Jack O’Meara is co-founder and CEO of Ochre Bio. Ochre develops genomic medicines that rejuvenate transplanted livers, and ultimately hopes to treat fatty liver disease (NASH/NAFL) and other metabolic diseases. Ochre employs spatial sequencing, advanced genomics, and high-throughput screening to identify disease-causing genes and develops combination therapies which are tested in donor livers kept alive outside of the body. Jack is a biomedical engineer by training, with a background in bringing new healthcare innovations to market. His career spans management consulting, company creation, health technology and biopharma market launches. He has a BEng from National University of Ireland, Galway, and MSc from the University of Notre Dame.

Dr. Minnie Sarwal is a key opinion leader in clinical and translational research that focuses on native organ diseases and organ transplantation. She was Principal Investigator of the parent R01 grant (R01DK109720) entitled “CD40 Autoantibody and FSGS Recurrence.” Her training and decades-long contribution to clinical and basic science stemmed from her career both at Stanford University, where she was Medical Director of the Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program, and at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where she is Co-Director of the Kidney-Pancreas Transplant Program and Director of the Precision Transplant Medicine program.

Minnie is also Co-Director of the T32 training grant in Transplant Surgery. Her research has focused on mechanisms and biomarkers for understanding renal transplant injury, and on improving diagnosis and therapies for renal diseases such as diabetes, IgA, and FSGS, with a primary focus on improving diagnostics for solid organ and bone marrow transplantation. To interrogate biological systems, her lab is using multi-omic assays and bioinformatics. Her lab has published in high impact journals such as the NEJM, PNAS, Nature Medicine, Nature Methods, Journal of Immunology, Journal of Experimental Methods, PLOS Medicine, and Science Translational Medicine.

Dr. Ann Chokas is the founder of Life4ward. Her mission is to inspire people living with chronic kidney disease and transitioning to dialysis, on dialysis, or have had a kidney transplant to lead the healthiest and happiest life possible. Ann is a trained scientist and business professional. She received her master’s degree in Neuroscience from New York University and her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Florida and was awarded an NRSA postdoctoral fellowship for her research at the University of Pennsylvania. For the past decade, she has held leadership positions in the biotechnology and healthcare diagnostics industries.

Her desire to help people with chronic kidney disease and their caregivers came from her own personal experience. Her father, a respected physician, professor, and director of critical care developed chronic kidney disease and transitioned to dialysis later in life. Once on dialysis, he continued his passion for knowledge and continually collaborated with Ann to keep abreast of the latest information on the disease and regularly monitor his blood test results. The CKD Insider Newsletter and the One Track Health mobile application were born out of this desire to share knowledge and help save patients and their caregivers time by enabling quick access to relevant information on disease management. Ann received a Kidney X Patient Innovator Challenge award jointly run by NKF, ASN, HHS, and funded by NKF for the development of the One Track Health mobile application.

Tim Fitzpatrick is the co-founder and CEO of IKONA Health, a company that combines neuroscience, psychology, and storytelling to improve how patients learn about their health. His interest in the field resulted from his own experience as a patient while serving in the US Navy. After eighteen months filled with several back surgeries and hTim Fitzpatrick is the co-founder and CEO of IKONA Health, a company that combines neuroscience, psychology, and storytelling to improve how patients learn about their health. His interest in the field resulted from his own experience as a patient while serving in the US Navy. After eighteen months filled with several back surgeries and hundreds of painful wound care treatments, Tim became deeply aware of health literacy and accessibility barriers faced by patients across care settings. Following his recovery, Tim spent two years as an institutional equities trader for a bank in New York, where he covered the technology and media sectors. It was in this role that he began to see the potential of emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, virtual and augmented reality in shaping the future of information delivery, particularly in healthcare settings. Building on his co-founders’ research on clinical applications of virtual reality, Tim launched IKONA Health in 2017 to help tackle the uncertainties he once faced in the Navy. He currently serves as Principal Investigator on research grants from the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense, is a member of StartUp Health’s Health Transformer portfolio, and was a Fellow in the inaugural cohort of On Deck Health Fellows that launch in April 2021.

Alon underwent a kidney transplant in 2016 and immediately started searching for a solution to improve the lives of kidney transplant recipients worldwide. Together with his team, Alon won a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority. In 2019, he was part of The Hive’s start-up Accelerator, and later on participated in the Google for Startups Bootcamp as well as the Yeshiva University Innovation Lab. Alon graduated with a degree in Practical Civil Engineering from the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art in Israel. He led many projects in the real estate field before he co-founded HeroKi in 2019. Today, Alon is leading HeroKi as the CEO with a mission to deliver the Kidney Shield to every kidney recipient in the world.

Patrick Sullivan was a Former VP of Digital Equipment Corporation, Conner Peripherals, Inc., Gold Star Products Company LTD (LG), and a Former Board Member of the publicly traded SpaceTec IMC, Northland Cranberries, Inc., Lab Tech Corporation, and Catalina Lighting Corporation. To the surprise and shock of friends, family, and coworkers, Pat began the shift from a fast-rising career to the fight for his life at the age of 38, living and surviving with heart failure. For seventeen years, Pat lived a very good life and kept himself busy enough to keep mentally and physically stable, despite heart health ups and downs. Ultimately, due to an error in a fairly routine surgical procedure to correct AF, he underwent open-heart surgery to install a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) and began the long road of a life with an LVAD and testing for transplant listing. His heart transplant miraculously occurred the day before Thanksgiving on November 21, 2012. During his stay in the hospital, and months before his transplant, Pat met his “heart brother” in Bob Romer. Bob and Pat talked daily about how, if they survived, they would give back. The HeartBrothers concept developed out of these conversations and the two are acting on their dreams. Pat then focused on his new mission in life – the HeartBrothers Foundation – and helping others going through a similar fate.

