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Key Personnel
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R.H. Joseph Shaw
Chief Executive Officer
and Chairperson
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Mr. Shaw has over 20 years experience in the development and commercialization of biotechnology innovations. He has extensive experience in strategic collaborating and raising funds from both public and private sources. Mr. Shaw's direct international experience includes Canada, Europe, South East Asia, China, and Japan. Previously Mr. Shaw served as CEO of OpGen Inc., a nanotechnology genomics company based in Wisconsin. Prior to this, he was interim President of Bank on a Cure, a global study project of the International Myeloma Foundation, the first comprehensive myeloma-specific cancer patient DNA bank. During his tenure, Mr. Shaw worked to coordinate and develop a fully functioning enterprise, combining multiple institutions and patient support groups. Simultaneously, he served as President of AusAmerican Group, Inc.'s North America division. AusAmerican Group Inc. is a consulting firm that provides a full range of business services to Australian and American corporations, from medical group practices to start-up biotechnology companies seeking to introduce products or services into the Australian or U.S. marketplace. From 1999 to 2004, Mr. Shaw was Managing Director and CEO of Ambri Limited, Inc., the medical division of Pacific Dunlop Limited, an Australian conglomerate.
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Ambri develops nanotechnology and biotechnology diagnostic devices. Under his leadership, Ambri listed on the Australian stock exchange, raising more than $32 million. At the time, this was the largest biotechnology listing in Australia to date. He also negotiated strategic investments from Dow Corning and Genencor, Inc. Previously he served as CEO and Chairperson of the Board of Quantech Inc., a biosensor technology company, and CEO of Cathra International, a bacteriological testing company. He has held senior executive positions with KVet/KVL Limited, a human and veterinarian medical company, QuadraLogics, which specializes in cancer therapeutics and Johnson & Johnson. In 2002 and 2003, Mr. Shaw spoke at the Australian/American Leadership Conference conducted at the White House. He also participated as a speaker at the Commonwealth Government's Australian Development Congress in 1999, 2000, 2001 and was a member of the "Prime Minister's Science Council" of Australia. He has been a frequent guest speaker at both U.S. and international government and academic forums regarding the development and commercialization of biotechnology innovations.
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Lisa Herron-Olson, Ph.D.
Senior Scientific Director
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Dr. Herron-Olson has eight years of experience working in staphylococcal pathogenesis. After joining Syntiron in 2005, she initiated a program-to investigate the mechanism of vaccine protection by iron-regulated surface proteins derived from Staphylococcus aureus. Her early work focused on establishing defined antigen production protocols for S. aureus and identifying the roles of individual antigens in stimulating an immune response. Initial data resulted in the award of two Small Business Innovative Research grants from the NIH to study both the vaccine antigens and the resulting antibodies for prophylactic and therapeutic applications. Dr. Herron-Olson is an inventor on the current Gram-positive patent applications and has also served as the Principal Investigator on two NIH Phase I grants to study the development of vaccines to prevent both Salmonella and Yersinia. She became the Senior Scientific Director at Syntiron in 2007. In April of that year, Dr. Herron-Olson was awarded the Early Career Investigator Award at the Tenth Annual Conference on Vaccine Research.
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Prior to joining Syntiron, she conducted her undergraduate training in Biology at Kalamazoo College and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Cumbaya, Ecuador as a National Merit Scholar. Her studies in Ecuador led to an interest in infectious disease microbiology, and she subsequently earned her Ph.D. in molecular microbiology and bioinformatics in the laboratory of Dr. Vivek Kapur at the University of Minnesota. Her studies were supported by a fellowship from the NIH, as well as a Graduate School Fellowship for Biomedical Sciences. In the laboratory, she determined the complete genomic sequences of two isolates of Staphylococcus aureus and conducted a comparative genomic analysis that included functional comparison of the iron metabolic systems among S. aureus isolates from different hosts. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Infection and Immunity and PLoS ONE, and she has presented her work with S. aureus and the SRP vaccines at several national and international meetings. |
Drew Catron, Ph.D.
Senior Scientific Director
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Dr. Catron has 10 years of experience working on Salmonella pathogenesis and host immune responses. He joined Syntiron in 2007. He oversees mouse models for studying bacterial disease and experiments to measure humoral and cellular immune responses to vaccine antigens. Dr. Catron earned a Ph.D. in immunology and microbial pathogenesis at Northwestern University in the laboratory of Dr. Kasturi Haldar, where he characterized the interactions between Salmonella virulence proteins and host cell trafficking pathways. This work was supported by an NIH fellowship and a Northwestern University Presidential Fellowship, and resulted in several publications and a patent application.
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Prior to joining Syntiron, Dr. Catron was a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Marc Jenkins, at the University of Minnesota, where he studied CD4 T cell memory, B cell antigen acquisition, and the development of modular microsphere-based subunit vaccines. His work was the subject of several publications in top immunological journals, including Immunity and Journal of Experimental Medicine. As a research fellow, Dr. Catron was supported by a Cancer Research Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship and a University of Minnesota Cancer Postdoctoral Training Grant.
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Tim Tripp, MS, MBA
V.P. Corporate Development and Program Manager
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Mr. Tripp serves a duel role as Vice President of Corporate Development and Program Manager at Syntiron. He has 14 years of experience in biotechnology research and development, expertise in gram-positive pathogenesis, animal model development, molecular biology, and the use of select agents. He has co-authored 15 peer reviewed journal articles on the diverse aspects of Staphylococcus, Streptococcus and Enterococcus pathogenesis. Prior to joining Syntiron, he worked at a publicly traded pharmaceutical/medical device manufacturer where he managed the Technical Development Group and Process
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Development for the production of both Therapeutics and Medical Devices for human use. Combining this extensive scientific knowledge with his commercial expertise enables him to focus on commercial technology transfer and process design in biotechnology products for Syntiron. In addition he has responsibility for Syntiron's $4.1 million dollar US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) program investigating the applicability of the Syntiron technology to vaccines providing protection against select agents of bioterrorism.
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