Frederick Beddingfield III, MD, PhD is a board-certified dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon who was appointed CMO of Kythera Biopharmaceuticals in March, 2013. Prior to his appointment at Kythera, he held the role of Vice President and Therapeutic Area Head, Dermatology and Aesthetics at Allergan, Inc. Dr. Beddingfield has experience working on premiere products in the dermatology and aesthetics industry, including Allergan’s BOTOX® Cosmetic, JUVEDERM® and LATISSE®, all market-leading aesthetic treatments in their respective categories. During his tenure at Allergan, Dr. Beddingfield served in several roles, including Chief Medical Officer, Allergan Medical, and Global Team Leader of several brands, including Botox Facial Aesthetics, Botox Hyperhidrosis, Dermal Fillers and Botox Spasticity and was responsible for research programs including acne, rosacea, and hair loss. Earlier in his career, he held a full-time faculty position at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Division of Dermatology, where he continues to maintain a practice and academic appointment as Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine. Dr. Beddingfield earned an MD degree with honors from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in Policy Analysis from RAND Graduate School of Policy Studies.
Albert Cha, MD, PhD, is a Managing Partner who invests in private and public biopharmaceutical and medical device companies. Albert draws on his scientific, medical, and operating experience when working with his portfolio companies.
He was an investor in Ceptaris Therapeutics (acquired by Actelion), Neomend (acquired by Bard), Vicept Therapeutics (acquired by Allergan), Bioform Medical (BFRM, acquired by Merz), Biodel (BIOD), and Aspreva Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ASPV, acquired by Galenica). Albert was also involved in founding NextWave Pharmaceuticals and Prestwick Pharmaceuticals. Other investments include YM Biosciences (YMI), Dynavax Technologies (DVAX), Avanir Pharmaceuticals (AVNR), Acura Pharmaceuticals (ACUR), and AMAG Pharmaceuticals (AMAG). He currently serves on the board of several private biopharmaceutical and medical device companies. Albert has also served as co-founder of several portfolio companies. Prior to joining Vivo, Albert worked at Oracle Corporation in pharmaceutical consulting and at the Palo Alto VA Hospital as a biomedical engineer.
Albert received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He subsequently completed the Medical Scientist Training Program at UCLA School of Medicine, where he received his MD and PhD in Neuroscience. During his studies, he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha and won the prestigious Outstanding Graduate Student Award. His research in molecular biophysics has been published in highly respected journals such as Nature and Neuron.
John Doux, MD obtained a B.S. with distinction and an MD from Stanford University, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow performing research in the laboratory of Dr. David Woodley. After an internship at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, he returned to Stanford to complete his residency training in dermatology. He also completed an MBA at the Wharton School of Business where he was a Palmer Scholar. He is board certified in dermatology and maintains an active clinical practice. Since 2004 he has also served as an analyst at Palo Alto Investors, an investment fund specializing in healthcare with $1B in assets under management.
William Ju, MD, FAAD is a board-certified dermatologist and has over 20 years of biopharmaceutical experience in a wide variety of therapeutic areas, including dermatology. He is president and a founding trustee of Advancing Innovation in Dermatology, Inc. Dr. Ju has been president and chief executive officer of Follica, Inc. and chief operating officer at PTC Therapeutics, Inc. (PTCT). In addition, he has held executive positions at Pharmacia Corporation/Pfizer, Inc. Merck & Co., Inc., and Hoffmann La Roche, Inc. in a broad spectrum of product development functions. Dr. Ju served as project leader for SUTENT®, introduced CANCIDAS® into humans, and was part of the product development teams for CRIXIVAN® and TRANSLARNA™. Dr. Ju began his pharmaceutical career at Hoffmann-La Roche where he was a clinical leader for the development of dermatology compounds. Before entering industry, Dr. Ju was a senior staff fellow in basic research in the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology and was affiliated with the Dermatology Branch at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health. He obtained his M.D. with Alpha Omega Alpha honors at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and his A.B. with Phi Beta Kappa honors at Princeton University. Dr. Ju is a co-founder of Zoomi, Inc., is currently a member of the board of directors for Zoomi, Inc. and for Brickell Biotech, Inc., is a trustee of the Morristown Medical Center Foundation, and serves on the Advisory Council for the Keller Center of entrepreneurship at Princeton University.
