Raptor Advisory Board
Our advisory board members work with our management team in the planning, development and execution of scientific and business strategies. The advisory board is composed of well-respected, experienced academic and industry leaders with diverse expertise and knowledge in a variety of areas, including drug discovery, translational research, drug development, and business development.
Stephen C. Blacklow, M.D., Ph.D.
Stephen C. Blacklow, M.D., Ph.D. is a board-certified pathologist and an associate professor of Pathology at Harvard
Medical School, where he is Director of the Harvard M.D./Ph.D. program, basic sciences track. Since 1998, he has directed a
research laboratory at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, a teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School. Over the last
ten years, Dr. Blacklow’s research team has achieved international recognition for mechanistic and structural studies
of proteins of the LDL receptor family, and for work on the structure and function of human
notch proteins.
Recently, Dr. Blacklow's team determined the structure of RAP d3 complex with receptor, a long-sought after and seminal result. Dr. Blacklow earned a B.S., summa cum laude, from Harvard College, and an M.D. and Ph.D. in Bioorganic Chemistry from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Guojun Bu, Ph.D.
Guojun Bu, Ph.D., a molecular and cell biologist, is an acknowledged leader in the field of the LDL receptor family. He
is currently a professor of Pediatrics, Cell Biology and Physiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, and
serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration.
As the recipient of numerous awards for his contributions to science, Dr. Bu has been a Faculty Scholar of the Alzheimer's Association and an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association. In the early 1990s, his research identified LRP as the endocytic receptor for tissue-type plasminogen activator, a clinically used enzyme to dissolve blood clots during myocardial infarction and stroke. Dr. Bu also studied mechanisms underlying the biogenesis and intracellular trafficking of lipoprotein receptors. In the mid-1990s, he helped define the receptor-associated protein (RAP) as a specialized molecular chaperone and antagonist for LRP and his laboratory has delineated the molecular mechanisms underlying interactions between RAP and LRP.
Dr. Bu's current research includes defining the roles of LRP and apolipoprotein E in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and the Wnt signaling pathway in breast cancer development. Dr. Bu received his undergraduate degree from the Beijing Normal University in China. He received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Department of Biochemistry at Virginia Tech, and he completed his postdoctoral training in Cell Biology at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri.
Robert P. Cook
Robert P. Cook is a pharmaceutical industry executive with extensive sales, marketing and business development experience
in North America, Europe and Asia. Mr. Cook has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of OraViron
Pharmaceuticals, a targeted drug delivery company, and was a founder and Senior Vice President of ScinoPharm International
LTD, a Taiwan-based manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Prior to founding ScinoPharm, Mr. Cook spent over 20 years at Syntex Laboratories, where his responsibilities ranged from launching branded products to developing and managing the generic drug business. Previously, Mr. Cook was with Borden, Inc. and Parke Davis, Inc. Mr. Cook has held Board of Director and advisor roles in numerous life sciences start-up companies.
Early in his career Mr. Cook was in the U.S. Navy and played professional football for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts. Mr. Cook received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
Ranjan Dohil, M.D.
Dr. Dohil is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of
California, San Diego, within the Division of Gastroenterology,
Hepatology and Nutrition. He has also served as the conference
director of the first Cystinosis Research Foundation
International Conference in Newport Beach (April 3-5 2008).
An interest in childhood acid-peptic disorders led Dr. Dohil to study patients with cystinosis taking cysteamine. He subsequently went on to study the pharmacokinetics of cysteamine with the intention of helping to develop a new formulation of cysteamine that would result in an improved quality of life for patients with cystinosis. Dr. Dohil also has a research interest in eosinophilic esophagitis, a condition that over the past few years has increased in incidence. Within this field, his work has led to the development of a treatment that is becoming more widely used.
Dr. Dohil undertook his medical training at the University of Wales College of Medicine in Cardiff, U.K. He has served as a physician in many hospitals over his career including the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, U.K., the British Military Hospital in Iserlohn, Germany, and British Columbia’s Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, Canada. He is a reviewer for several respected academic publications, including the Journal of Pediatrics, Pediatrics and the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
Patti A. Engel, R.N.
Patti A. Engel is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Engage Health, Inc., a drug, medical device and biotech
consulting firm that she founded to specialize in unique commercialization issues. Ms. Engel has worked extensively in
the areas of strategic and infrastructure planning, patient identification and quantification, market research, clinical
trial recruitment, risk management, managed distribution, orphan drugs and specialty medical products.
