharmaceuticals, President & CEO of Nycomed Salutar, President, CEO & Chairman of Nycomed Interventional, and has held various R&D positions at Salutar and Catalytica. Dr. Rocklage currently serves as Board Chairman of Achaogen, Ilypsa as well as on the Board of WaveRx, Pulmatrix, Variation and Wildcat and the Board of Associates at the Whitehead Institute. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mark S. Colella
Director

Mark S. Colella joined 5AM Ventures in 2008 from BåRRX Medical, a Bay Area start-up gastrointestinal medical device company, where he was head of marketing. Prior to BåRRX, he held various management roles with Stryker, focused in the fields of orthopedics, laparoscopy, urology, gynecology, and general minimally invasive surgery. Mr. Colella brings over a decade of operational experience in healthcare, focused primarily in the areas of marketing, product development and business development. In addition, he spent four years with Primrose Alzheimer's Living, Inc., an early-stage healthcare service start-up company, and one year working for Versant Ventures. Mr. Colella currently serves on the board of Semprus BioSciences and represents 5AM as a board observer to WaveRx, TivaMed and Epic Pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Colella earned a B.S. in Biology from Williams College and earned his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Dr. Robert S. Langer, ScD
Director and Co-Founder

Robert S. Langer is one of 13 Institute Professors (the highest honor awarded to a faculty member) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Langer has written nearly 1,000 articles. He also has more than 600 issued or pending patents worldwide, one of which was cited as the outstanding patent in Massachusetts in 1988 and one of 20 outstanding patents in the United States. Dr. Langer's patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 200 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies; a number of these companies were launched on the basis of these patent licenses. He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration's SCIENCE Board, the FDA's highest advisory board, from 1995-2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.

His work is at the interface of biotechnology and materials science. A major focus is the study and development of polymers to deliver drugs, particularly genetically engineered proteins, DNA and RNAi, continuously at controlled rates for prolonged periods of time. Work is in progress in the following areas:

  • Investigating the mechanism of release from polymeric delivery systems with concomitant microstructural analysis and mathematical modeling.
  • Studying applications of these systems including the development of effective long-term delivery systems for insulin, anti-cancer drugs, growth factors, gene therapy agents and vaccines.
  • Developing controlled release systems that can be magnetically, ultrasonically, or enzymatically triggered to increase release rates.
  • Synthesizing new biodegradable polymeric delivery systems which will ultimately be absorbed by the body.
  • Creating new approaches for delivering drugs such as proteins and genes across complex barriers in the body such as the blood-brain barrier, the intestine, the lung and the skin.
  • Researching new ways to create tissue and organs including creating new polymer systems for tissue engineering.
  • Stem cell research including controlling growth and differentiation.
  • Creating new biomaterials with shape memory or surface switching properties.
  • Angiogenesis inhibition

Dr. Langer has received over 150 major awards. In 2007, he received the 2006 United States National Medal of Science. In 2002, he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers and the world’s most prestigious engineering prize, from the National Academy of Engineering. He is the also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award; 70 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005) and the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research. In 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world's largest prize for invention for being "one of history's most prolific inventors in medicine." In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.

Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world. Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area. Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Langer as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America. Parade Magazine (2004) selected Langer as one of 6 "Heroes whose research may save your life." He has served, at various times, on 15 boards of directors and 30 Scientific Advisory Boards of such companies as Wyeth, Alkermes, Mitsubishi Pharmaceuticals, Warner-Lambert, and Momenta Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from Yale University, the ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the University of Liverpool (England), the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, the Pennsylvania State University, Northwestern University and Uppsala University (Sweden). He received his Bachelor's Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.

David L. Lucchino
Chief Executive Officer

Prior to co-founding Semprus BioSciences, Mr. Lucchino worked at Polaris Venture Partners, a $3 billion private equity and venture capital fund based in Boston, with an expertise in health care-related investments. In 2000, Mr. Lucchino co-founded LaunchCyte, a commercialization engine for early stage biomedical IP which was backed by the University of Pittsburgh and its Medical Center. As Managing Director, Mr. Lucchino helped secure funding for LaunchCyte and its portfolio companies and led corporate development initiatives, including securing an exclusive "disruptive technology" program with Boston Scientific.

Mr. Lucchino earned an M.B.A from MIT's Sloan School of Management as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, an M.S. from Syracuse University, and a B.A. from Denison University. He is a Trustee of Mt. Auburn Hospital – a Harvard Medical School teaching facility in Cambridge, MA – where he serves on the hospital’s Audit/Compliance and Nomination Committees. He also serves on the Audit Committee for CareGroup, the parent organization of Mt. Auburn, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and The New England Baptist Hospital, which collectively have annual revenues of >$1 billion. Additionally, Mr. Lucchino is a member of the Board of Governors for the Alfred P. Sloan Fellows program at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and has served as a guest lecturer both at MIT and at Harvard Business School. Mr. Lucchino is a member of AdvaMed’s (Advanced Medical Technology Association) 2010 Program Committee, a distinguished group of medical device industry executives who develop high quality content for the premier MedTech conference for CEOs, business executives, policy-makers, financiers, media, and industry stakeholders from around the world. He serves on the committee’s "Hot Technologies: The Latest in MedTech" and "Business Development & Finance" subcommittees.

Mr. Lucchino was recently honored by the Boston Business Journal as one of Boston's "40 under Forty" leading executives.

Dr. Purnesh Seegopaul, Ph.D.
Director

Dr. Purnesh Seegopaul is a partner at Pangaea Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage cleantech and advanced materials. He has more than 30 years of advanced materials experience covering a wide range of technologies that include analytical biochemistry, nanotechnology, thin films and coatings, energy and cleantech, manufacturing technologies and quality management. Dr. Seegopaul’s corporate executive management and technology responsibilities covered manufacturing scale-up and commercialization of nanomaterials at Nanodyne, technology and business development in North America for Umicore and thin film engineering and quality management at Materials Research Corporation. He has collaborated with academic research groups, served on the advisory boards of the Marcel-Dekker Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and other materials/cleantech alliances, published widely and has nine U.S. patents.

Dr. Seegopaul received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Delaware. He also serves on the Boards of Cyrium Technologies, InMat Inc. and Cnano Technologies.