Leadership

Adam Simpson is the president and chief executive officer of PvP Biologics. He has substantial life science operational and emerging company experience and has executed significant partnering and acquisition transactions. Prior to joining PvP Biologics as president and CEO, he was the president and chief operating officer of Cypher Genomics, a genome interpretation company focused on biomarker discovery to facilitate drug development, through its sale to Human Longevity, Inc. Previously, Mr. Simpson was a co-founder and chief business officer of Meritage Pharma, a company developing treatments for upper gastrointestinal disorders, from company creation through its staged sale to Shire, and at Verus Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on treatments for asthma and anaphylaxis, where as general counsel he led its sale to AstraZeneca and Shionogi. He has been a co-founder of three additional life sciences companies that have either gone public or been acquired. Mr. Simpson started his career as an attorney at Latham & Watkins. He holds a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego, and received his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.

Malcolm R. Hill, Pharm.D. is the chief development officer of PvP Biologics. Dr. Hill has more than 35 years of academic and pharmaceutical industry experience in new product assessment and clinical trial design and execution, with a special emphasis in gastroenterology, respiratory medicine, and drug delivery systems. Prior to joining PvP Biologics as chief development officer, Dr. Hill was a co-founder and chief scientific officer of Meritage Pharma (acquired by Shire). Prior to joining Meritage, Dr. Hill was senior vice president of research and development at Verus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where he was responsible for various development-stage programs. Dr. Hill is currently a member of the board of directors at Evoke Pharma, a company focused on developing treatments for the gastrointestinal tract. Dr. Hill was a member of the senior management team at Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he served as a vice president and corporate officer. At Dura Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Hill was responsible for all clinical development activities related to the Spiros® dry powder inhaler, including numerous asthma programs. Dr. Hill was a partner at ProPharmaCon, LLC, a product development and regulatory consulting company for clients with pharmaceutical products in every stage of the development cycle. Dr. Hill’s academic career includes his position at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, and he has also served as an assistant professor in the Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Colorado. Dr. Hill has published more than 80 articles on the topics of clinical pharmacology and pharmacokinetics and the treatment of pediatric asthma and related conditions. Dr. Hill earned his Pharm.D. from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral program at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, San Diego, as well as a research fellowship in the Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Florida Health Sciences Center.

Ingrid Swanson Pultz, Ph.D., is a co-founder and the chief scientific officer of PvP Biologics. Dr. Pultz is a leader in computational enzyme design, and has a distinguished track record of leading research teams to success. As an inventor of PvP’s gluten-degrading enzyme technology and an entrepreneur, Dr. Pultz has established cross-disciplinary connections and bridged industry with academia to accomplish research goals. Dr. Pultz established PvP Biologics in 2012 and joined the team as its chief scientific officer in 2016. Prior to PvP Biologics, Dr. Pultz led the effort to develop effective therapeutics for celiac disease at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, where she held a faculty position in the Department of Biochemistry. Dr. Pultz completed her Ph.D. in microbiology at Washington in the laboratory of Dr. Samuel Miller, and post-doctoral research with Dr. David Baker. She holds a B.A. in biology from Wellesley College. While operating at the forefront of protein engineering, Dr. Pultz also has a strong interest in training the next generation of effective leaders in science and technology. Dr. Pultz has received numerous awards and recognitions including a Life Sciences Discovery Fund grant, the Neil Groman Award for Excellence in Teaching, and a competitive NSF research fellowship.

Mark Mugerditchian is the senior vice president, manufacturing and product development of PvP Biologics. Mr. Mugerditchian has significant manufacturing and product development experience in small molecules and biologics across a wide variety of dosage forms. Previously, Mr. Mugerditchian led the manufacturing and product development activities at Laguna Pharmaceuticals (solid oral), NovaMedica (sterile injectables and biologics), and Sequel Pharmaceuticals (sterile injectable and solid oral). Mr. Mugerditchian was also a founder and president of American BioHealth Group, a start-up focused on pharmacological treatments for hearing loss and tinnitus, whose technology was successfully out-licensed in 2010. Mr. Mugerditchian was also a member of Dura Pharmaceuticals management team, where he was responsible for program management activities and insulin product manufacturing. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois and a M.A. in organizational leadership from the Graduate Institute.

Linda Gieschen is the vice president, program management of PvP Biologics. Ms. Gieschen has more than 30 years of experience in multiple aspects of drug and device product development including experience in non-clinical and clinical study implementation and conduct. Prior to joining PvP Biologics, she served as a consultant to many emerging pharmaceutical companies leading teams through corporate acquisitions, drug development, budgetary analysis, and NDA preparation. She has experience with all phases of drug development and was previously director of project management at Meritage Pharma and technical project lead at Verus Pharmaceuticals. Previously, Ms. Gieschen held roles of increasing responsibility at Dura Pharmaceuticals. She began her career in inhalation toxicology at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories operated by Battelle, managing all phases of non-clinical inhalation studies for both government and commercial sponsors. She earned a B.S. degree in mathematics from Washington State University.

