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Senior Management
Steve Gailar
Acting CEO
Mr. Gailar is President and Chief Executive Officer of MetaCyte Business Lab LLC, the life sciences business accelerator in Louisville, KY, and managing partner of Kentucky Seed Capital Fund. Mr. Gailar has spent the last 30 years as a manager of, and investor in, various life sciences businesses. During 14 years at Eli Lilly and Company he held various management positions in finance, sales, and marketing, as well as establishing the initial Pharmaceutical Strategic Planning component for the company which determined future competencies, investments and acquisitions. Mr. Gailar spent 3 years in the San Francisco Bay Area in senior management positions of emerging biotechnology companies including his role as President and CEO of Marlstone Corporation, a rational drug design firm. For 13 years Mr. Gailar was a Managing Director of Senmed Medical Ventures, a private evergreen venture capital firm making investments in university spin-outs and mid-to-late stage private life science companies. He has been Founder/CEO of seven biomedical startups and has raised more than $50 million in venture capital financing. The public market capitalization of his investments exceeds $1 billion. Mr. Gailar holds a B.A. from Indiana University and an M.S.I.A. from Purdue University's Krannert School of Business.
Haval Shirwan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer and Founder
Dr. Shirwan is the Founder and CSO of ApoImmune and also a member of the Board of Directors. He is Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Louisville, and is the Director of the Molecular Immunomodulation Program at the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics at Louisville. He is also the Hamilton Chair in Autoimmune Disease and a University Scholar at the School of Medicine.
Throughout his career Dr. Shirwan has maintained a focus on clinically relevant details of the immune response. Dr. Shirwan investigated the molecular basis of the effects interferons on the replication of viruses during his graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology dealt with the structure and function of major histocompatibility complex antigens. He was recruited from Caltech to start the Molecular Immunology Program at Cedars/Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with a focus on transplantation immunology. After a brief tenure at the Alleghany University of Health Sciences in Philadelphia, PA, Dr Shirwan joined the faculty of the University of Louisville in 1998. In recent years, Dr. Shirwan has focused on translational research and pioneered the ProtEx technology, the Company's platform technology, as a safe, efficient, and practical alternative to DNA-based immune gene therapy for immunomodulation.
Dr. Shirwan has served on numerous study sections for national and international funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Veteran's Administration, The U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, Israel Science Foundation, American Heart Association, Wellcome Trust, and Philip Morris USA Inc. He has also served on the Editorial Board of the journal Graft, was Section Editor for Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation, and an ad hoc reviewer for numerous scientific journals. He is the member of several scientific organizations and authored more than 100 papers, reviews, and book chapters. He has lectured at various national and international scientific meetings as an invited speaker. Dr. Shirwan's numerous honors and recognitions include the following organizations and awards: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Red Cross, an NIH First Independent Research Support & Transition (FIRST) award, the American Society of Transplant Physicians-Ortho Award, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Young Investigator Award, and the Louisville Business First, Partners in Health Care Award.
For additional information, please visit Dr. Shirwan's University of Louisville web site.
Kathryn MacLeod, Ph.D.
Vice President of Research and Development
Dr. MacLeod joined the company in 2005, and has more than 12 years of industry experience including both start-up biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies, including Genzyme Tissue Repair, Velcura Therapeutics, and Pfizer Global Research and Development. In addition to overseeing all aspects of the R&D activities and expansion of the technology portfolios, she also serves as the Company's Grants Administrator and Principle Investigator on numerous grants. In her role as Grants Administrator, Dr. MacLeod has been instrumental in procuring funding from both state and federal agencies, resulting in over $5 MM in the last two years. She also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for granting agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. MacLeod received her B.S. degree in Biology from Emmanuel College, Boston, and her graduate degree in Cellular and Molecular Physiology from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. She completed her postdoctoral work at Pfizer Global Research and Development, Ann Arbor, MI.
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