A frequent presenter on complex issues related to commercializing therapies for rare diseases, Ms. Engel held the position of Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Orphan Medical, Inc., and spent over 10 years in various sales and marketing management roles at 3M Pharmaceuticals.
Ms. Engel has personal experience including significant policy and governmental affairs work at both the federal and state level, and extensive involvement rallying patient support groups around important policy issues. Ms. Engel is an R.N. and earned her B.S. in nursing and sociology from the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Andres Lozano, M.D., Ph.D.
Andres Lozano, M.D., Ph.D. is a Professor, the RR Tasker Chair in Functional Neurosurgery, and a Canada Research Chair in
Neuroscience at the University of Toronto. Dr. Lozano was appointed to the University’s neurosurgical faculty in 1991 and
became a full Professor in 1999. He has lectured or been a visiting professor at various academic institutions throughout the world.
Dr. Lozano also serves as Head of Applied and Interventional Research at the Toronto Western Research Institute, and is on the boards and executive teams of several international organizations, including the World Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, where he currently serves as President.
Dr. Lozano's research, which has appeared in over 200 publications, is focused on understanding the cellular pathogenesis of neurological disorders and developing novel treatments for Parkinson's disease, dystonia (abnormal muscle contractions) and other disorders in this category. Dr. Lozano graduated from the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Medicine, in 1983, and completed Neurosurgical Training at McGill University in Montreal, receiving his Ph.D. in Neurobiology.
Jerry Schneider,
M.D.
Dr. Schneider is Research Professor of Pediatrics and Dean for
Academic Affairs Emeritus at the University of California, San
Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. He also serves as a member of
the Board of Directors and Chair of the Scientific Review Board
for the Cystinosis Research Foundation.
Over the course of his distinguished career, Dr. Schneider has been actively involved in the study of metabolic diseases. An expert on the diagnosis and treatment of cystinosis, Dr. Schneider has published over 150 papers on cystinosis and related subjects over the past 40 years. Since 1969 he has been associated with the UCSD School of Medicine in both academic and research capacities.
Dr. Schneider earned his M.D. from Northwestern University. He received postgraduate training at Johns Hopkins University, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centre de Genetique Moleculaire, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. He was also a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fogarty Senior Fellow at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London, England.
Lawrence Steinman, M.D.
Lawrence Steinman, M.D., is a leader in Multiple Sclerosis
(MS) research and currently serves as the George A. Zimmermann
Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Pediatrics and
Genetics at Stanford University. Dr. Steinman is the inaugural
holder of the chair, funded to support MS research. He is also
the chair of the Stanford University Program in Immunology.
Dr. Steinman has received various awards for his scientific contributions to MS research, including the John M. Dystel Prize from the American Academy of Neurology and the National MS Society. He was also a two-time recipient of a Javits Neuroscience Award from the U.S. Congress and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Dr. Steinman’s research focuses on what provokes relapses and remissions in MS, the nature of the genes that serve as a brake on brain inflammation, and the quest for a vaccine against MS. He has developed two antigen specific therapies using DNA vaccines for MS and type 1 diabetes. He was senior author on the seminal 1992 Nature article that reported the key role of a particular integrin in brain inflammation and led to the development of the drug Tysabri.
Dr. Steinman received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and his M.D. from Harvard University.
Sam Teichman, M.D., FACC, FACP
Sam Teichman, M.D., an independent consultant specializing in strategic drug discovery and development, has worked on over 40
medical products in various stages of development, from the earliest identification of leads in research, to supporting
commercial-stage products.
Board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology, Dr. Teichman is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) and the American College of Physicians (FACP), his credit includes more than 40 original publications, reviews and abstracts published in peer-reviewed and invited medical journals. During the past 20 years, Dr. Teichman has held senior level executive positions at Medco Research (now part of King Pharmaceuticals), Glycomed (now part of Ligand Pharmaceuticals), Genentech, and Mimetix.
Most recently, Dr. Teichman served as Vice President and Chief Development Officer at ARYx Therapeutics, where he identified and advanced three products from the research stage into clinical development. He has also provided scientific advisory services and acted in an interim executive role for numerous early-stage and established biotechnology companies. From 1990 to 2001, Dr. Teichman served as Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, California. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Columbia College, Columbia University, and an M.D. from Columbia University, New York.