LEADERSHIP
Management
David L. Lucchino - CEO and Co-Founder
Christopher Loose, Ph.D. - CTO and Co-Founder
Laurence A. Roth - Product Development
Gregory Haas - Product Strategy and Regulatory
Ulla B. Wallin, RN - Clinical Affairs
Douglas Weaver - Manufacturing
Derek Beaupre - Quality Assurance
David N. McClellan - Business Development
Board of Directors
Scott Rocklage, Ph.D. - Chairman
Simeon J. George, M.D. - Director
John P. Sullivan - Director
Mark S. Colella - Observer
Purnesh Seegopaul, Ph.D. - Director
Robert S. Langer, Sc.D. - Director and Co-Founder
David L. Lucchino - CEO and Co-Founder
Management
David L. Lucchino
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Lucchino co-founded Semprus BioSciences in 2007. Under his stewardship, the company has grown from two to 30 employees and secured $28.5M in venture capital financing and $2.4M in federal funding. Prior to co-founding Semprus, Mr. Lucchino was a Senior Associate at Polaris Venture Partners, a $3B venture capital fund based in Boston. Mr. Lucchino was involved in the fund's investment in Athletes' Performance, a global leader for integrated performance training, nutrition and physical therapy. Previously, Mr. Lucchino co-founded and served as Managing Director of LaunchCyte, an investment firm that specializes in developing biomedical intellectual property. He led corporate development activities and secured funding for the firm's portfolio companies. LaunchCyte successfully co-founded six portfolio companies, including Knopp Neurosciences, which recently entered into an exclusive $345M license agreement with Biogen Idec, and Immunetrics, which entered into a joint development agreement through the purchase of a 29% stake by Royal Philips Electronics. He also led the firm's disruptive biomedical technologies assessment for Boston Scientific Corporation.
Mr. Lucchino is a Trustee of Mt. Auburn Hospital, a Harvard Medical School facility, 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. Additionally, Mr. Lucchino is a member of AdvaMed's (Advanced Medical Technology Association) Board of Directors, where he serves on the International Board Committee, as well as AdvaMed's 2012 Program Committee.
Mr. Lucchino began his career as a technology marketing executive. He earned an M.B.A. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 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 former member of the Board of Governors for the Sloan Fellows program and has served as a guest lecturer on entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT, Wharton Business School, Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School.
Mr. Lucchino was honored by the Boston Business Journal as one of Boston's "40 under Forty" leading executives.
Outside the office, Mr. Lucchino is active with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), where he was part of an expedition that climbed Alaska's Mt. McKinley, North America's tallest mountain, and spent 95 days living in the Rocky Mountains as part of a leadership training program. He most recently rafted down Idaho's "River of No Return," the Salmon River, with NOLS.
[ back to top ]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.
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. Dr. Loose was recently honored by the Boston Business Journal as one of Boston's "40 under Forty" up and coming business leaders.
[ back to top ]Laurence A. Roth
Product Development
Mr. Roth brings more than thirty years of medical device product development, clinical trial and operational experience to Semprus. Throughout his career, he has led the development and clinical evaluation of numerous products in the cardiology, surgery and biomaterials fields. Mr. Roth previously 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. At Percardia, Mr. Roth 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 B.S. and an M.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.B.A. from Babson College.
Gregory Haas
Product Strategy and Regulatory
Mr. Haas served as Vice President of Global Critical Care Research & Development at Arrow International, which was acquired by Teleflex in October 2007. In this role, Mr. Haas led a 50-person team that launched multiple new vascular access products. He had corporate responsibility for innovation strategy and design through product launch process optimization. Also at Arrow, Mr. Haas was Vice President of Product Development, Asia International, where his team utilized in-depth customer market research to develop devices designed specifically for targeted international markets.
He transitioned the early lab technology from research through the product development process to launch for the first and current market-leading short-term antimicrobial central venous catheter products. Mr. Haas holds an E.M. in Technology Management from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.
[ back to top ]Ulla B. Wallin, RN
Clinical Affairs
Prior to joining Semprus, Ms. Wallin served as International Clinical Project Director at NMT Medical, Inc., a Boston-based medical technology company. While at NMT, she oversaw and directed a number of post-market studies evaluating the efficacy of a Class III bio-absorbable structural heart implant. Ms. Wallin has also held leadership positions with BattelleCRO, Inc., of Newton, MA, where she provided in-depth senior project management oversight on full service clinical projects, and Dover, NH-based TissueLink Medical, Inc., where she planned, developed and implemented clinical feasibility and outcomes studies for 510(k) cleared, novel electrosurgical technology.
