The bioCapture Leadership Team
Johanna Allston, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, Chairman
Dr. Allston is the co-founder of ViroPharma, Inc. a successful anti-infective biopharmaceutical company in Exton, PA which achieved an IPO in fewer than 2 years. She later co-founded Procognia, which focused on the development of enabling proteomic technologies out of England and Israel. She was on the Board of Directors of the Personalized Medicine Coalition where she headed the Clinical Sciences Division. Before starting ViroPharma, Dr. Allston was Director of Molecular Research and Clinical Virology at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceutical Company where she led a team that developed one of the first drugs to treat AIDS. Prior to this she was a tenured professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Medicine. She has held research and faculty positions at the Rockefeller University and California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Allston is actively involved with several charities. She is the past president of the Board of Directors of Camphill Soltane, a college which supports the needs and educational development of adults and young adults with special needs. She is also active in the fight against childhood obesity.
Thomas Russell, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Russell is the founder of Russell Biotech Inc. and an inventor of the technology on which this business plan is based. He has more than 35 years experience in the field of cell selection using microparticle technology. Prior to founding RBI, Dr. Russell was Vice President of Reagent Development at Immunicon Corporation and spent the previous 14 years at Coulter Corporation, including serving as Director of Research and Technology. While at Coulter he was a co-inventor of a cell selection for therapeutic applications and was a co-inventor of Coulter's Q-Prep technology that revolutionized sample processing for Flow Cytometry. Dr. Russell is an inventor on 17 U.S. patents and an author on over 40 publications. He also spent 10 years as a Professor at the University of Miami.
Chief Operating Officer — to be named
Mike Ciocci, Ph.D., Sr. VP Manufacturing and QC
Dr. Ciocci, co-inventor of the CAPstm technology, has extensive research, development and manufacturing experience in biological separation technologies with several of this business sector's leading corporations including Batelle Scientific, Immunicon, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics and Orasure. Specifically he has significant experience in cGMP and QC methods development, writing SOPs, method and process validation and techniques for protein purification and analysis. He has also performed tech transfers of processes and analytical methods for FDA submissions.