Dr. Tadataka (Tachi) Yamada is a venture partner at Frazier Healthcare Partners. He was previously executive vice-president, chief medical and scientific officer and a board member of Takeda Pharmaceuticals. He joined Takeda after serving as president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Program where he managed $9 billion in programs directed at addressing major health challenges of the developing world. Previously, he had served as chairman, Research and Development and a member of the board of GlaxoSmithKline and before that as chair of the Department of Internal Medicine and physician-in-chief at the University of Michigan Medical Center. Dr. Yamada holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University and obtained his M.D. from New York University School of Medicine. In recognition of his contributions to medicine and science he has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine (US), the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) and the National Academy of Medicine (Mexico) and he has received an honorary appointment as Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). He is a past-president of the Association of American Physicians and of the American Gastroenterological Association and he has served as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He is currently vice-chair of the Council of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on the board of directors of the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Adam Simpson is the president and chief executive officer of PvP Biologics. He has substantial life science operational and emerging company experience and has executed significant partnering and acquisition transactions. Prior to joining PvP Biologics as president and CEO, he was the president and chief operating officer of Cypher Genomics, a genome interpretation company focused on biomarker discovery to facilitate drug development, through its sale to Human Longevity, Inc. Previously, Mr. Simpson was a co-founder and chief business officer of Meritage Pharma, a company developing treatments for upper gastrointestinal disorders, from company creation through its staged sale to Shire, and at Verus Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on treatments for asthma and anaphylaxis, where as general counsel he led its sale to AstraZeneca and Shionogi. He has been a co-founder of three additional life sciences companies that have either gone public or been acquired. Mr. Simpson started his career as an attorney at Latham & Watkins. He holds a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego, and received his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School.

Ingrid Swanson Pultz, Ph.D., is a co-founder and the chief scientific officer of PvP Biologics. Dr. Pultz is a leader in computational enzyme design, and has a distinguished track record of leading research teams to success. As an inventor of PvP’s gluten-degrading enzyme technology and an entrepreneur, Dr. Pultz has established cross-disciplinary connections and bridged industry with academia to accomplish research goals. Dr. Pultz established PvP Biologics in 2012 and joined the team as its chief scientific officer in 2016. Prior to PvP Biologics, Dr. Pultz led the effort to develop effective therapeutics for celiac disease at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, where she held a faculty position in the Department of Biochemistry. Dr. Pultz completed her Ph.D. in microbiology at Washington in the laboratory of Dr. Samuel Miller, and post-doctoral research with Dr. David Baker. She holds a B.A. in biology from Wellesley College. While operating at the forefront of protein engineering, Dr. Pultz also has a strong interest in training the next generation of effective leaders in science and technology. Dr. Pultz has received numerous awards and recognitions including a Life Sciences Discovery Fund grant, the Neil Groman Award for Excellence in Teaching, and a competitive NSF research fellowship.

David Baker, Ph.D., is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  Dr. Baker is a biochemist and computational biologist whose research focuses on the prediction of macromolecular structures and functions. He is the director of the Rosetta Commons, a consortium of labs and researchers that develop the Rosetta biomolecular structure prediction and design program, which has been extended to the distributed computing project Rosetta@Home and the online computer game Foldit. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and did postdoctoral work in biophysics at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Baker has received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, the Overton Prize from the International Society of Computational Biology, and the Feynman Prize from the Foresight Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Sciences.

Justin Siegel, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine, at UC Davis in the Genome Center. He is an entrepreneur and widely recognized world leader in the field of computational enzyme design. His scientific efforts are on the design and discovery of enzymes of interest to modern society. Through strong industrial and cross-disciplinary collaborations, Dr. Siegel has led enzyme engineering efforts for a wide range of applications, from treating human diseases such as celiac disease to the development catalysts for the productions of fuels and chemicals. In recent years, Dr. Siegel has begun to explore in greater depth the application of enzymes into the food systems in order to promote health and sustainability. Dr. Siegel has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. Beyond academic science Dr. Siegel is closely engaged with the translation of research. He is the founder of two companies (including PvP Biologics), is the director of Business Development for the Rosetta Commons, and is the faculty director of the Innovation Institute for Food and Health (IIFH). As the faculty director of the IIFH he has led the efforts taking the concept of this organization and building an infrastructure capable of rapidly scaling, initiating cross-disciplinary and multi-sector research activities, and brought together over a twenty partners to begin working on some of the hardest challenges that effect our food system at a systemic level.

David Socks is a venture partner with Frazier Healthcare Partners, a life science venture capital firm, where he focuses on company creation. Prior to joining Frazier he co-founded Incline Therapeutics in 2010 and served as its president and chief operating officer until its sale to The Medicines Company in 2013 for up to $390 million. Mr. Socks also co-founded Cadence Pharmaceuticals in 2004 and served as its senior vice president, Corporate Development and Strategy. Cadence completed its IPO in 2006, received FDA approval for OFIRMEV® (acetaminophen injection) in 2010, and was acquired by Mallinckrodt in 2013 for $1.3 billion. Previously, Mr. Socks was a venture partner at Windamere Venture Partners, where he co-founded companies including Cadence, Somaxon Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pernix Therapeutics) and Verus Pharmaceuticals (acquired by AstraZeneca and Shionogi/Sciele). Previously, he worked in private equity and management consulting. Mr. Socks holds a B.S. from Georgetown University and an MBA from Stanford University.