Management
Bruce D. Given M.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Given is CEO of Leonardo Biosystems, Inc. Until June of 2007, Dr. Given served as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors of Encysive Pharmaceuticals, which he joined in 2002. Prior to joining Encysive Pharmaceuticals, he was with Johnson & Johnson for 9 years, serving in several capacities including as President, International, Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics and as Group Vice President, Head of U.S. Marketing & Sales, Research & Development for Janssen Pharmaceutica. He has held various executive and senior management positions at Sandoz Pharma Ltd., Sandoz Research Institute and Schering-Plough Corporation. Prior to entering the pharmaceutical industry, he was on the medical faculty at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Given is currently Cheif Operating Officer of Arrowhead Research Corp (NASDAQ: ARWR) and Chairman of the Board for ICON, plc. (NASDAQ: ICLR). Dr. Given serves on the Boards of Directors for Calando Pharmaceuticals and BioHouston, where he is Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Board and the Texas Life Science Center. He is a member of the CPRIT Commercialization Committee, is past Chairman of the Rider University Scientific Advisory Board and a past member of the Technology Review Committee of MD Anderson Medical Center.
Dr. Given obtained his bachelor of sciences degree from Colorado State University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He received his M.D. degree with honors from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine and completed his medical training at the University of Chicago and at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where he was a Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School. He is board certified in internal medicine and endocrinology and metabolism and has authored 33 scientific publications.
Mauro Ferrari Ph.D.
Director, Co-founder and Scientific Advisor
Dr. Mauro Ferrari is the President and CEO of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, and holds the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Distinguished Endowed Chair. He is also the President of The Alliance for NanoHealth. Dr. Ferrari is an internationally recognized expert in nanomedicine and biomedical nanotechnology. He was trained in mathematics, engineering, and medicine.
Prior to assuming leadership of TMHRI, Dr. Ferrari was Professor and Chairman of The Department of NanoMedicine and Biomedical Engineering (nBME) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Professor of Experimental Therapeutics at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University, and Adjoint Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. His previous academic appointments include professorships at UC Berkeley and Ohio State University.
From 2003 to 2005, he served as Special Expert on Nanotechnology and Eminent Scholar at The National Cancer Institute, where he led in the development of the NCI's program in Nanotechnology, which remains the largest program in NanoMedicine in the world. Dr. Ferrari has been serving as the Editor-in-Chief for "Biomedical Microdevices: BioMEMS and Biomedical Nanotechnology" since 1997.
Dr. Ferrari holds more than 30 U.S. and International patents and has founded several startup companies, including Leonardo and NanoMedical Systems. He serves on the Board of Directors of Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ:ARWR).
He has published approximately 200 peer-reviewed articles and received many national and international awards including the James A. Shannon Director's Award from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense (DOD) Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) Innovator Award in 2008, the National Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation from 1993 to 1998, and the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in 1999. He is also an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He was nominated Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the President of Italy. Dr Ferrari was also the first recipient of a Research Superiority Award from the Emerging Technology Fund of the State of Texas.
Chris Anzalone Ph.D.
Chairman and Director
Dr. Anzalone is the Chief Executive Officer of Arrowhead Research. He has a wealth of experience in nanotechnology, biotechnology, company-building, and venture capital. Prior to joining Arrowhead, Dr. Anzalone founded and built The Benet Group, a private equity firm focused on creating and building new nanobiotechnology companies from university-generated science. While at the Benet Group, Dr. Anzalone co-founded Leonardo Biosystems and Nanotope Inc., a tissue regeneration company. Prior to Benet, Dr. Anzalone was a partner at the Washington DC-based private equity firm Galway Partners, LLC where he was in charge of sourcing, structuring, and building new business ventures. He was also the founding CEO of NanoInk, Inc., a leading nanolithography company.
Dr. Anzalone holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Biology from UCLA and a B.A. in Government from Lawrence University.
Jason H. Sakamoto, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Sakamoto serves as a consultant for the Arrowhead Research Corporation, assigned to the technology and business development of Leonardo Biosystems. He is a faculty member of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) in Houston, Texas, where he leads research efforts developing novel nano-therapeutic drug delivery systems and nano-based proteomics technologies. He is a co-inventor of the multi-stage nanoporous silicon nanovector delivery system technology that is currently being commercialized by Leonardo. Dr. Sakamoto serves as an Interim Co-Chair of the Nanomedicine and Biomedical Engineering Department at TMHRI. He also is the Chief Operating Officer of the Alliance for NanoHealth (ANH). The ANH is a consortium of eight institutions of the Greater Houston Texas Region. The mission of the Alliance is to collectively bridge the disciplines to develop nanotechnology-based solutions to unresolved problems in medicine and to facilitate the clinical translation of these new technologies through commercialization.
Prior to his services in Houston, Dr. Sakamoto completed his undergraduate degree in Material Science Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley under the mentorship of Dr. Mauro Ferrari. After Berkeley, he entered the medical device industry and was employed as coronary and peripheral stent manufacturing and process engineer at the Guidant Corporation in Santa Clara, California. During these years at Guidant he played a significant role in the regulatory approval process of three medical devices and was responsible for the GMP production of coronary/peripheral stents for over 1 year.
After Guidant, he rejoined Dr. Ferrari and received his doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from The Ohio State University. Upon completion of his Ph.D., Dr. Sakamoto remained as a post-doctoral researcher in Dr. Ferrari's nanomedicine research group and also worked as a business development consultant for several biotech start-ups. He has written several publications on nanomedicine including peer-reviewed journal articles & book chapters, and is a co-inventor of two U.S. pending patents.