Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Board of Directors
Jeff is the founder and CEO of SpineThera. He has built SpineThera as a semi-virtual company with in-house formulation development and pilot plant operations and contracted services for all supporting functions. Jeff has further established a world class team of clinical and regulatory consultants (C-level and FDA director level). Mr. Missling has an extensive background in formulation, preclinical, and clinical development of polymeric, sustained release products including biodegradable microspheres, ophthalmic implants, drug coated medical devices, and biodegradable implants. Before founding SpineThera, Jeff led the formulation development and clinical study manufacturing of a sustained release steroid implant for ocular administration that was licensed to Merck. A chemical engineer trained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jeff has spent his career developing functional polymeric materials including polymeric batteries, and sustained-release drug products.
After 15 years of clinical practice and research (the majority as an associate within a large general orthopedic surgery practice), Dr. Techner transitioned into the pharmaceutical industry as a Medical Director and the Head of the Arthritis, Musculoskeletal Disorder, and Pain Management therapeutic area of a large, global Clinical Research Organization (CRO), Omnicare Clinical Research. He then transitioned to Adolor Corporation, serving as the medical lead for all alvimopan (a peripherally acting mu opioid receptor antagonist) development programs and co-lead on all other development programs in acute or chronic pain (eg., delta and kappa opioid agonists, cannabinoids) and went to serve as the Vice President Medical Affairs and Drug Safety and Pharmacovigilance. Following Cubist’s acquisition of Adolor in December 2011, Dr. Techner served as a Vice President, Clinical Research for Cubist Pharmaceuticals in Lexington, Massachusetts where he provided strategic leadership to postoperative ileus (ENTEREG) and opioid-induced constipation (bevenopran) programs and served as the clinical lead for the Drug Discovery group and Business Development (e.g., strategy, due diligence) across multiple therapeutic areas. While at Cubist he successfully led the cross-functional development team to an expanded indication for ENTEREG. Since 2014 Dr. Techner has been providing consulting services to the pharmaceutical industry.
Mark is a seasoned executive with over 35 years of experience, focusing on financial and operational areas. He has been the Chief Financial Officer for 3 public companies (after leading the Initial Public Offerings for ValueVision/Evine, Famous Dave’s BBQ and Redline Performance Products), successfully completed secondary offerings and numerous private placements. His background and experience focuses on emerging businesses in many industries with revenues from $0 to $50 million. He is now consulting as a fractional executive to emerging companies to assist in areas including overall strategy and planning, capital formation, projections/budgets/forecasts, cash flow planning, fund raising guidance including messaging and pitch decks, and operational improvements, including analytics, dashboards and KPI’s. Mark received his degree in accounting from the University of North Dakota and began his career at Arthur Andersen & Co, leaving as an audit manager.
Emily is an experienced formulation and polymer chemist with a focus on drug-eluting coatings, hydrogels and implants. Ms. Meyering is also skilled in small molecule and polymer synthesis for medical applications. She has significant expertise in developing novel animal models for use in new therapy testing both for medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Her passions include the Biodesign unmet needs analysis for new technologies and intellectual property. Previously, Emily has led technical teams as a Principal Research Scientist at both Minnetronix and American Medical Systems. Prior experience includes positions as a Senior Scientist at SurModics and Associate Scientist at Medtronic. She has an M.S. Organic Chemistry at the University of California - San Diego and B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of St. Thomas.
Beth Llewellyn is a highly skilled clinical research professional with more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. During those years, she has participated in over 30 clinical trials in a variety of therapeutic indications. Beth specializes in providing clinical operations management to small and medium sized pharmaceutical companies. In 2014 Beth established 2L Pharma, LLC, a clinical consulting organization. As the Chief Consultant of 2L Pharma, Beth has led multiple organizations from start-up to successful project completion. Beth received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Ohio University and received graduate training in Experimental Psychology at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Dr. Houghton was formerly the Chief Medical Officer at Xenome, Anesiva, and Orphan Medical, and completed his Anesthesiology residency at Sydney University, Sydney, Australia. Bill provides guidance and insight to optimize SpineThera's pre-clinical and clinical study plans, and defines product requirements from the clinical perspective.
Cassie Miller received her B.S. from the University of Minnesota in the field of Family Studies. She has over 20 years of professional experience working with, and managing teams, in both a small business atmosphere, as well as in the corporate healthcare industry. Cassie spent ten years with Park Nicollet/HealthPartners in the Twin Cities working at the Melrose Center and the International Diabetes Center. Some notable work includes leading recruitment for numerous type-one and type-two diabetes clinical trials. She also participated in the creation of a clinical diagnostic tool designed to help clinicians identify eating disorder patterns in pediatric patients with diabetes. With a passion for healthcare advancement and patient care, along with a wealth of experience in the field, Cassie is excited to help the SpineThera team progress SX600 through the next phase of development.
John Foster has more than 30 years of executive management experience and proven expertise in developing and bringing specialty pharmaceuticals and drug-device combination products to market. Mr. Foster is currently President of Cerebral Therapeutics, formerly CEO and Chairman of NTF Therapeutics. He was previously the founder and CEO of CNS Therapeutics, a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on developing and marketing intrathecal drugs for neurological disorders and pain. CNS was sold to Covidien/Mallinckrodt (October 2012). Mr. Foster also serves as Vice Chairman of Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare.
Doug Drysdale is the CEO at Cybin, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on progressing psychedelics to therapeutics by engineering proprietary drug discovery platforms, innovative drug delivery systems, novel formulation approaches and treatment regimens for mental health disorders. As an experienced Corporate Director and CEO, Doug has chaired the board of directors of a NASDAQ-listed company and as a CEO for the past 14 years has built and turned-around four pharmaceutical companies.
Wayne has spent his career as a business owner and operator in the life science industry and currently owns ProMed Molded Products and ProMed Pharma LLC.
Dr. Shaheen Lakhan is a physician-scientist and clinical development specialist with over 15 years of diverse experience in clinical practice, academia, and industry. He is board-certified in both neurology and pain medicine with clinical training from Cleveland Clinic and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is currently Chief Medical Officer at Click Therapeutics where he is transforming medicine and democratizing health care through digital therapeutics. He also continues to serve patients as a practicing neurologist and pain specialist at Cambridge Health Alliance. Previously served as faculty of leading institutions (Harvard Medical School, Case Western Reserve University), founding department chair and curricular dean (California University of Science and Medicine), institutional review board chair (Arrowhead Regional Medical Center), chief of pain management (Virginia Tech - Carilion Clinic), and executive/leadership roles in both biopharma (Zogenix, Sage Therapeutics) and biotech (Fern Health, The Learning Corp).
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