Dennis J. Purcell
Dennis is Founder and Senior Advisor at Aisling Capital LLC. During his tenure, Dennis has been directly involved with over two hundred completed transactions and supervised over $15 billion of financing and advisory assignments in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical products industries.
Dennis is a frequent commentator on the industry and has been honoured in various publications as a top contributor to the Life Sciences industry. He sits on numerous private and public healthcare company boards, such as Real Endpoints and Summus Global. He is actively involved with many of the industry’s professional organizations, such as BIO, the Life Sciences Foundation, the NYC Investment Fund and NYU’s office of Therapeutics Alliance. He is a member of the University of Delaware Investment Committee and Harvard Kennedy School – M-R CBG Advisory Council. He is Executive Chairman of Poliwogg Holdings, a company devising new financed products for the healthcare industry.
Dennis received his M.B.A. from Harvard University and his B.S. in Accounting from the University of Delaware.
Dr William (Bill) Hunter MD
Dr. Hunter has been the President and CEO of Cardiome Pharma Corp in Vancouver, BC since 2012. Cardiome (NASDAQ: CRME) is an integrated, commercial, specialty pharmaceutical company that markets and sells acute care parenteral drugs in Europe, Canada and over 50 other countries around the world.
Previously, Dr. Hunter co-founded and served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Angiotech Pharmaceuticals (1992-2011). After founding the Angiotech while still in medical school in 1992, he grew the Company to become a profitable, diversified, device company with over 1,400 employees, several thousand commercially available products, and 12 facilities in 5 countries.
Dr. Hunter’s career has revolved around examining ways to make implantable medical devices “bioactive” and “smarter” through the use of technologies borrowed from other industries such as pharmaceutical coatings, surface modification and sensor technologies. As an inventor with over 200 patents and patent applications to his name, he has been involved in the invention and development of the TAXUS® Drug-Eluting Coronary Stent, the Zilver PTX Peripheral Drug-Eluting Stent, and the Quill barbed wound closure device; combined these products have been used in over 40 million patients and recorded revenues exceeding $25 billion. His latest venture, Canary Medical, utilizes implanted sensor, battery and transmission technology to create “smart” implanted medical devices that can “self-report” on function, activity, wear, complications and patient outcomes for up to 20 years.
Selected awards he has received include the 2006 Principal Award from the Manning Foundation (one of Canada’s highest awards for innovation); BC Innovation Council’s Cecil Green Award for Science and Technology Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneur of the Year from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association; and Canada’s 40 Under 40. Current and previous company board seats include Cardiome (NASDAQ/TSE), Adherium (ASX), REX Bionics (AIM), Zalicus Inc (NASDAQ), Aspreva Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ/TSE), Anormed Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ/TSE), Active Pass Pharmaceuticals, Neuromed Pharmaceuticals (Chairman) and Angiotech Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ/TSE). Dr. Hunter served as a practicing physician in British Columbia for 5 years. He received his Doctor of Medicine and Masters of Science degrees from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and his Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University in Montreal.
Professor Hugh Perry BSc, MA, PhD, F.Med.Sci.
Professor Hugh Perry is Professor of Experimental Neuropathology at the University of Southampton.
He trained as a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, 1991-1977, where he obtained his B.Sc. and D.Phil. He remained at the University of Oxford as a Locke fellow of the Royal Society, 1982-1986, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow (1986-1995) and Professor of Experimental Neuropathology, 1996-1998. His research interests are in the field of interactions between the immune system and nervous system, and how inflammation contributes to the outcome of neurological and psychiatric disease.
His recent work has demonstrated how systemic infection, disease and inflammation play a role in driving the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. He has wide expertise in preclinical models of diseases of the nervous system and the translation of these findings to the human condition. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers.
Professor Hugh Perry currently holds grants from the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK focusing on the role of inflammation in chronic neurodegenerative disease. He has sat on research advisory and funding panels for a number of different charities and funding agencies and chaired the Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience panel of the Wellcome Trust, 2004-2007.
Professor Perry has acted as a consultant for biotechnology (British Biotech, Nurin Ltd, BioVex Ltd, Inflazyme) and pharmaceutical companies (Celltech, UCB, Novartis, Eisai) in the area of neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative disease. He is currently chair of the Medical Research Council (UK) Neurosciences and Mental Health Board, a member of MRC Strategy Board and chair of UK Dementia Platform Oversight Board. Professor Hugh Perry was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, 2005, Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, 2014, was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2006-2012, and recipient of a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, 2011.
Sir Mark Richmond
Mark Richmond is a molecular biologist whose research has centred on the genetics of bacterial infection. Mark identified the role of small units of DNA known as plasmids, which can replicate independently of chromosomes, in developing bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Mark was responsible for the discovery of plasmids in Staphylococcus aureus that produce an enzyme conferring resistance to penicillin. Subsequently, he applied a unique combined molecular and epidemiological approach to the study of plasmids responsible for antibiotic resistance in gut bacteria such as E. coli. He then produced the first evidence that these resistance-producing plasmids could transfer between bacterial species, describing probable mechanisms of spread in the gut of humans and animals.
Mark was awarded the Robert Koch Prize in 1976 for his contributions to microbiology. In 1981, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester, a post followed by a string of public appointments, including Chair of the Science and Engineering Research Council. From there, he moved into industry, becoming Global Head of Research at Glaxo.
Dr Adam M Hill
Adam is a highly experienced leader in the life sciences with a career developed at the interface of Industry, Academia and Health systems. A dual-qualified Clinician and Mechanical Engineer, Adam is excited about the interface of healthcare and technology.
Current board positions are CEO of Oncimmune; Association of British HealthTech Industries (ABHI – Vice-Chair and Non-Executive Director Board Member); Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP); MyRecovery.ai and Accelerated Clinical Trials (ACT).
Professor Phil Beales
Co-founder & CEO of Axovia Therapeutics Inc as well as Professor of Medical & Molecular Genetics, Philip Beales researches in to the cause and treatment of rare diseases having discovered over 45 disease-related genes in the last decade. His main research focus is on the ciliopathies, which he has helped to characterise clinically and molecularly.
As a professor at Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust & University College London, Philip proposed (and later proved) that non-motile cilia underpinned the multi-system disorder, Bardet-
Biedl Syndrome. He was lead author on the first gene discovery for the Bardet-Biedl syndrome and Jeune Syndrome, the latter implicating for the first time, cilia dysfunction in skeletal dysplasias.
His lab was one of the earliest to develop tools for the functional characterisation of ciliary proteins in disease including the generation of several animal models that have assisted in understanding disease causation.