BUSINESS AND SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
Gail Cassell, PhD
Dr. Gail H. Cassell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Senior Scientist, Division Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Board of Visitors at the University of Alabama, School of Medicine, as well as a Distinguished Scientist and Consultant for PAI Life Sciences in Seattle, WA. Dr. Cassell previously served as Vice President, Scientific Affairs and Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar for Infectious Diseases at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis where she was responsible for launching the Lilly MDR-TB philanthropic effort and establishing and leading the Lilly TB Drug Discovery Initiative, a nonprofit launched in 2007. Formerly she was Vice President of Infectious Diseases Drug Discovery and Clinical Development at Lilly, where she led a hepatitis C protease inhibitor program from the discovery phase to clinical candidate, and the development of a new antibiotic from clinical development to product decision. Prior to Lilly, Gail served as the Charles H. McCauley Professor and Chairman of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Alabama Schools of Medicine and Dentistry at Birmingham. Dr. Cassell has served on many boards and committees including past President of the American Society for Microbiology, the Board of Scientific Councilors of the CDC, Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Council of Public Health Preparedness, the FDA’s Science Board, and is currently a member of the NIH Science Management Board, the newly appointed NIH Board of Trustees, and the Advisory Council of the Fogarty International Center of NIH. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Gail has been widely recognized for her research accomplishments including two honorary degrees.
David J. Decewicz, MD, MS, MHA
Dr. Decewicz is a Sr. Member of the Office of Medical Affairs at Medtronic. He has over a decade of experience in Medical, Clinical, and Regulatory Affairs with emphasis on thought leader engagements, clinical research protocols and technology/product development. Dr. Decewicz has led teams through all stages of Research and Development, as well as been primary author on various peer reviewed journal articles. He received a Master’s in Education (Physiology) from the University of Pittsburgh, a Master’s of Health Administration from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine, and his Medical Degree from St. Matthew’s University School of Medicine. Dr. Decewicz also serves on a variety of medical and community advisory boards. His current research focus is in the field of degenerative disc disease as well as tumor, trauma, and pain associated spinal conditions.
Christopher Davis, OBE, MD, PhD, FFPM
Dr. Davis is currently the Senior Medical Adviser, Division of Clinical Studies, at DHHS/ASPR/BARDA. In this role, Dr. Davis reviews all BARDA programs that involve clinical activities and represents the Division of Clinical Studies to ensure all clinical trials meet the requirements for reliably demonstrating safety and efficacy in compliance with good clinical practice, as well as reviewing and analyzing safety data relevant to BARDA contracts. He is involved in clinical trial protocol design discussions, implementation, analysis, oversight and discussion of cohort populations, clinical endpoints, clinical assays, and adverse events within clinical development programs; he serves as liaison on clinical studies with contractors and other HHS agencies (especially FDA, CDC and NIH). Dr. Davis is a senior business executive & physician-scientist with successful leadership roles in the fields of therapeutics, diagnostics, detection and medical devices, with expertise in infectious diseases, emergency preparedness & consequence management. Dr. Davis created, led and managed a medical biotechnology business focused on developing an entirely new generation of anti-viral drugs where he spearheaded DoD/DTRA contract wins & Congressional support of $20M, with follow-on of $36M. Dr. Davis managed a uniquely successful NATO multi-national drug development program and was awarded the Royal Navy’s Erroll-Eldridge Prize for his accomplishments. Dr. Davis is a co-discoverer of the mechanism of action of the novel cancer therapy anti-emetic (Kytril/Zofran), now in world-wide use and was awarded the Gilbert-Blane Gold Medal of Royal Colleges of Physicians & Surgeons in recognition. Dr. Davis was the co-debriefer of the first-ever defector from the Soviet BW Program, he organized and led the technical intelligence element of the first-ever US-UK diplomatic initiative to bring FSU/Russia into compliance with the Biological & Toxin Weapons Convention and was ultimately recognized for this major accomplishment with the award of the Order of The British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Carsten Korth, MD PhD
Dr. Korth is currently Professor at the University of Düsseldorf Medical School, Germany, where he leads a laboratory doing fundamental research in protein pathology and molecular psychiatry. He received an M. D. from the LMU Munich, Germany in 1995 and a Ph.D. from the VU Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2006. He received clinical training as resident for psychiatry at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich, Germany and in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and University of California San Francisco in the lab of Nobel Laureate Stanley Prusiner. Dr. Korth is a board certified psychiatrist and co-founder the company Prionics, Switzerland, who was the first to develop prion testing for bovine spongiform encephalopathy. His current reserarch focus is on biological diagnostics of mental illesses, as well as the development of novel therapies for these diseases targeting their protein pathology.
Vishwanath R. Lingappa, MD, PhD
Dr. Lingappa is currently Chief Technology Officer and Co‐CEO of Prosetta Biosciences, Inc. In these roles he is responsible for the advancement of all of Prosetta’s drug discovery and development programs. He received a B.A. degree with High Honors from Swarthmore College in 1975, a Ph.D. degree from The Rockefeller University in 1979 under the mentorship of Guenter Blobel (Nobel Laureate, 1999), and a M.D. degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine in 1982, then joined the faculty in the Departments of Physiology and Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he ran an NIH-funded basic research laboratory for over 20 years. Dr. Lingappa practiced internal medicine at San Francisco General Hospital for over 26 years. He is recipient of a Kaiser Award for excellence in teaching (1990), is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2004), and is Emeritus Professor of Physiology at UCSF.
