Alexis Wallace, President and Chief Executive Officer, co-founder

Mr. Alexis Wallace is President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Thrombolytic Science International, a start-up cardiovascular biotechnology company in Cambridge, MA. Mr. Wallace has over fifteen years of international business development and operational experience including a decade with leading biopharmaceutical companies. Most recently, Mr. Wallace was the Executive Director of Medicine in Need, a biotechnology company funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There, Mr. Wallace oversaw the development of an inhaled version of an anti-tuberculosis drug from pre- IND through early human clinical development. Previously, Mr. Wallace was a Principal at Puretech Development, a strategic advisory and partnering group, part of Puretech Ventures. Mr. Wallace created and grew Puretech Development’s European business, advising client CEOs and board of directors on business strategy while leading business development activities in the fields of cardiovascular, drug delivery, ophthalmology and CNS. Mr. Wallace was also Director of Science Strategy at Genzyme Corporation, where he was instrumental in the establishment of major corporate joint ventures resulting recently in commercialized products, Myozyme® for Pompe’s disease and Aldurazyme® for MPS I. Mr. Wallace received an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, France, an MS degree in organic chemistry from Ecole Superieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon, France and an MBA degree from the the Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. Mr. Wallace is a member of the Board of Directors of Vascular Laboratory, Inc.

Victor Gurewich, MD, Scientific Director and co-founder

Dr Gurewich’s research interest has involved fibrinolysis for over thirty years. He was co-director of the first clinical trial of streptokinase (SK) in the US, was consultant for Hoechst in their negotiations with FDA for SK, helped write the package insert for it and served on the NIH consensus panel for Thrombolytic Therapy in 1980. In 1979, he co-discovered the single chain form of urokinase (proUK); a patent was issued in 1983. After licensing out proUK, Dr Gurewich participated in clinical trials for heart attack and deep vein thrombosis both in the US and Europe. Dr Gurewich’s team developed the mutation, M5, a patent was issued in 1995. Dr Gurewich is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Vascular Research Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

 

Jian Ning Liu, PhD, co-founder

Dr Liu is co-founder and Chairman of RxD Biopharma, a cardiovascular biotechnology company developing human recombinant proUK in China. Dr Liu is also Yangtze Professor of Biochemistry and Director at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Nanjing University, China. Dr Liu has been working in the field of molecular medicine for more than 20 years, focused on structure-function studies of therapeutic proteins and peptides. He is a leading expert in the production of recombinant proteins and peptides in China. Dr Liu came from China to join the Vascular Research Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 1990. After contributing substantially to the molecular characterization of proUK, Dr Liu designed a series of proUK mutants from which M5 was selected.

Paolo Sarmientos, PhD, co-founder

Dr Sarmientos has been involved with the research of Professor Gurewich since the late 80s. Dr. Sarmientos is CEO since 1992 of PRIMM, a biotech company based in Milan, Italy. Prior to joining PRIMM, Dr. Sarmientos managed Biotech R&D at Farmitalia Carlo Erba in Milan and Genetica, former Rhone Poulenc Group, coordinating the development of several biotech drugs which moved to clinical phases in the US and Europe. Dr. Sarmientos received his PhD. in Chemistry from the University of Naples, Italy and did post-doctoral work at NIH (Bethesda, USA).