Management
David O'Hagan Ph.D.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
David is the CEO, inventor, and co-founder of Esperovax. Dr. O’Hagan Earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine and Genetics developing microarray technology for Genomic Solutions - that he spun off as Streamline Proteomics with Sloan Ventures, using microspheres to capture and analyze genomic and proteomic data. He completed his post-doctoral work at the Burnham Institute (La Jolla, California), returning later to Michigan to develop a novel cancer therapy for melanoma at the Karmanos Cancer Institute. Dr. O’Hagan also developed several products as a product manager for Stratagene (La Jolla, California), followed by a position in sales for Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, Missouri).
Dr. O’Hagan earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Wayne State University School of Medicine in 2002.
Savita Nikam Ph.D.
Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer
Dr. Nikam has more than 20 years of research experience in academia and with biotechnology companies. Her expertise includes molecular biology, protein biochemistry, and expression of products from mammalian, yeast, and bacterial expression systems. Dr. Nikam gained extensive experience in molecular imaging research at Charles River Co, manipulating different cancer cell lines and generating reporter models for in vivo imaging of apoptosis following new cancer drug treatment. Her research included the development of a potent viral vaccine against Japanese encephalitis from primary chick embryo cell cultures. Dr. Nikham received her Ph.D. in microbiology from the National Institute of Virology, Pune University, India. She completed her post-doctoral research on the mechanism of HIV reverse transcriptase fidelity and the kinetic basis of drug resistance at the University of Michigan.
Advisors
Robin Robinson
Board Chairman
Dr. Robinson is a respected authority on the development of breakthrough biomedical technologies, and a seasoned expert in consummating collaborations with leading US government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, academic research groups, and foreign governments, for which he was cited in 2018 as one of the top 100 innovators in medicine by The Medicine Maker. Notably, Dr. Robinson was appointed as the first director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, managing an annual budget of $1.35 billion and a staff of 250 scientists and medical experts. He brought BARDA into prominence as one of the top 10 fully integrated R&D organizations worldwide supporting advanced development and acquisition of more than 240 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and medical devices for man-made biodefense threats, pandemic influenza, and emerging infectious diseases, including Ebola and Zika viruses. Some 32 of these medical countermeasure products were approved and licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during his 12-year tenure.
David Roth
Board Member
David M. Roth is a Senior Managing Partner of SouthOcean Capital Partners, Inc., which has invested in real estate, venture capital, and public and private markets, both internationally and in the United States.
Previously, he served as a Principal and Managing Director of WLD Enterprises, Inc., a private investment company. Roth began his professional career in the Farmington, Connecticut law firm of Levy & Droney, P.C., where, as a partner, he specialized in litigation, investment banking and public finance law.
Roth is a Trustee at Lafayette College, a Director of the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center (Chair), the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. He is also a past Director for the Jewish Community Foundation and the League of American Orchestras. Roth previously served on the Board of Directors of USI Holdings, Inc., CMC, Inc., Omniglow Corporation, Genomas Inc., and Exploria SPS.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College, an M.A. (with distinction) from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from the University of Connecticut (cum laude).
Danith Ly, Ph.D.
Scientific Advisory Board Member
Danith Ly, Ph.D. is one of the world’s leading experts in peptide nucleic acid (PNA) chemistry and programmable DNA targeting. He is a Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University and Founding Director of the Institute for Biomolecular Design and Discovery. He pioneered many of the advances in γ-PNA technology that made sequence-specific invasion of double-stranded DNA practical, and his laboratory has published landmark work demonstrating PNA-mediated gene editing and gene regulation in vivo.
From an industry perspective, Danith co-founded several biotechnology companies, including NeuBase Therapeutics, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer and was the primary inventor of the company’s PNA-based therapeutic platform. He has successfully translated academic discoveries into venture-backed biotechnology companies, giving him both deep scientific credibility and real commercialization experience.
William J. Evans Ph.D.
Scientific Advisory Board Member
William J. Evans, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of California, Berkeley and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine in the Geriatrics Program at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC. Dr. Evans is the CEO or MyoCorps, Inc a new company with exclusive license to the granted patents for the D3Creatine dilution method to measure muscle mass. This method is termed the Muscle Assessment Test (MAT) and is currently being used to assess muscle mass in several NIH sponsored cohort studies including the Framingham Heart Study, Women's Health Inititiative, Tobago Longitudinal Aging Study, the Study on Muscle, Mobility, and Aging (SOMMA), and more. The goal is to achieve FDA approval for the MAT as a diagnostic test for muscle mass. From 2014 - 2016 he was the President of the Muscle and Health Division at KineMed, Inc and from 2009-2014 he was a Vice President and Head of the Muscle Metabolism Discovery Performance Unit at GlaxoSmithKline a group dedicated to developing new medicines to treat muscle wasting, frailty, and sarcopenia. From 1997 – 2009 he was the Warmack Chair of Nutritional Longevity and director of the Nutrition, Metabolism, and Exercise Laboratory in the Reynolds Institute on Aging at the U of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. From 1993 to 1997 he was the director of the Noll Physiological Research Center at Penn State and from 1982 to 1993 he served as the Chief of the Human Physiology Lab at the U.S.D.A. Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. He is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, The American College of Nutrition, and an honorary member of the American Dietetic Association. He is the author or co-author of more than 350 publications in scientific journals with an H-index of 126, and more than 80,000 citations. His research has examined the functional and metabolic consequences of physical activity in elderly people as well as dietary protein needs of older men and women. He is the author of Biomarkers (Simon & Schuster) and AstroFit (Simon & Schuster, 2002). His studies have demonstrated the ability of older men and women to improve strength, fitness, and health through exercise, even into the 10th decade of life. His work has been featured on CBS evening news, 20/20, Good Morning America, NOVA, the New York Times, and a variety of media outlets. In 2005, he was invited to testify before the Senate Special Com. on Aging on strategies to save Medicare through prevention of chronic diseases associated with aging.