Managing Director, Science Futures Management Co. LLC, and Lead, Portfolia FemTech Funds I & II

Nola E. Masterson, MSc. is a biotechnology industry leader and forward thinker with more than 45 years of business experience in the life sciences industry and in venture capital investment. She founded Science Futures, Inc. in 1982 and as an analyst and consultant communicated the power that was to be found in the new field of biotechnology. Masterson was the first biotech Analyst on Wall Street working for Drexel Burnham Lambert and Merrill Lynch. Ms. Masterson worked with prominent venture funds. She has served as a Consultant at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Oak Investments and IVP to create companies such as IDEC, Resound, and InSite Vision. Ms. Masterson serves as Managing Director of Science Futures Management Company, LLC and also works as an advisor, board member and investor. She has served as a Special advisor to the Board of Directors at Nativis, Inc, and is a current investor.

She is a special advisor to several private companies and is Chair Emeritus of California Life Science Institute and served as founder and General Partner of Science Futures LLC I and Science Futures LLC II. She served as a Strategy Advisor at First Warning Systems, Inc., since September 2012 now called Cyrcadia Health, Inc and is the chair of the Advisory Board. Ms. Masterson started her own venture fund in 1998. As a venture investor, she served on the Board of EpiCept Corporation and on the Board of Nanostream, Inc. She served as an Industry Advisor at TVM Capital GmbH and its Venture Partner from 2000 to 2005. She also opened the San Francisco office of TVM and became a Venture Partner. She is the co- founder and first CEO of Sequenom, Inc. (SQNM), she has served on the Board of Directors at Omicia, Inc. now called Fabric Genomics. She served as a member of the Board and then Chairman of Repros Therapeutics Inc. (RPRX) until its sale to Allergan. She served as a Board of Director Member at EmbraceHer Innovations, Inc. and she serves as a Member of Global Advisory Board and is a Mentor at Astia, Inc. She is on the Board of Directors for Resonance-Med, a software for hearing Solutions Company in Chicago. She recently joined the board of directors of the start-up Lynx Bio in San Diego. She is an Adjunct Professor at University of California in the School of Management, teaching the business of biotechnology. She is the co-chair of the Northern California chapter of the Women Corporate Directors. The American College of corporate Directors awarded her the Advanced Professional Director Certificate.

She is an experienced global executive having worked at Millipore for 8 years and Ames Company, a diagnostic division of Bayer. She serves on the community leadership board for the American Diabetes Association. She is a graduate of the Stanford Law School Board of Directors College course. She received a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Marymount College, a Medical Technology (ASCP) certification and a M.Sc. in Biological Sciences from George Washington University and completed Ph.D. course work in Molecular Biology at the University of Florida, where she taught in the Environmental Engineering Department.

Medical Director, Maven Clinic; Lead, Portfolia FemTech Fund I; Co-Founder and CEO, Equity Quotient; Co-Founder, OB Best Practice in partnership with OBGProject; Co-Founder, TIME’S UP Healthcare

Dr. Jane van Dis, MD, FACOG is a practicing OB-GYN, volunteer clinical faculty at USC Keck Verdugo Hills, Medical Director at Maven Clinic and Medical Advisor to women’s health companies such as Flex, and Bobbie Baby. She is also Co-Founder and CEO of Equity Quotient, Co-Founder of OB Best Practice in partnership with OBGProject, Co-Founder of TIME'S UP Healthcare and Co-Founder of Diana Consulting. A highly sought after medical advisor and national expert and speaker on equity in the workplace, she has published on the topic in the NEJM, Slate, and Harvard Business Review. She advises 5 health care startups, and Co-Admins a popular Facebook group (501c3) of 4800+ ObGyns, Ob Mom Group. Dr. can Dis is also a Founding Member of the Womxn’s Health Collaborative, a national non-profit seekings to empower womxn from diverse backgrounds to succeed and become leaders in science and medicine in the field of women’s health. She is a single mom to twins.

Welcoming Kelly Londy, Chief Executive Officer, Innoblative Designs, Inc., joining the Summit from Ann Arbor, Mich.

Innoblative Designs, Inc. (“Innoblative”) is an advanced electrosurgical medical device company developing next-generation radiofrequency ablation (“RFA”) technology for cancer therapy and beyond. Spun out of Northwestern University and based in Chicago, IL, the Company’s pioneering work in RF energy has disruptive potential for treating solid cancerous and non-cancerous tumors beginning in its flagship markets of liver, breast, and lung.

Innoblative is dedicated to innovating technology to help surgeons effectively treat surgical margins to improve the standard of care, focus on better patient experience, reduce the cost of treatment, and provide solutions to address clinical needs.

Learn more about Innoblative and meet Kelly on May 27th by completing your RSVP here.

Introducing Neil McDonnell, PharmD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Seal Rock Therapeutics, Inc., joining the Summit from Seattle, Wash.

Seal Rock Therapeutics is targeting the liver to deliver a first-in-class NASH therapy.

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a severe, often lethal, liver disease characterized by inflammation and fibrosis (scarring) emerging from earlier-stage non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Exploding in prevalence by the global obesity and diabetes epidemics, approximately one fourth of the world’s population now have NAFLD. The resulting NASH frequently leads to liver cancer and cirrhosis and will soon become the number one reason for liver transplantation. Well over 16 million patients worldwide suffer from NASH, and with no approved drugs available, face little prospects for improvement. An effective NASH drug will prevent the pain and suffering of millions of people, helping to ease the tremendous societal and economic burden this disease inflicts across the globe. Founded to create new drugs for such serious, life-threatening, inflammatory, and fibrotic conditions, Seal Rock Therapeutics has successfully developed and is now advancing its lead drug, SRT-015, into clinical trials for NASH.

The process by which NASH arises from fatty liver is multi-factorial, but there is one common cellular pathway from which much of the inflammation, fibrosis, and cell death arise. As a central choke point, this common pathway makes an excellent target for disease control. Seal Rock’s drugs block this pathway by inhibiting the kinase ASK1, which acts as a key molecular “on-off switch” in regulating cellular injury. By identifying ASK1 as a critical therapeutic target and leveraging their specialized kinase expertise and know-how, the Seal Rock team has successfully designed a platform of drugs to inhibit ASK1. As an oral ASK1 inhibitor that goes selectively to the site of disease, the liver, Seal Rock’s first clinical candidate SRT-015 is ideally suited for NASH. Building upon this success, other ASK1 inhibitors from Seal Rock’s proprietary platform are being positioned toward other major inflammatory and fibrotic diseases including kidney, heart, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Neil McDonnell is the founding CEO of Seal Rock Therapeutics, created in 2016 to develop regenerative drugs for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases with inadequate treatment options. Neil has spent over 25 years in drug development and executive leadership roles in start-up biotechs, public biotechs and global pharmaceutical companies.

He has previous CEO experience as CEO of Metacrine, a San Diego-based biotech dedicated to developing drugs for NASH and diabetes. Before Metacrine, Neil was Senior Vice President and head of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease therapeutic area at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, responsible for the R&D and R&D pipeline strategy in these areas. Prior to this, Neil was Vice President of Program Management at the Seattle-based public biotech ZymoGenetics, where he oversaw all program development teams, and began his biotech career at Immunex, an oncology and immunology company acquired by Amgen.

Learn more and meet Neil at the May 27th Summit by completing your RSVP here.