Scientific Advisory Board
Deep Scientific Expertise
Eugene Bauer, M.D.
Eugene Bauer, M.D. is the former CEO of Neosil, Inc., a biotechnology company. Dr. Bauer was previously Vice President for Medical Affairs of Stanford University, Dean of the School of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Dermatology at that institution. Dr. Bauer is one of three co-founders of Connetics Corp. He is a member of the boards of directors of Protalex, Inc., Echo Healthcare Acquisition Corp., Modigene, Inc., Peplin, Ltd. and is a member of numerous academic societies, including the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
André F. Marion
André F. Marion retired from the Perkin-Elmer Corporation as the President of its Applied Biosystems Division on February 1, 1995. Mr. Marion was the Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Applied Biosystems, Inc. at the time of its merger with Perkin-Elmer in 1993. As one of the founders of Applied Biosystems, Inc., André Marion served as its Chairman of the Board from October of 1987, President and Chief Executive Officer from January of 1986, Chief Operating Officer from May of 1983 to 1986 and was Vice President of Engineering from the founding year of the Company in June of 1981 to 1983. Mr. Marion held various Research and Development managerial positions during his employment with the Hewlett-Packard Corporation from 1972 to 1981.
A native of France, Mr. Marion holds an engineering degree from the French Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs Arts et Métiers in both mechanical and electronic engineering. He is the holder of several U.S. patents related to printing, data processing and storage. Mr. Marion currently serves as director of several private corporations.
Lincoln J. McBride, Ph.D.
As a scientist and life science executive with nearly 30 years of experience including work in the area of real-time PCR, Dr. McBride has proven expertise in commercializing several breakthrough-enabling technologies for life science research. His work has included tenures with leading enabling technology companies such as Applied Biosystems, Perkin Elmer and Fluidigm. While at Fluidigm, during which time he served as vice president of research and development and chief technology officer, Dr. McBride is credited with leading the commercialization of the TOPAZ® System, the company’s first product line and the world’s first chip-based product for structural biology. Previously, Dr. McBride oversaw the marketing and scientific collaboration between Perkin Elmer and Applied Biosystems prior to the merger of the two companies. During this period, he founded and led the companies’ effort to commercialize the world’s first real-time PCR system. As an author, Dr. McBride is credited with more than 25 journal publications, six issued U.S. patents and numerous U.S. patent applications.
Arul M. Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Chinnaiyan is a recognized leader in the use of biomarkers in the clinic to choose appropriate therapies for cancer patients. Biomarkers are characteristics that are measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biologic processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention. Dr. Chinnaiyan has led the characterization of a number of biomarkers of prostate cancer including AMACR, EZH2, hepsin, and sarcosine. His laboratory identified recurrent ETS gene fusions in prostate cancer, potentially redefining the molecular basis of prostate cancer as well as other common epithelial cancers. His laboratory also developed Oncomine (www.oncomine.org), a popular cancer profiling bioinformatics resource.
Muneesh Tewari, M.D., Ph.D.
Muneesh Tewari, M.D., Ph.D., is a faculty member at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where he has focused on studying the role of microRNAs in cancer, as well as on developing microRNA-based biomarker approaches for oncology applications. Dr. Tewari earned both an M.D. and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Following his internship and residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center, he went on to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where he completed a clinical fellowship in Medical Oncology and a research fellowship in functional genomics and systems biology. He continued his research as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, and also served in clinical capacities at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (all affiliates of Harvard Medical School). Since 2005 he has led a laboratory at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where his group pursues basic and translational studies of microRNAs in cancer.
Christopher Sears, Ph.D.
Dr. Christopher Sears is the Chief Scientific Officer at Ambergen, responsible for overseeing the development of molecular diagnostic platforms for cancer, HIV, autoimmune, and other diseases. Prior to his role at Ambergeb, Dr. Sears held joint academic appointments in oncology at Children’s Hospital Boston, The Broad Institute, Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he was responsible for directing all projects and operations of the clinical genomics group. He devoted a significant portion of his time to developing technology platforms for allele and mutational analysis and employing these for target-oriented cancer clinical trials.
Prior to his academic appointments, Dr. Sears was the Chief Scientific Officer at Biosift, a company he founded to commercialize his patented enterprise-level computational biology software platform that become a market leader. Dr. Sears has served as a scientific advisor to molecular diagnostic and genetic testing companies including: Genzyme Genetics, Myriad Genetics and Invitrogen; and as a key scientific advisor for the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the areas of genetics and statistics for the development of high-throughput comparative forensics genomic technologies. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Molecular and Cellular Biology.
Paul R. Schimmel, Ph.D.
Dr. Paul R. Schimmel is currently at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego serving as the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor of Molecular Biology and Chemistry. Dr. Schimmel specializes in researching the mechanism of action of proteins and the manner in which they act upon the nucleic acids in the cell. Author or coauthor of more than 450 scientific papers, he is also co-author of a widely read three-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field. Prior to joining Scripps, Dr. Schimmel was John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Biophysics and Biochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was employed from 1967 to 1997. He also served as the Chairman, Division of Biological Chemistry, American Chemical Society. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute of Medicine.
Dr. Schimmel graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and did post-doctoral work at Stanford University.