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Team
ActoKine Therapeutics has assembled an expert team with leading edge expertise in the area of drug research, discovery, and development. The team includes not only the technical expertise, but also the business expertise to maximize the potential for success for ActoKine Therapeutics.
Management Team
The management team consists of the following individuals.
Their biographies are given below.
Chief Executive Officer (Asia & USA)- Grace Wong, PhD
Chief Executive Officer (Europe) - Heinz-Kurt Hochkeppel, PhD
President and Chief Scientific Officer - Grace Wong, PhD (founder)
Chief Medical Officer - Claude G. Biava, MD
Chief Technology Officer - William A. Cafruny, PhD
Vice President of Biomarkers & Genomics- Reinhard Ebner, PhD
Director of CNS - Michael Howard, PhD
Director of Immunoregulation - Dyana Dalton, PhD
Chief Executive Officer - Grace Wong PhD
Dr. Grace Wong has worked for Genentech, Millennium, AstraZeneca and Serono on new drug discovery in a variety of therapeutic areas. Dr. Wong did a PhD at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia. In the US, Dr. Wong did a postdoc with Dr. David Goeddel at Genentech and she advanced basic research discoveries to product development in 1993. Dr. Wong was the Head of Apoptosis Research at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, the Section Head of Molecular Genetics at AstraZeneca and the Head of Cytokine Genomics at Serono.
Chief Executive Officer (Europe)- Heinz-Kurt Hochkeppel, PhD
Dr. Hochkeppel was the global Oncology Research Project Manager for the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research. Prior to this position, he held a variety of research and management positions at Ciba-Geigy and Novartis.
Dr. Hochkeppel did his undergraduate work at the University of Cologne, and received his doctoral degree in Biochemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding at the University of Cologne in 1972. He did post-doctoral fellowships in Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, Wisconsin, USA and at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Hochkeppel is an authority on Immunology and Oncology.
After his post-doctoral work, Dr. Hochkeppel was a member of the research team at the Institute for Biotechnology Research in the Department of Genetics at the University of Braunschweig, Germany, where he did some of the first work on production of antibodies against human interferon beta and gamma. In 1982, he joined Ciba-Geigy as a staff scientist in Immunology and Oncology, moving into management in 1997.
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President and Chief Scientific Officer - Grace Wong, PhD
Dr. Grace Wong has worked for Genentech, Millennium, AstraZeneca and Serono on new drug discovery in a variety of therapeutic areas. Dr. Wong did a PhD at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia. In the US, Dr. Wong did a postdoc with Dr. David Goeddel at Genentech and she advanced basic research discoveries to product development in 1993. In 1996, Dr. Wong became the Head of Apoptosis Research at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and identified potential drug resistance genes using functional genomics.
In 1998, she joined AstraZeneca as Section Head of Molecular Genetics and identified potential genes for Alzheimer's disease. Since AstraZeneca was moving to Delaware, Dr. Wong joined Serono in 1999 as Head of Functional Genomics and Director of Cytokine Genomics. She has been awarded 13 scholarships and received 5 Recognition Awards from Genentech. She was invited to present at 139 international conferences including the Nobel Symposium (Sweden, 1994). She has published 87 papers and filed 27 patents (11 issued). Seven of her publications (3 Nature, 1 Science, and 3 Cell) received 500-900 citations.
Dr. Wong has founded Actokine Therapeutics (www.actokine.com) which will focus on (1) drug rescue (2) drug indication switch and (3) drug advancements for biodefense projects (radioprotection against dirty bomb and protection against a broad spectrum of virus). She has also founded Student Vision for helping the growth of students of all ages in biotech science (www.studentvision.org).
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Chief Medical Officer - Claude G. Biava, MD
Dr. Biava has more than 30 years of experience in pre-clinical and clinical
research studies. From 1968-1971, as the Director of the Department
of Pathology and Toxicology in the Experimental Therapy Division at
Abbott Laboratories, he was responsible for pre-clinical safety evaluation
of new drug candidates and their approval for clinical testing, preparation
of data for submission of INDs and NDAs. As Vice President for R&D and
Clinical Research in the Hospital Products Division at Abbott Laboratories
from 1971-1973, he was responsible for R&D and clinical studies of hospital
products, including anesthetics, intravenous therapeutics, urological
products, and intraperitoneal dialysis kits.
From 1973 to 1993, he was an Associate Professor and Director of the
Laboratory of Ultrastructural and Renal Pathology Services at the University
of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Dr. Biava received his
M.D. from Louvain University in Belgium and completed his residency
as a Royal Canadian Research Fellow at Queen’s University in Kingston,
Ontario. He is the author of more than 50 publications.
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Chief Technology Officer - William A. Cafruny, PhD
Dr. William A. Cafruny is an immunologist with major research interests in viral immunology and mechanisms of viral transmission. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Medical University of Ohio, and did postdoctoral training in virology at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.
As a professor at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine, Dr. Cafruny studied virus-host interactions and antiviral mechanisms. These studies, in collaboration with Dr. Grace Wong, have characterized novel antiviral actions of various small molecules as well as cytokines, and have provided new avenues for antiviral drug development.
Dr. Cafruny has published numerous peer-reviewed papers, and received support for his research from government and industry. Dr. Cafruny has also taught immunology to medical, graduate, and undergraduate students, and his 5 PhD students have gone on to productive careers in industry and government.
Vice President (Genomics and Biomarkers) - Reinhard Ebner, PhD
Dr. Ebner was a Scientific Director at Avalon Pharmaceuticals. He received his undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Regensburg and his doctorate in Microbiology and Genetics from the University of OsnabrŸck, Germany, where he then served on the faculty of the Genetics department. In 1989, he identified and cloned the type I TGF-b receptor at Genentech. He has made a series of substantial contributions to the fields of cytokine biology, receptor-ligand interactions and intracellular trafficking, cell differentiation, early development and tissue repair, first at Genentech and then at the University of California, San Francisco and at Stanford University Medical School. He has discovered several proteins now in preclinical and clinical development, including such molecules as LIGHT, IL-17B and its receptor, BlyS and TR6.
In 2000, he joined Avalon Pharmaceuticals where he was instrumental in the initiation of intramural and external research programs and contributed to corporate and scientific infrastructure development. Dr. Ebner is a frequently invited plenary speaker at national and international conferences and member of scientific advisory panels. He is the author of >37 original research publications, including several articles in Science magazine, and is the primary inventor on more than 100 patent applications.
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