Management Team

Nalini Ghag-Motwani, Ph.D., President and Founder

Dr. Motwani has over twenty-five years of experience in research and management in the broad field of biotechnology including recombinant protein production. Prior to founding ApoLife, Dr. Motwani was a founding scientist and played a key role in the start-up of two biotechnology companies. Dr. Motwani was a founding scientist of Strohtech, which was involved in the development of a cost-effective yeast expression system to produce genetically engineered hemoglobins. In 1994, Strohtech moved its operations to North Carolina under a new name, Apex Bioscience (later sold to Curacyte, AG, Germany), and Dr. Motwani negotiated an arrangement with Apex to start ApoLife, Inc. She has been successful in securing NIH-SBIR and state grants, private funds, and contracts for ApoLife. Under her leadership, the ApoLife team has developed a proprietary twin cassette expression system for cost-effective production of recombinant proteins including herterodimer of cytokines and monoclonal antibodies in yeast. Dr. Motwani is an inventor of four issued patents on yeast expression system for recombinant proteins. Dr. Motwani was a licensing consultant for the technology transfer office at the University of Michigan and was visiting scientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Nalini is adjunct associate professor at the Oakland University, MI. She received her Masters degree from Haffkine Institute in Bombay and her Ph.D. from Wayne State University in Michigan.

Martina Molsbergen, B.S., Vice President, Licensing and Business Development

Ms. Molsbergen has 18 years of business development, marketing, and entrepreneurial experience including 8 years of business development experience in bio therapeutics and antibodies. She has proven corporate development strategy and leadership experience within large and small companies. She was the Vice President of Business Development (PER. C6 Licensing) at Crucell Holland BV. In this capacity she has established the PER.C6 manufacturing technology platform for therapeutic antibodies and proteins, managed global business development team as well as the joint venture with DSM Biologics. She has brought more than twenty new licensing opportunities. As aVice President of Business Development, Ms. Molsbergen played a key role in establishing and building BioWa, Inc., a novel antibody engineering platform company as a subsidiary of a Japanese company Kyowa Hakko Kogyo (KHK). In three years of business activity, she successfully negotiated more than 15 deals valued at over $2.5 B in future milestone payments and royalties with leading antibody and biopharma companies. In addition, Ms. Molsbergen has 12+ years of business development experience in small molecule pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies including Patheon, Watson Pharmaceuticals and FMC Corporation. She has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University.

Kurt Riegger, B.S., Senior Business Manager

Kurt Riegger has 25 years of entrepreneurial leadership and operating experience as CEO/COO of 5 early stage technology ventures, as well as experience making early stage venture investments as a venture partner in a $100M VC fund and as a principal in an early stage investment fund. Mr. Riegger was President/COO and founder of 3 companies in the information technology space, including Intelliseek, a two-time Inc 500 company (acq AC Nielson); SSG (acq CommerceOne); and WorkWell (acq Liberty Mutual). Mr. Riegger has raised venture and debt financing for more than 15 companies. He has 20 years of board experience. Mr. Riegger has advised early stage bioinformatics companies, medical device companies and biotech tools companies. He consults on several early stage investment programs and to angel investment groups. He has a dual B.S. in Molecular Biology and Mathematics from the University of Michigan.

Savita Nikam, Ph.D., Director of Research

Dr. Nikam has over 15 years of extensive research experience in academia and biotechnology companies. Dr. Nikam's expertise includes molecular biology, protein biochemistry and expression of products from mammalian, yeast and bacterial expression systems. Dr. Nikam gained extensive experience at Molecular Imaging Research (Charles River Company) in manipulating different cancer cell lines and generating reporter models for in vivo imaging of apoptosis following new cancer drug treatment. Her Ph.D. research included development of a potent viral vaccine against Japanese Encephalitis from primary chick embryo cell cultures. Dr. Nikam received her Ph.D in Microbiology from National Institute of Virology, Pune University, India. She completed her postdoctoral research on mechanism of HIV reverse transcriptase fidelity and the kinetic basis of drug resistance at the University of Michigan.

Consultants

Dr. George Chisholm Ph.D., Yeast Strain Development

Dr.Chisholm received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in Cellular and molecular biology and did his post-doctorate from Yale University. Dr. Chisholm has extensive experience in the field of biotechnology. His expertise includes the design and construction of plasmids used for heterologous gene expression and yield improvement of protein production in yeast, as well as the generation, selection and analysis of yeast strains with improved yield of protein production. Other previous experiences include establishment of cell culture collections, characterization of cell lines for research and production of recombinant proteins, ELISA assay design, and design and implementation of scale-up fermentation facilities. Dr. Chisholm has experience as a Senior Scientist in companies like Sugen, COR Therapeutics, and Genentech.