Seth Orlow, MD, PhD has over 25 years of experience in medicine, science, and finance. As a faculty member at New York University, Dr. Orlow rose to become Chair of its leading dermatology department. He serves as a Senior Advisor with Pharus Advisors, focused on strategic transactional/investment banking advisory services in the dermatology and personal care sectors. In 1995 he co-founded Anaderm, a dermatologic discovery company backed by Pfizer and OSI Pharmaceuticals. He participated in the sale of Anaderm to Pfizer in 2002. From 2001-2010, he rose from Advisor to Partner with Easton Capital Partners, a venture capital firm focused on healthcare and consumer products. At Easton, he was involved in the sourcing, diligence, funding, oversight and exit of investments in many healthcare companies such as Acorda, Conor Medsystems, Protez, Salmedix and Transave. Dr. Orlow has licensed technologies to companies ranging from Pfizer to SkinMedica. An author of over 200 medical/scientific publications, he is an internationally sought-after speaker and thought leader. A graduate of Harvard in Biochemical Sciences and with an MD-PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Orlow trained in Pediatrics and Dermatology at Mt. Sinai and Yale.
Dr. Neal Walker is the President & Chief Executive Officer at Aclaris. He is a board certified dermatologist and serial entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to founding Aclaris, he was co-founder, President and CEO of Vicept Therapeutics (acquired by Allergan). Dr. Walker has co-founded and led a number of life science companies: Octagon Research Solutions, a software and services provider to biopharmaceutical companies (acquired by Accenture); Trigenesis Therapeutics, a specialty dermatology company where he served as Chief Medical Officer (acquired by Dr. Reddy's Laboratories); Cutix Inc., a commercial dermatology company that markets PreSun®, a sunscreen brand acquired from Bristol-Myers Squibb. He began his pharmaceutical industry career at Johnson and Johnson. Dr. Walker currently serves as Vice Chairman of Alexar Therapeutics, Inc. (co-founder) and Director on the Board of Sebacia, Inc. He previously served on the Board of Directors for Octagon. He is also on the Advisory Board of Flexible Medical Systems. Dr. Walker received his MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Peter Nicholson has worked in the biopharmaceutical and medical device industries for over 25 years. He is responsible for the worldwide strategy and business development functions at Galderma S.A., the dermatology-focused operating company of Nestlé Skin Health, which he joined in 2007. Previously he was Vice President, Corporate Development for Mentor Corporation where he successfully divested the company's urology business and refocused its strategy on the aesthetic business, which ultimately led to its acquisition by Johnson & Johnson. He served in a similar role at Inamed where he refined the company's strategy and successfully executed a number of business development agreements and revitalized the company's international presence prior to its acquisition by Allergan.
Nicholson worked at Amgen for six years in roles of increasing responsibility in product development and product licensing and was responsible for starting and managing the company's venture program. He worked at two small medical device companies, Telios and Advanced Tissues Sciences where he was a team-member focused on developing products addressing unmet needs for wound healing and burns. He pursued research at Triton Biosciences and Allergenetics where he was focused on identifying, isolating and characterizing new growth factors.
Mr. Nicholson received a master's degree in business administration from the University of California at Los Angeles where he won the 19th annual Knapp New Ventures Competition. He was a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Heron Biotechnology, a genomics company which he grew from two to 33 employees and a successful commercial launch. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry with an emphasis on immunology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he did post-graduate research in the laboratory of Dr. Robert I. Mishell.
Elisabeth A. Sandoval was appointed Chief Commercial Officer at KYTHERA Biopharmaceuticals in March 2012. Prior to her appointment at KYTHERA, she held the role of Vice President of Global Marketing and Strategy at Bausch + Lomb Surgical, a medical device company where she was responsible for creating and leading the global marketing team. Prior to that, she served for more than 20 years at Allergan in several roles spanning clinical research, sales, marketing, and global marketing across multiple businesses including neurology, dermatology, bariatrics, and plastic surgery.
She served as Vice President of Global Strategic Marketing for several market leading brands which included the launch strategy and execution of JUVEDERM®, BOTOX®Cosmetic, LATISSE®, Natrelle® breast implants and LAP-B.A.ND®. She received a B.S. in Biology from the University of California, Irvine and a MBA from Pepperdine University.
