LEADERSHIP
John Lewis
Founder / Chief Executive Officer
Dr. John Lewis is an experienced scientist and entrepreneur specializing in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), gene therapy, and nucleic acid delivery. John holds multiple titles, including Professor of Oncology and the Bird Dogs Chair in Translational Oncology at the University of Alberta. His research has focussed on developing gene therapies for cancer and age-related diseases. John also develops liquid biopsy diagnostic tests using an extracellular vesicle machine learning analysis platform for cancers, cardiac, degenerative, and immune-related diseases. Dr. Lewis earned a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Victoria and a BSc in Genetics from the University of Western Ontario.
Hong Jiang
Founder / Chief Operating Officer
Dr. Hong Jiang is a serial entrepreneur and a biotech investor. She has invested in cancer therapeutics and genomics, a treatment for HIV, and longevity therapeutics. Hong is passionate about finding treatments for infectious diseases such as HIV, tick-borne infections, and now COVID-19. Dr. Jiang co-founded three mobile/wireless companies, including Roundbox, Tatara Systems, and Flarion, and worked on 3G and 4G wireless networks at Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies). Her work yielded more than 16 patents and numerous published papers. Dr. Jiang earned her PhD and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University.
Arun Raturi
Chief Manufacturing Officer
Dr. Arun Raturi leads the development and manufacturing of the Fusogenix platform and the COVID-19 vaccines. Arun has considerable experience developing and characterizing pharmaceutics and biologics, with more than six years of industry experience in various roles. Dr. Raturi trained at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Windsor.
Roy Duncan
Founder / Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Roy Duncan is renowned for discovering the Fusion Associated Small Transmembrane (FAST) protein family, a critical component of the Fusogenix technology. He has spent many years studying viral fusion proteins as a Professor and Killam Chair at Dalhousie University. Roy is also deeply involved in the COVID-19 vaccine development. For nearly 30 years, Dr. Duncan’s research has been continuously funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). He currently holds a prestigious 7-year CIHR Foundation Grant.
Brian Abel
Senior Director of Program Development
Dr. Brian Abel is an immunologist with a research background in immunological responses to viruses, bacteria, immune monitoring, and infectious disease vaccine assessment. Dr. Abel has over 14 years of collective experience providing immunological oversight and scientific direction to clinical trials and managing projects across international sites, including South Africa, Singapore, the UK, and the US, with key roles at A*STAR and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). Brian’s leadership expertise includes Scientific and Business Development Directorship roles where he led teams to develop and conduct immunogenicity assays for novel vaccines’ clinical trials and set up seminal studies with Johns Hopkins University and the NIH to deeply characterize SARS-CoV-2 T cell immunity in COVID-19 recovered patients and vaccine recipients. Dr. Abel holds a PhD in Immunology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and trained at the South African TB Vaccine Initiative, the prime site for TB vaccine candidate clinical trials, before completing an MBA in Tel Aviv and Hyderabad.
Catalina Vasquez
Vice President Clinical Development
Ms. Catalina Vasquez has over ten years of management experience in academic institutions and entrepreneurial experience with biotechnology companies. Catalina has dedicated her professional life to creating and leading teams oriented towards solving health problems, be it in a clinical lab, in oncology clinical trials at the Lawson Health Research Institute, as the Program Director of the Alberta Prostate Cancer Research Initiative, or as a co-founder and executive leader in the biotechnology space. Ms. Vasquez earned an MSc. in Medical Biophysics at Western University in 2011, a certificate in Management Development from the University of Alberta in 2016, and a certificate in Executive Leadership with the adMare Academy in 2020.
