James C. Zimring has run an independent research operation for the last 19 years with uninterrupted grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, and has published over 160 articles in the field of blood biology. The therapeutic strategy that Svalinn is advancing is a direct result of Dr. Zimring’s scientific discoveries, which his lab continues to actively pursue. He has served as a scientific advisor for the N.I.H., the F.D.A., the Department of Defense, Canadian Blood Services, and has been on the board of directors for the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB). Dr. Zimring has also served on the scientific advisory board of a major biotech company in the field of blood therapeutics, as well as consulted other biotech companies. Dr. Zimring has multiple patents in the area of blood therapeutics and diagnostics, and was the Chief Scientific Officer of BloodworksNW before taking his current position, where he holds the Thomas Tillack endowed chair of experimental pathology at the University of Virginia.

Eric Larsen is an experienced entrepreneur with over 25 years of business, investment, and technology project management experience. Mr. Larsen has been an executive, investor and board member in early stage companies. He served as Entrepreneur in Residence for Life Sciences with the University of Washington’s CoMotion office advising prospective spinout teams on technology and fundraising strategy.

Previously as a partner at Quellos Mr. Larsen developed processes and technology to scale Quellos’s business from 17 employees with $324 million in assets, to 350 employees with $25 billion in assets prior to the sale to BlackRock. As a Managing Director at BlackRock Mr. Larsen ran global technology development and implementation projects.

Paul Buehler is advising Svalinn on product development and regulatory strategy. Dr. Buehler worked for the FDA, holding positions as a pharmacologist and toxicologist in the offices of clinical pharmacology (CDER) and blood research and review (CBER). In more than fifteen years at the FDA he has developed a unique expertise that integrates basic and applied research at FDA to inform regulatory processes within the agency. He is currently a Professor of Pathology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the Center for Blood Oxygen Transport and Hemostasis. Dr. Buehler’s research is centered on preclinical proof of concept as well as applied and mechanistic toxicology of therapeutics that impact the basic biologic functions of blood.

Rob Commons is advising the company on treatment strategy, drug delivery, and patient engagement. He is an Infectious Diseases Physician in Ballarat, Australia and a Senior Research Fellow at the Menzies School of Health Research, Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia. His PhD, which he completed in 2019, investigated primaquine as a radical cure for Plasmodium vivax malaria in collaboration with WWARN. He was supervised by Menzies researchers, Professor Ric Price and Dr Kamala Thriemer and Professor Julie Simpson from The University of Melbourne. He continues to research ways to improve vivax radical cure, including undertaking large pooled individual patient data meta-analyses with WWARN to examine the efficacy and safety of different primaquine doses.