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Management Team
Cedric Francois' primary areas of expertise are immunology and immune system mediated disease. Cedric Francois received his medical degree from the University of Leuven in Belgium and his Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of Louisville. Following postgraduate training in pediatric and transplant surgery, Dr. Francois was a member of the research team that performed the first successful hand transplantation and of the Louisville Face Transplant Team, whose work supported the first human face transplantation in Lyon, France in 2005. He has published numerous publications and is the principal author on the clinical report of the first four human hand transplantations. He is an inventor on many biotechnology patent applications, including all of Potentia's proprietary patent applications. Dr. Francois led Potentia to become the first group to test complement-inhibiting drug candidates for age-related macular degeneration, more than a year before the landmark reports in Science magazine. |
Cedric Francois,
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Dr. Deschatelets joined Potentia in 2001 and has served as Chief Technology Officer and Intellectual Property Officer, becoming Chief Operating Officer in 2005. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day activities of the company and managing external collaborations, he remains actively involved in overseeing Potentia's research and development efforts. Dr. Deschatelets has been engaged in state-of-the-art research in the areas of surface chemistry and organic synthesis for the last 15 years, and was a co-founder of Syntetica Fine Chemicals, a custom chemical synthesis company supporting the pharmaceutical industry. He has extensive experience in nanobiotechnology and in the synthesis of organic molecules and bioconjugates Dr. Deschatelets received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Montreal and his post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. George Whitesides at Harvard University. |
Dr. Olson obtained his PhD in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School . Dr. Olson further developed his expertise in gene transfer and vaccine design in Dr. Thomas Caskey's laboratory at Merck and in Dr. Richard Mulligan's laboratory at Harvard University . He has over 20 years of experience in the fields of virology, vaccine design, gene therapy, and mammalian cell culture. |
Dr. Slakter is a nationally and internationally recognized retinal specialist who has been involved in the design and application of a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. He has played a key role in the clinical development of digital indocyanine green angiography (ICG), particularly for the evaluation of macular degeneration and chorioretinal inflammatory disease. He has served as a principal investigator in the clinical trials of photodynamic therapy (PDT) with verteporfin and is currently conducting clinical studies for the treatment of central serous chorioretinopathy. He created and is the director of the Digital Angiography Reading Center, which serves as a key resource for numerous industry-sponsored studies, including the Anecortave Acetate for AMD clinical trials. He has been on the medical advisory boards and has served as a consultant to many of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies involved in the development of new treatments for AMD, diabetic retinopathy and retinal vascular disease. |
Prior to joining Potentia Dr. Gerber was a patent attorney at the law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston , where she assisted clients in the life sciences field with their intellectual property needs ranging from intellectual property development and protection to licensing. Before joining Choate in 1999, Dr. Gerber was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University . Dr. Gerber received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Biophysics from the University of California , San Francisco , where she studied the role of the CDC37 gene in the cell cycle, and received her M.D. from the same university. She received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School. |
Dr. Stoll is a toxicologist with more than three decades of experience in drug development. Dr. Stoll obtained his PhD. in Pharmacology and Toxicology from Purdue University in 1974. Upon graduation, he started his industrial career at Merck, then moved on to become Director of Preclinical Safety Assessment at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals; Senior Director of Toxicology and Pathology at Cetus/Chiron; and Director of Toxicology and Safety Assessment at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) Pharmaceuticals where he was awarded the title Highly Distinguished Scientist in Toxicology before retiring in 2005. He is presently Adjunct Professor of Toxicology at the University of Connecticut. He has served on numerous task forces for the Premarket Approval (PMA) review process at the FDA, and served as Chairperson of the DRUSAFE (Drug Safety) Steering Committee from 1987-1989 and was a working member of this subsection committee of the PMA for 25 years. Additionally, he served as PMA Safety Chairperson in ICH (International Conference on Harmonization) process I, II, and III from 1989 to 1997. Dr. Stoll was responsible for the design, strategy, execution and toxicological regulatory issues of toxicology for more than 200 INDs and 20 successful NDAs, including Restoril®, Dynacirc®, Visken®, Sandimmune® iv and po routes, Parlodel®, Tavist®, Clozaril®, Lescol®, Proleukin®, Viramune®, Flomax®, Mobic®, Aptivus®, and most recently, Yondelis®. He was also responsible for the toxicology program for the first biological insecticide approved by the EPA (Thuricide®), as well as the pesticide, Safrotin®. |
Federico Grossi received his medical degree from the University of Cordoba in Argentina and his Doctorate's Degree in Physiology from the University of Louisville. Following his post graduate training in surgery, Dr. Grossi joined the Plastic Surgery Research Laboratory at the University of Louisville were he developed his expertise in microsurgery and composite tissue transplantation. He was a crucial member of the Louisville Face Transplant Team, which has published several manuscripts on the ethical and psychological aspect of face transplantation that are now considered hallmark publications in this field. He has also published numerous articles in the fields of ischemic preconditioning and composite tissue allotransplantation. Dr. Grossi joined Potentia as part of its research team in 2004 and became its Clinical Research Director in 2006. |
