Leadership

Eric Devroe is the Chief Executive Officer of Opsonix and has been an entrepreneurial leader and founding team member of multiple life science start-up companies. He has most recently served as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, establishing the product development and commercialization strategy for Opsonix and its pathogen extracting therapy.

Prior to his work related to Opsonix, Dr. Devroe served as Executive Director of Strategic Alliances at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. His recent experience with life sciences start-up companies includes serving as the Vice President of Business & Strategy Development at Metamark Genetics, and an Associate at Flagship Ventures. Earlier in his career, he held scientific and operating roles at Ambion and Codon Devices.

Dr. Devroe has authored 12 scientific publications and more than 20 pending and issued patents. He holds a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology from Harvard University.

Daniel Geffken serves as Chief Financial Officer of Opsonix and brings more than 20 years of experience in the life science industry to his work with Danforth Advisors clients, ranging from early start-ups to publicly traded companies with $1 billion+ market capitalizations.

Previously, he served as COO or CFO of four publicly traded and four privately held companies, in addition to his consulting clients, and was interim CEO of a medical device company. In these roles, he has had management responsibility for finance, accounting, human resources, investor/public relations, facilities, legal, intellectual property, and manufacturing functions. Mr. Geffken has raised more than $1 billion in equity and debt securities, including a $132 million private placement that was, at the time, the largest PIPE financing in biotechnology history.

Mr. Geffken started his career as a CPA at KPMG and, later, as a principal in a private equity firm. He is the former Co-Chairman of the Association of Bioscience Financial Officers (ABFO) and of the Finance Committee of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. He received his B.S. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Greg Martin is the Vice President of Research and Development at Opsonix and is an executive/entrepreneur with over 20 years experience taking medical technologies from concept to bedside to commercialization in academic, start-up and corporate environments. Most recently, he was Senior Lecturer of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and was Director of the Coulter Program which translated promising university-derived technologies toward commercialization.

Previously, Dr. Martin was the Vice President of Research and Development at Hologic in the Surgical Products Division. Prior to that, he was the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Hemedex, a startup that commercialized a device to measure cerebral blood flow. Prior to Hemedex, he was a Staff Scientist in the Harvard-M.I.T. Division of Health Sciences and Technology Biomedical Engineering Center.

Dr. Martin holds B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has co-authored over 12 publications on biomedical engineering and is an inventor of 9 issued U.S. Patents.

Donald E. Ingber is a Scientific Founder of Opsonix. He is also the Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, as well as the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Dr. Ingber is recognized as a leader of the emerging field of biologically inspired engineering. He oversees efforts at the Wyss Institute that strive to identify the mechanisms that living organisms use to self-assemble and auto-regulate, and applies these principles to develop advanced materials and devices for healthcare and the environment. Ingber led the pioneering work that resulted in the development of a blood cleansing device for dialysis-like treatment of sepsis, as well as related companion diagnostic, which form the basis for Opsonix’s pathogen extracting therapy.

Dr. Ingber has also made major contributions to mechanobiology, tissue engineering, tumor angiogenesis, systems biology, nanobiotechnology and translational medicine. He has authored more than 400 publications and 130 patents, and has received numerous honors. He is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Ingber received his B.A., M.A., M.Phil., M.D. and Ph.D. from Yale University.

Michael Super is a Scientific Founder of Opsonix. He is a Senior Staff Scientist and a Lead of the Advanced Technology Team in the Biomimetic Microsystems Platform at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. At the Wyss Institute, Dr. Super is Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Donald Ingber on a DARPA funded project for the dialysis-like treatment of sepsis, which form the basis for Opsonix’s pathogen extracting therapy.

For more than three decades, Dr. Super has conducted preeminent research in pathogen-binding opsonins of the innate immune system. He published the first manuscripts identifying one of these opsonins as the newly described mannan-binding protein (now named mannose binding lectin / MBL), showed that the deficiency of this serum lectin caused clinical disease and frequent unexplained infections and described the molecular basis of the defect. He continued with post-doctoral work on MBL and other C-type lectins at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Super’s R&D roles in industry included Director of Protein Biochemistry at Lexigen Pharmaceuticals, Director of Immunobiology at EMD Lexigen and Head of Hybridoma Antibody Technologies at EMD Serono. While in industry, he was responsible for preclinical development and Phase 1 through Phase 3 manufacturing of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and immune-cytokines for cancer treatment including, huKS-IL2, hu14.18-IL2 and EMD 72000, a follower of Erbitux.

Dr. Super has authored 35 publications and over 20 patents. He received his B.Sc. from Manchester Polytechnic Metropolitan University and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of London.