In memory of Patrick Sullivan

Isabel Portero, MD, holds a PhD in Medicine with a background in the biomedical field.

She is the Founder and CEO of BIOHOPE, a startup dedicated to precision medicine, that promotes that each person receives personalized treatment based on individual physiology.

Before founding Biohope, Isabel acquired extensive experience -more than 15 years- as the Medical and R&D Director for different hospitals, foundations, universities, and biomedical/pharma companies, including big pharma (Merck and Roche) and biotech companies like Cellerix/Tygenics and Genetrix.

As she states, “I am firstly a medical doctor, which has driven everything. I would say that my background was critical because without it, I would have never launched Biohope. I have a 360° view of healthcare. My experience as a physician taught me the medical approach, while the pharmaceuticals industry gave me the marketing perspective. My experience in the biotech sector was important for developing the technology, and the university context clued me in on handling young people, which has also been very important.”

With her medical vocation and entrepreneurial spirit, she decided to run her own biomedical company by joining a multidisciplinary team of professionals, who together aimed to provide solutions to the unsolved medical needs in organ transplantation, a field to which Isabel has dedicated an important part of her career.

“When I worked at Merck Sharp & Dohme, one of the founders said that whenever you focus on the patients and what benefit them, you obtain economic benefits in return. Whenever you look for personal gain and lose that focus, you sink. If you work in the healthcare sector, you have to think about what will benefit the patient at all times. That’s the key to success.”

Dr. Portero began working on developing a test and founded Biohope in 2015. However, she found that creating a test was more challenging than she had anticipated. One challenge was that it proved difficult to grow immune cells in culture; another was scaling up the test while keeping it simple and able to give consistent results.

Despite the obstacles, her works has been recognized widely. Biohope received a grant from the European Commission for over € 3.4M in 2016 and Dr. Portero has received multiple awards over the years, including being listed in Forbes 100 most creative people in business (2018) and being named “Referent Women in Innovative Entrepreneurship” (2021).

She defines herself as a non-conformist and a lover of challenges. The desire to make a social contribution and the ability to identify a need in medicine led her to creating a startup.

Nick is a co-founder and CEO of Accunea Ltd, a medical device company with real time diagnostic monitoring products for organ transplantation.

Nick has a PhD in Microbial Genetics from University of Warwick followed by post graduate research (genomics/biotechnology) at Harvard and Oxford University. At Oxford, the research in Professor Sir Ed Southern’s laboratory led to the creation of the spin out company Oxford Gene Technology Limited. Nick went on to secure a fellowship in technology transfer at the University of Warwick and then to Manchester as a business consultant to UMIC, mentoring entrepreneurs and commercial development of the bioincubator. This was followed by heading up the business group at Warwick HRI (2008) and the creation of Warwick Enterprise Park for provision of incubation facilities. Nick held several senior level positions as Scientist, CEO, NED, investor and Chairman in several start up enterprises such as the Oxford University startup Oxagen (Human Genetics, 2003) Novolytics (antimicrobial therapeutics, 2010), BioMimox (peptide aptamers, 2014), Arcamis (business consulting, 2010), and has served as the Director of Business Development at OBN (2012). Nick has raised significant public, private, VC and business angel funding (Beer and Partners, 2013) for several businesses (multiple £M) and was a coach for the Growth Accelerator programme. Recently Nick created the Molecular Diagnostics Centre within the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, building self-sustainability models and international collaborations and partnerships. Nick also led the successful bid to become the Oxford Genomics Medicine Centre and the Director of the Programme. Nick is a current member of the Diagnostics Advisory Council in Oxfordshire; has advised on Genomics products for ThermoFisher; was a lecturer at MIB (Manchester) in genomics; and graduated (2016) with a PGDiP in Strategy and Innovation from the Said Business School in Oxford.

Pierluigi Mantovani is the co-founder and CEO of Evolution Devices, where they are helping people with Multiple Sclerosis and other neurological diseases rehabilitate their walking with a remote physical therapy program enabled by a smart nerve stimulation wearable device. Specifically, Evolution Devices is helping people with foot drop pick up their foot to trip and fall less, and walk with more confidence. Pierluigi is a healthcare entrepreneur and former Neuroscience researcher at UCSF. Pierluigi received his BA in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. He was inspired to build Evolution Devices initially to help his father, who struggles with Multiple Sclerosis. Pierluigi and The Evolution Devices team has been featured in multiple media outlets, and has been recognized by the NIH, NSF, and the Toyota Mobility Foundation for their innovations.

Peter is committed to improving the quality of life for people of all abilities and creating a barrier free, inclusive future for all to enjoy. This commitment led him to become the co-founder of MV-1 Canada, where he built and managed Canada’s largest national sales and warranty/service network, providing factory-built wheelchair accessible vehicles and warranty service to governments, fleets and families across Canada. Peter recognized that more could be done, so he put his experience and relationships to work and became the Co-Founder of MUVE, a ride hail/dispatching software platform specially designed to create and manage inclusive and sustainable transit systems of the future. Peter is thrilled to be part of such a robust and caring community-based company that recognizes the importance of sustainable and responsive public transit that is in tune with the needs of the entire community, regardless of their age, race, religion and ability. Peter’s goal is to go to work every day and know that his efforts are helping to affect positive change and lasting impact in the lives of those who need it most.