Board of Directors
William Gedale, JD MBA
Executive Chairman
William (“Bill”) J. Gedale serves as the Company’s Executive Chairman. Bill is an experienced investor, financial professional and biotech founder. He has been in the investment business since 1965. He is a co-founder and Chairman of Promosome, and Chairman of PIN Pharma. Previously, Mr. Gedale co-founded NGN Capital, a trans-Atlantic life-sciences venture fund, founded Mount Everest Advisors, and served as an investment advisor to individuals and as a full-time consultant to Warburg-Pincus Capital Management, the world's largest venture capital firm. Before founding Mount Everest Advisors he was a Managing Director at John W. Bristol & Co. and President & Chief Executive Officer of General American Investors. Mr. Gedale has been a director of Board of KIKA Medical Inc. (acquired by Merge Healthcare), BioArray Solutions (acquired by Immucor), Unilab (acquired by Kelso), Allied Clinical Labs (acquired by Labcorp), Bioreliance (acquired by Sigma-Aldrich), U.S. Home Health Care, GAMCO and General American Investors. William Gedale holds an M.B.A. from New York University, a J.D. from Fordham Law School, and an A.B. from Syracuse University.
Cedric Francois, MD, PhD
Dr. Cedric Francois is Co-Founder and CEO of Apellis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: APLS). Dr Francois and his co-founders were the first group to test complement-inhibiting drug candidates for a range of diseases (e.g., AMD, GA, PNH, etc.). Dr Francois successfully led Apellis through its early development stages, cross-over and IPO, and now leads APLS' rapidly expanding team, therapy portfolio and commercialization efforts. Dr. Francois has numerous publications and is inventor on several biotechnology patent applications. He received his MD degree from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and his PhD in physiology from the University of Louisville. Following postgraduate training in pediatric and transplant surgery, Dr. Francois joined the research team that performed the first successful hand transplantation in Louisville in 1999.
Bernard Peperstraete, MD MBA
President / Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Bernard M. Peperstraete is CEO and co-founder of Acuamark Diagnostics, Inc. Bernard is a medical entrepreneur, and has been involved in operating in, founding and investing in life science businesses for over 20 years; Prior to Acuamark, Bernard ran ACT Biotech, a cancer pharmaceutical company (acquired by Eddingpharm). Earlier, Bernard was involved in healthcare venture capital for nearly a decade, most recently as a Partner at NGN Capital. Bernard served on the boards of Exosome Diagnostics (acquired by Bio-Techne), ACT Biotech and Potentia Pharma (aka APLS:NASDAQ), and was closely involved with a number of transactions, e.g. Santhera (SANN:SIX) and Artisan Pharma (acquired by AKP). Before completing his MBA at Harvard, Bernard worked on emerging market opportunities at Novartis in Basel, was a Deputy Director at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore (during the SARS crisis) and successfully co-founded and ran a contract research business, also in Singapore. In 1999, after serving as a physician, Dr. Peperstraete managed the HIV business unit at Bristol Myers & Squibb, Singapore. MD, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; DTMIH, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium MBA, Harvard Business School.
Vanja Vuletic, MD, MBA
Early in his career, Dr. Vuletic was a cancer researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. After receiving an MBA from Harvard, he was a member of the Roche Pharma Biomarker strategy team, worked at Booz Allen Hamilton and was a hedge fund investor. Dr. Vuletic served on the Board at a mid-size pharmaceutical company in the emerging markets which was successfully sold to a multinational Pharma company. He is a board-certified physician and active biotech investor.