Ms. Wallin earned a B.S. in Nursing at Northeastern University and an M.S. in Health Policy Management from Harvard University's School of Public Health.
[ back to top ]Douglas Weaver
Manufacturing
Before joining Semprus in 2010, Mr. Weaver served for six years as Principal Engineer for Design Assurance and Supplier Compliance at Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC). Prior to joining BSC, Mr. Weaver held senior development posts at Genzyme Biosurgery, Inc., and Focal, Inc., the former synthetic surgical sealant manufacturer which was acquired by Genzyme. At Focal, Mr. Weaver was instrumental in leading the development of GMP compliant manufacturing processes while driving the scale-up and commercialization of the company's core polymer technology.
Mr. Weaver is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt and a HAZOPs Incident Commander. He holds an M.B.A. from National University, San Diego, CA, and earned a B.A. in Chemical Technology from Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis, MN.
[ back to top ]Derek Beaupre
Quality Assurance
Mr. Beaupre brings over 16 years of expertise in medical devices and start-up companies, including experience in project management, product development, design transfer and quality assurance. Previously, Mr. Beaupre was a project engineer at Enginivity, acquired by Vital Signs, a GE Healthcare Company, where he oversaw production of patient warming devices. Before that, Mr. Beaupre was a project engineering manager at Axya Medical, acquired by Tornier, Inc., where he worked on orthopedic implants and instruments including suture anchors for sports medicine repair and implants for wrist fixation.
Mr. Beaupre received a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a dual concentration in Biomechanics and Biomaterials from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
[ back to top ]David N. McClellan
Business Development
Prior to joining Semprus, Mr. McClellan served as President of Navilyst Medical, a Boston Scientific divestiture, which has product lines devoted to the Cardiovascular and Oncology markets. Mr. McClellan previously spent 21 years at Boston Scientific, where during his tenure as President of the Oncology business, he led several strategic acquisitions, pioneered multiple market leading technologies and developed clinician partnerships throughout the oncology community.
Mr. McClellan was a former board member of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham and RFK Children's Action Corp. He is currently providing consulting services to medical technology companies and serving on boards of organizations dedicated to the healthcare industry, including privately held HealthSTAR Communications.
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Board of Directors
Scott Rocklage, Ph.D. (Chairman)
Managing Partner, 5AM Ventures
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.
[ back to top ]Simeon J. George, M.D.
Partner, SR One
Dr. George joined SR One in 2007. In addition to Semprus, Simeon serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Anaphore and Genocea Biosciences and as an observer at Rib-X and Syntaxin. Prior to joining SR One, Simeon was a consultant at Bain & Company and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Simeon earned his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and his M.B.A. degree from the Wharton School of Business, where he was a Mayer Scholar. He holds a B.A. in Neuroscience from the Johns Hopkins University, where he graduated Phi Betta Kappa.
[ back to top ]John P. Sullivan
Principal, Foundation Medical Partners
Mr. Sullivan has over twelve years of operating experience in the health care industry, with a focus on medical devices and biotechnology. Before joining Foundation, he helped start Molecular Staging Inc., a biotechnology company spun out of the Yale School of Medicine that he joined as the first full-time employee. He served as Director of Business Development until the successful sale of the company to Qiagen, GmbH. Following this, he served as a consulting entrepreneur for a variety of early stage healthcare technology companies, with a particular emphasis on business strategy and product development. Prior to his entrepreneurial experiences, Mr. Sullivan led the development of the first coronary stent at Boston Scientific Corporation. He began his career developing marketing strategies for Johnson & Johnson while working for Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising. Mr. Sullivan holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering degree with distinction from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
[ back to top ]Mark S. Colella
Principal, 5AM Ventures
Mark S. Colella joined 5AM Ventures in 2008 from BÂRRX Medical, a Bay Area start-up gastrointestinal medical device company, where he was head of marketing. Prior to BÂRRX, 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 represents 5AM as a board observer to Semprus BioSciences, 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.
[ back to top ]Purnesh Seegopaul, Ph.D.
Partner, Pangaea Ventures
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.
[ back to top ]Robert S. Langer, Sc.D. (Co-Founder)
MIT Institute Professor
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 worldwide 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.
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