Scientific Advisors

Prof. Fred Winston, Ph.D.

Dr. Winston is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from M.I.T. Dr. Winston is an expert in the areas of yeast genetics, transcriptional control, and chromatin structure. He began studies of yeast genetics and molecular biology as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Gerald Fink. For over 20 years, Dr. Winston’s laboratory at Harvard has used yeast genetics to identify and study proteins critical for normal gene expression. These pioneering studies have led to several new insights concerning the roles of general transcription factors, chromatin remodeling complexes, histone proteins, and transcription elongation. Prof. Winston has been advisor for Dr. Motwani’s team at Apex bioscience and later at ApoLife, Inc.

James A. Wilkins Ph.D., Board of Directors

Dr. Wilkins was a Director of Technology Outsourcing and Technology Assessment and Process Development group at Genentech, Inc. until April, 2009. He is now a CTO at Sensorin. CA. He started his career in at Genentech in the mid eighties where, he worked on the development of recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rTPA, Activase®). In 1993, he joined Alexion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, CT where he started the process development and manufacturing groups and rose to the position of Vice President of Process Sciences and Manufacturing. In 2000, he left Alexion to start a consulting business and joined the research group at Yale University in the Department of Chemical Engineering. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1979, Dr. Wilkins did postdoctoral work at the Johns Hopkins University.

Joseph DeAngelo, M.S., Board of Directors

Dr. Wilkins was a Director of Technology Outsourcing and Technology Assessment and Process Development group at Genentech, Inc. until April, 2009. He is now a CTO at Sensorin. CA. He started his career in at Genentech in the mid eighties where, he worked on the development of recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rTPA, Activase®). In 1993, he joined Alexion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, CT where he started the process development and manufacturing groups and rose to the position of Vice President of Process Sciences and Manufacturing. In 2000, he left Alexion to start a consulting business and joined the research group at Yale University in the Department of Chemical Engineering. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1979, Dr. Wilkins did postdoctoral work at the Johns Hopkins University.

Prof. Michael Holland, Ph.D., Board of Directors

Dr. Holland is a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Holland started his career in biotechnology when he was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. William Rutter (former CEO & founder of Chiron) at the University of California. Prof Holland is an expert in the yeast molecular biology and is a pioneer in the area of expression of proteins in yeast. He has been a consultant for several biotech companies including Chiron, Roche and Apex Bioscience. His current research involves the application of novel functional genomics approaches to understanding mechanisms of gene expression. Dr. Holland has been advisor for Dr. Motwani's team at Apex Bioscience and later at ApoLife, Inc.

Prof. Sherie Morrison, Ph.D.

Dr. Sherie Morrison is a distinguished professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Morrison joined UCLA in 1988. Prior to that, Dr. Morrison served as professor in the Department of Microbiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Morrison spent a sabbatical year in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Professor Paul Berg at Stanford in 1982. Dr. Morrison was a department chair from 1992-2002 at UCLA. Her long-time research interest has been the functional properties of antibodies and novel antibody-related proteins, and she is author of over 250 journal articles, book chapters and reviews. During the past 30 years, Dr. Morrison's UCLA laboratory has established multiple technologies relating to recombinant antibody production and characterization. Her team has generated a wide spectrum of different recombinant antibodies, including antibody fusion proteins, bi-specific mAbs and secretory IgA. Dr. Morrison holds Ph.D. and B.A. degrees from Stanford University.

Sanjay Jain, Ph.D., Fermentation and Bioprocess Development

Dr. Sanjay Jain is currently Program Advisor for vaccine development at the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI). His focus is on CMC activities related to malaria transmission-blocking vaccine approaches. He is also technical lead for process development and GMP manufacturing of recombinant protein vaccines as well as for the MVI-supported Vaccine Formulation Center. Sanjay has more than 20 years of experience in process development and scale-up for GMP production of protein therapeutics and human vaccines using a variety of production expression systems. He has supported several IND applications and one BLA application for FDA approval of recombinant protein products. Sanjay has worked for several biopharmaceutical companies, including Astra-Zeneca, Cephalon, Shire Biologics (now GSK). He has also consulted for ApoLife since 2004. Most recently, Sanjay managed the Bio-Process Center at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester. Sanjay received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France.