Kristen B. Slaoui is the Vice President and Head of Business Development and Licensing with Stiefel, a GSK company, a specialty dermatology company and part of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). She has spent fourteen years with GSK, where she won multiple awards during her time as a Principal Investigator in Respiratory drug discovery, and her work in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) resulted in the discovery of umeclidinium bromide – the active agent in the recently approved medicines Anoro™ Ellipta™ and Incruse™ Ellipta™. Since joining GSK’s Worldwide Business Development and Corporate Development teams, she has executed over $10.8 billion worth of deals and acquisitions, including the $2.1 billion licensing of ofatumumab (Arzerra®) from Genmab A/S, characterized as the largest biotech deal ever signed at that time, as well as the $3.6 billion acquisition of Stiefel Laboratories. She holds multiple patents, has authored more than 40 original publications including peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts, and textbook chapters, and she has an ongoing role as a peer reviewer for a dozen established medical journals.
Previous to her work in the private sector, Dr. Slaoui earned Bachelor’s degrees in both Biology and Classical Studies from Gettysburg College. Dr. Slaoui then went on to win a pre-doctoral research training fellowship grant award from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She earned her PhD in Physiology from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she was an NIH Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Following conferral of her degree, she earned multiple post-doctoral fellowship grants, including an NIH Post-Doctoral Fellowship, at the University of Washington. After her term in Seattle, she accepted a position in Respiratory Drug Discovery at GSK, but continued her commitment to academic research by spending over a decade as an adjunct assistant professor at her alma mater, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD.
Thorsten was appointed Senior Vice President of New Product Discovery, a business unit with more than 200 dedicated scientists and specialists at LEO Pharma in January 2013. In this role, the priorities for Thorsten Thormann have been to continue the building of a strong R&D project pipeline at LEO Pharma.
Prior to this, Thorsten held a double role of Director of Biological Research and Director of Pharmaceutical Technologies, respectively. Here he was responsible for disease specific experimental platforms linking biochemistry and exploratory clinical testing as well as refocusing the early formulation and CMC to build a platform for product improvements based on usability and user experience. Thorsten has also held the position as Head of Department, Molecular Biomedicine, and Head of Section for Product Reprofiling.
Throughout these jobs, Thorsten has gained insights into the importance of having strong ideation processes to create confidences in new targets and concepts as well as establishing high value of life cycle management and product improvements to meet real patient needs.
Thorsten Thormann has a MSc in Chemistry from University of Roskilde and a PhD in Protein Biology from University of Copenhagen.
Dr. Whitcup is the Executive Vice President, R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at Allergan. He is on the faculty at the Jules Stein Eye Institute/David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and also serves as a Director on the Board of Semnur Pharmaceuticals and as a member of the Biology Chair's Council at Caltech. He previously served as a Director at Avanir Pharmaceuticals and Questcor Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Whitcup graduated from Cornell University Medical College and completed residency training both in internal medicine at UCLA Medical Center and in ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary-Harvard Medical School. He then received fellowship training in uveitis and ocular immunology at the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Prior to coming to Allergan, Dr. Whitcup was Clinical Director of the National Eye Institute, and also served as head of the Clinical Branch and Director of the uveitis and ocular immunology fellowship program. Dr. Whitcup also served as Chair of the NIH Medical Executive Committee.
Dr. Whitcup currently directs Allergan's drug discovery efforts, medical device research, and the worldwide clinical development programs that include ophthalmology, neurosciences, dermatology, plastic surgery, and urology. He is also in charge of Allergan's global medical affairs organization. Dr. Whitcup is an author on over 150 scientific articles, book chapters, and a textbook on ocular inflammatory disease.
Lee T. Zane, MD, is a board-certified dermatologist and Anacor’s Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. He had served as Anacor's Vice President of Clinical Development from August 2008 to October 2013 and had served as Medical Director at Anacor since January 2008. From 2003 to 2007, Dr. Zane served as Assistant Professor of Clinical Dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Department of Dermatology, where he was the Director of Mt. Zion Dermatology Clinical Research Unit and the Director of the Acne Specialty Practice.
Dr. Zane received his Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree (valedictorian; summa cum laude) with high honors in Neuroscience from Colgate University and his Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from Stanford University. He completed his Dermatology residency training at UCSF, where he also earned a Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) degree in Clinical Research and maintains a faculty position as Assistant Clinical Professor of Dermatology.