Management
Chief Executive Officer: Joel Ackerman
spent 15 years at Warburg Pincus, a leading private equity investment firm, from 1993 to 2008. While at Warburg Pincus, he was a partner of the firm, a member of the executive management group and ran the healthcare services group. He invested in start-ups and early-stage companies as well as later stage growth investments and management-led buyouts. For most of these companies, Mr. Ackerman served on the board of directors and worked closely with the respective management teams on strategy, financing, M&A and organizational development. Currently, Mr. Ackerman sits on the board of directors of Coventry Health Care, a publicly traded managed care company, and Kindred Healthcare, a publicly traded company that owns hospitals and nursing homes. He is also Chairman of the Board of One Acre Fund, a non-profit microfinance organization in Western Kenya. He received a BA in physics from Columbia University and an MA in physics from Harvard University.
President: Ronnie Morris, M.D.
was most recently one of the founders of MDVIP, the national leader in personalized healthcare. Serving as a board member, medical director, and part of the executive management team, Dr. Morris helped build and manage MDVIP, a company that grew to a network of 400 doctors within 29 states servicing 125,000 consumers/patients. In December 2009, MDVIP was acquired by the Procter and Gamble Co. (NYSE:PG). Prior to MDVIP, Dr. Morris was the Chief Medical Officer and Executive V.P. of AllianceCare, a 1500+ employee company that provided home healthcare, physical therapy and doctor visits for homebound patients. At AllianceCare, Dr. Morris developed and operated the physician house call division of the business, and he was the general medical director for the company. He was the managing partner of a large multispecialty group that was acquired in 1998 by Promedco. Dr. Morris is a board certified internist and up until 2004 he had a private practice in Boca Raton, Florida. He has been a consultant for many pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Merck, and AstraZeneca.
Chief Medical Officer (Consultant): Eric K. Rowinsky, M.D.
received his B.A. degree from New York University and his M.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Following his residency in internal medicine at the University of California, he completed fellowship training in medical oncology and clinical pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. From 1987 to 1996, Dr. Rowinsky served as an Associate Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he performed seminal clinical development and pharmacologic studies on paclitaxel, docetaxel, irinotecan, and topotecan, among other agents. From 1996 to 2004, he served as the Director of Clinical Research and later Director of the Institute for Drug Development of the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio where he held the SBC Endowed Chair for Early Drug Development and was a lead investigator on early developmental studies of many classes of targeted therapeutics such as erlotinib, gefitinib, panitumumab, temsirolimus, ridaforolimus, trabectedin, and many other agents. He was also Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio from 1996 to 2006. From 2005 to 2007, Dr. Rowinsky served as the Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President at ImClone Systems, responsible for clinical development and regulatory affairs at ImClone Systems. From 2007 to 2009, he was an Executive Vice President of ImClone Systems, which became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly after its acquisition. He is also an Adjuvant Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and currently serves as a scientific advisor to ImClone Systems and other pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, with a focus on cancer therapeutic development.
Dr. Rowinsky is the Editor-in-Chief of Investigational New Drugs, an Associate Editor and Editorial Board Member of Cancer Research (Associate Editor and Reviews Editor), Clinical Cancer Research, Annals of Oncology, Cancer Biology and Therapy and several other oncology journals and has published approximately 300 manuscripts in both the preclinical and clinical research fields. He has also served on the Board of Directors, Scientific Advisory Board and Project Advisory Boards of a large number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and has advised and/or presented aspects of New Drug Applications to the FDA on several occasions. Dr. Rowinsky’s honors include receipt of the career development award of the American Cancer Society and the 6th Annual Emil J. Freireich Award for outstanding achievement of a young researcher in clinical cancer therapeutics. He has also served on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the NCI.
Vice President, Scientific Operations: Elizabeth Bruckheimer, Ph.D.
was named Vice President, Scientific Operations in August 2010 after joining Champions Biotechnology in January 2009 as Director of Preclinical Development. In this role, she leads the Champions TumorGraft™ platform development and oversees all scientific operations for both Champions’ Translational and Personalized Oncology Solutions. Prior to joining Champions Biotechnology, Dr. Bruckheimer was Associate Director and Manager at Systems Medicine, LLC. from 2007 to 2008 where she led the pre-clinical and translational research programs and supported business development opportunities. Dr. Bruckheimer was a Senior Scientist in cancer biology, at MedImmune, Inc. from 2003 to 2007 where she was involved in several preclinical and translational programs focused on monoclonal antibodies, cancer vaccines, and small molecule technologies for the treatment of cancer. Dr. Bruckheimer was a Scientist II, research, at Targeted Genetics Corporation from 2001-2003 where she was involved gene therapy programs aimed at treating cancer, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, and AIDS. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland Medical School in 2001. Dr. Bruckheimer obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center where she focused on prostate cancer pathogenesis and progression. Dr. Bruckheimer holds a bachelor’s of science degree in biochemistry from the University of Arizona and a doctorate in biomedical sciences from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Vice President, Sales & Marketing: Jordan Rubinson, MBA
has 17 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry with Pfizer, GSK, Aventis and most recently as the CEO of Polyheal Ltd., which is strategically allied with Teva Pharmaceuticals. Immediately prior, Mr. Rubinson worked at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals as the Marketing Director in Israel where he launched 5 new products in 3 years. Just prior at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Mr. Rubinson worked in U.S. marketing where he managed assets of over $200M in annual sales, brought to market several category leading vaccines, and earned the company Frost and Sullivan's Market Engineering Excellence Award. He also worked in GSK France managing a large field force division of over 100 employees. While at Aventis, Mr. Rubinson had assignments in France, Canada and the U.S. in the areas of Strategic Marketing, Manufacturing and Sales. Mr. Rubinson holds an Engineering Degree from Columbia University and an M.B.A from M.I.T's Sloan School of Management.
Vice President, Scientific Innovation Keren Paz, PhD
was named the Vice President, Scientific innovation for personalized oncology services in June 2011. Keren holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree from Tel-Aviv University, a Master of Science degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. She completed EMBO-awarded and Human Frontiers-awarded postdoctoral fellowships at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and at Rockefeller University in New York City. Keren’s academic training focused on research in the field of Signal Transduction, Molecular and Cellular Biology and Bioinformatics.
In 2003, Keren joined ImClone Systems, overseeing a number of Drug Discovery programs in the oncology field, from early preclinical stage through Investigational New Drug applications to late stage clinical development. Keren also supervised the Bioinformatics and Biomarker program in the company supporting the entire ImClone pipeline. Most recently, Keren led the Translational Sciences and Patient Tailoring group at ImClone. In this position, Keren also served as the ImClone representative and an active member of the Global Oncology Patient Tailoring team at the Eli Lilly Oncology Business Unit.