LEADERSHIP

LEADERSHIP & BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Joseph Patti, PhD

President & Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Patti has over 25 years of executive experience in biotechnology. He has been the President and Chief Executive Officer for multiple private and publicly traded companies and a Board member for six biotechnology companies. During his tenure as a biotechnology executive, he oversaw the filing of six investigational new drug applications, raised over $300M in capital, and was instrumental in over $2.6B in M&A transactions. Dr. Patti received a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh, a M.S.P.H. from the University of Miami School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Louise Hecker, PhD

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Hecker is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of FibroNox. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and a research investigator at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Hecker is a world-leading expert on Nox4 and Nrf2, having made numerous seminal discoveries. She was the first to define a novel role for the oxidant-generating enzyme, Nox4, in mediating pro-fibrotic myofibroblast functions and scar tissue (fibrosis). Since this landmark discovery, these findings have been extensively validated by numerous independent laboratories – Nox4 has since been shown to be a critical mediator of tissue fibrosis in various organ (lung, kidney, blood vessels, liver, skin, skeletal muscle, and heart). She also discovered novel mechanisms Nox4 by which Nox4 is dysfunctional in aging, where its sustained upregulation results in an age-dependent persistent fibrotic response (Science Translational Medicine, 2014); these finding may help to explain why fibrotic diseases disproportionally effect the elderly. She has a long-standing interest in commercializing technologies, and these efforts have led to numerous patents, licensed technologies, and many regional and national awards for related to commercialization. She has successfully led >$8 million in funding dedicated to the pre-development of the therapeutics at the heart of FibroNox.

Margaret K. Offermann, MD

Board of Directors

Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD is President and CEO of OncoSpherix, a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company located in Atlanta that is advancing a proprietary platform of first-in-class small molecule therapeutics for cancer. Prior to OncoSpherix, Dr Offermann was in leadership roles in academic, philanthropic and for-profit sectors. She is a founder and Managing Partner of Salutramed Group, a C-level consulting group, where she has advised multiple companies, from early stage to public companies. From 2008-2011, she served as Deputy National Vice President for Research at the American Cancer Society (ACS) where she provided executive leadership for intramural and extramural research programs and served as a spokesperson for the research mission of the ACS. From 1989-2008, she rose through the ranks at Emory University to Professor of Hematology and Oncology, Associate Director of the Winship Cancer Institute, co-director of the MD, PhD training program, and Associate Director of the Postgraduate Training Program in Hematology and Oncology. She trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals and in Medical Oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine and in Medical Oncology.

Scientific/Clinical Advisors

Karl-Heinz Krause

Karl-Heinz Krause is full professor at the Department of Pathology and Immunology at the University of Geneva. He obtained his MD and PhD at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany. He is a trained specialist in internal medicine and infectious diseases and has a joint appointment with the Geneva University Hospitals. His research is centered around molecular mechanisms and therapy of age-related diseases. His main research fields are reactive oxygen species (ROS)-generating NADPH oxidases and pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons. For both topics, his research team focuses on physiology and pathologies of the central nervous system. Of particular importance among his stem cell research activities is the development of engineered neural tissues. Professor Karl-Heinz Krause has also been active in the biotechnology field. He is a co-inventor on numerous patents. He is also cofounder of several start-up companies, including GENKYOTOX (development of NADPH oxidase inhibitors), Neurix (pluripotent stem cell-derived neural tissues), Transcure bioservices (stem cell-based humanized mouse models), Antion Biosciences (therapeutic minigenes and HIV cure), and HPlus therapeutics (development of proton channel inhibitors).

Paul W Noble, MD

Paul W Noble, MD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine, Vera and Paul Guerin Family Distinguished Chair in Pulmonary Medicine, and Director of the Women’s Guild Lung Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. He received his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, and completed his medical residency and chief residency at the University of California, San Francisco Hospitals. Dr Noble completed his Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowships at the University of Colorado and the National Jewish Center in Denver. Dr Noble is a physician scientist with an active
research laboratory focused on elucidating the basic mechanisms of lung fibrosis. The National Institutes of Health have funded his research laboratory for the past twenty years. He has been involved in industry-sponsored clinical trials evaluating new therapies in IPF and participated in the pirfenidone and nintedanib programs that led to the first FDA-approved IPF treatments. Dr Noble is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Association of Physicians. He is a Deputy Editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Toby Maher MD MSc PhD

Toby Maher is Professor of Medicine and Director of Interstitial Lung Disease at Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Dr Maher has spent the last 20 years specialising in the management of all forms of pulmonary fibrosis and orphan interstitial lung diseases. He previously ran the ILD unit at Royal Brompton Hospital, London. Since June 2020 he has been Director of ILD at Keck Medicine of University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His research interests include; biomarker discovery, the lung microbiome and host immune response in the pathogenesis of IPF and clinical trials in interstitial lung disease. He has been involved in >100 trials in fibrotic lung disease from phase 1b through to phase 4 and including those assessing IPF, sarcoidosis, scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory myositis. He is an associate editor for American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and is on the Editorial Board of Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He has authored over 400 papers and book chapters on pulmonary fibrosis.