Multispan Inc.

Helena Mancebo, Ph.D., President and CEO
Dr. Helena Mancebo brings over 10 years experience in drug discovery research and management in the biotech industry and 15 years research experience in signal transduction. Dr. Mancebo held increasing responsibilities in research and project management at 3 leading biotech drug discovery companies including Tularik (Amgen), Rigel, and Abgenix (Amgen). Prior to founding Multispan, she was the Director of Business Development at Epitomics, leading the company's business development in both strategy and successful execution. She joined most companies at early stage and made significant contributions to their growth by taking leadership roles from directly heading a group for developing new technologies for high-throughput screening assays, to leading large international collaborations, to establishing and managing an executive-level operational committee, and to being responsible for signing near 40 collaboration agreements with major pharmaceutical and top biotech companies. Dr. Mancebo holds a Ph.D. in Genetics/Immunology from Yale University and M.S. in Chemistry from Yale University.

Casey Case, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Casey Case is an experienced and accomplished biotechnology executive and scientific leader in drug discovery. Before Multispan, he was Vice President of Research and Development at Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. He held positions from Senior Scientist to Director of Transcription Research In Oncogene Science (now OSI Pharmaceuticals) and Director of Cell biology and Director of Assay development at Tularik. He has a solid reputation for using cell and animal-based approaches for the discovery and development of novel therapeutics. Dr. Case was responsible for drug discovery to IND filing for multiple drugs in his career. At Sangamo BioSciences, he helped promote the Sangamo vision to Wall Street during the IPO road show which led to raising $60 million. Dr. Case has Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis. He conducted postdoctoral research at UCLA. He is a co-inventor and co-author on 19 grants and awards and has 12 issued patents and 23 publications.

Selena Bartlett, Ph.D., Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Selena Bartlett is the Director of the Preclinical Development Group at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center, University of California San Francisco. Dr Bartlett has established and directs a laboratory focused on the translation of basic research discoveries into druggable targets and new treatments for neurological diseases such as addiction, pain, stress, anxiety and depression. She has developed a novel GPCR screening platform technology that is being used to identify potential pain therapeutics. Dr Bartlett was a Principal Investigator on an Australian NH&MRC project from 1999-2001 before joining the Gallo Center at UCSF in December 2001. She has been awarded a number of grants to fund this research, has authored 30 scientific papers and has 3 patent applications in neuroscience therapeutics. She is a trained Pharmacist and completed her Ph.D. in neuropharmacology in 1995 in the School of Pharmacy, Brisbane, Australia and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuroscience at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra, Australia in 1998.

Tamas Bartfai, Ph.D., Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Tamas Tbartfai is a world-leading expert in GPCR research. He is currently Director of The Harold L. Dorris Neurological Research Center at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, and Professor in the Department of Neuropharmacology and holds the Harold L. Dorris Chair in Neuroscience. Bartfai’s research interests have spanned several topics in the field of physiological chemistry, including the study of acetylcholine, glutamate, dopamine, noradrenaline and the neuropeptides VIP, NPY and galanin. Previously as Head of Central Nervous System Research at F. Hoffman-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland, he was involved in research on the metabotropic glutamate receptor, monoamine receptors and additional neuropeptide receptors from the GPCR class. His group developed several ligands that have been used as research tools or advanced into the clinic. He completed a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Stockholm University, Sweden, where he was appointed Associate Professor and then Professor of Biochemistry, and subsequently Chairman of the Department of Neurochemistry and Neurotoxicology. Dr. Bartfai has been the recipient of several awards, including the Eötvös Prize in Chemistry, the Svedberg Prize and the Eriksson Prize.

Arthur “Donny” Strosberg, Dr. Sci., Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Donny Strosberg is an internationally renowned biochemist and currently professor of infectology at the Scripps Institute’s new facilities in Palm Beach County, Florida. Dr. Strosberg, has been in biological research for nearly 40 years and made significant discoveries in the fields of biochemistry and immunology. at the University of Paris, the Pasteur Institute and the Cochin Institute of Molecular Genetics in Paris, the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, both in Boston. In addition, he has more than 20 years experience as an investor and co-founder of 5 biotechnology companies including Chemunex SA, Nouveau Marché, Incyte, Praecis and most recently Hybrigenics, a privately held company he helped to establish in 1998 and where he served as chairman and chief executive officer from 1999 to late 2004. He is one of the few members from the industrial sector of the investment committee of the French government’s Fund of Funds, which supports French venture capital companies. Strosberg received his License in Chemistry and a Doctorate in Sciences (Chemistry) from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium. From 1986 to 1990, he was chief of the unit of molecular biology of receptors at the Pasteur Institute, followed by eight years as director of the molecular immunopharmacology unit and vice president of the Cochin Institute of Molecular Genetics. Professor Strosberg has received numerous awards and honors from US and European scientific organizations; he holds nearly 20 issued patents, many of which have been licensed to pharmaceutical companies; he has published more than 370 scientific articles in the major scientific journals in his field.

Olivier Civelli, Ph.D., Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Olivier Civelli is a professor at Department of Pharmacology at the University of California, Irvine, California, USA, where he holds the Eric L. and Lila D. Nelson Chair of Neuropharmacology. His current interests are focused in two directions: the use of orphan GPCRs as tools to identify novel transmitters; and the search for the functional significance of the novel transmitters new transmitters and their receptors and discovered, in particular, the MCH1 and urotensin II receptors. He was previously the Head of the Department of Biology at F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland, as, where he designed and applied a strategy that uses orphan GPCRs as targets to discover new neurotransmitters and neuropeptides. This allowed him to identify orphanin FQ/nociceptin as the first novel transmitter discovered using this strategy. As a postdoctoral fellow, he joined Edward Herbert’s laboratory at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA. There, he became interested in neuropeptide expression and cloned the rat prodynorphin precursor. He began his studies on the cloning of GPCRs as an assistant professor and founding member of the Vollum Institute in Portland, Oregon. He was the first to clone and describe the structure of a dopamine receptor, the D2 receptor, and used that clone to unravel the diversity of the dopamine receptor system by discovering the D4 and D5 receptors. He earned his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland.

James Larrick, M.D. and Ph.D., Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Jim Larrick has an international reputation in biotechnology in cytokines, therapeutic antibodies, molecular biology, pharmaceutical drug development having written or co-authored eight books, over 220 papers/chapters and fifteen patents. He serves on the editorial board of six journals. Dr. Larrick has worked on various aspects of therapeutic antibodies and other protein therapeutics for the past 20 years. Dr. Larrick received his MD and PhD. degrees from Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC. After housestaff training in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, he completed a post doctoral fellowship in the Stanford Cancer Biology Research Labs with Professor Henry S. Kaplan. In 1982, he joined Cetus Immune Research Labs, Palo Alto, CA, where he became Director of Research in 1986. While at Cetus he pioneered the use of PCR for the construction of recombinant antibodies. In 1988 he moved to Genelabs Inc., Redwood City, CA, as Director of Exploratory Research. In 1991, Dr. Larrick founded the Palo Alto Institute of Molecular Medicine, a non -profit research institute situated near Stanford University. Since then he has founded more than a dozen biopharmaceutical companies including: Panorama Research Inc., Planet Biotechnology Inc., Kalabios Inc., Nugen Technologies Inc., Medlogic Inc,, Panolife Products Inc., PanResearch Inc., Neuromolecular Inc., Absalus Inc., and Quality Clinical Labs Inc. are based in California. PanGenetics B.V. (merged with Tanox Inc.) and TargetQuest B.V. (merged with Dyax Inc.) are headquartered in The Netherlands. Currently he serves on the Boards of five early stage companies and continues to pursue entrepreneurial activities through TENEX Medical Investors in Silicon Valley and 7X, an investment fund he co-founded in The Netherlands.

Bruce A. Keyt, Ph.D., Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Keyt has extensive background in all phases of drug development including pre-clinical development, protein chemistry and pharmacology of proteins and antibodies as therapeutic agents. Recently as Vice President of Pre Clinical Development at Abgenix, he led the efforts on development of more than 20 therapeutics candidates in the field of cancer, three of which are in clinical development. Previously he held several senior management positions at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and at Genentech. At Millennium as Director of Biotherapeutics Oncology he led the group for validating targets and developing model systems for pre-clinical candidates. During his tenure at Genentech he led the VEGF project. He is co-inventor on 11 granted US patents, has published more than 50 scientific articles in peer reviewed journals and an international speaker on biotherapeutics. Among 6 major projects he helped develop at Genentech , 4 of which are marketed products and two are in clinical trials. He holds a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry and pharmacology from Tufts University School of Medicine.