Advisors

Peter Frishauf

Peter Frishauf is the founder of Medscape, and SCP Communications, Inc. Frishauf is listed in Richard Saul Wurman’s March, 2002 book, Who’s Really Who as one of the 1,000 most creative people in the U.S.

Frishauf started his career as a medical writer in 1972 after graduating from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He founded three New York City-based medical information companies, F&F Publications in 1975, SCP Communications in 1982, and Medscape in 1995. He served as Medscape’s CEO until February, 1998 when he became Chairman of its Executive Committee and was a member of its Board of Directors through its IPO and until its merger with MedicaLogic/Medscape, Inc in May, 2000. MedicaLogic sold Medscape to WebMD in the final days of December, 2001, and Peter left the enterprise in 2002. SCP was acquired by CMP Healthcare Media in 2004.

Stephen B. Howell, M.D.

Dr. Howell is a medical oncologist and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

He currently serves as Associate Director for Clinical Research, Director of the Cancer Therapeutics Training Program and Director of the Clayton Foundation Drug Resistance Laboratory at the Moores UCSD Comprehensive Cancer Center.

He is the recipient of patents for his innovative work in chemotherapeutics, drug-delivery systems, and diagnostic assays.

Dr. Howell co-founded, DepoTech, Beacon Laboratories and Targa Pharmaceuticals. He has served on the Board of Directors and as Medical Director of each of these companies. In addition, he served on the Board of Directors of Matrix Pharmaceuticals, and is currently on the Board of Directors of Angstrom Pharmaceuticals, Access Pharmaceuticals and Repros Pharmaceuticals. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards and Data Safety Monitoring Boards of a number of both large and small pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Howell received his A.B. at the University of Chicago and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School; completed his internship and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco; and his medical oncology training at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He completed his research training at the National Institutes of Health. He is board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology.

Beth D. Harper, BS, MBA

Beth is the President of Clinical Performance Partners, Inc., a clinical research consulting firm specializing in enrollment and site performance management and facilitating productive sponsor-site relationships. Beth leverages her 25 years of site, SMO, CRO, Pharma, Consulting, Training and Service Provider experiences, both domestically and internationally, to identify solutions for accelerating the clinical trials process.

Beth serves as an adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the George Washington University.

Her previous roles include Senior Vice President at D. Anderson & Company(a patient recruitment service provider), Associate Director of Clinical Research Operations at Merck Research Laboratories and CRA Director at MedTrials (a CRO).

Beth is a published author of more than 25 publications focused on patient recruitment, retention and site relationship management. Beth has designed and facilitated over 75 industry presentations and workshops dedicated to clinical trials performance optimizatio. She has developed and facilitated over 350 customized workshops and web conferences on patient recruitment and retention for specific clinical research trials including investigator’s meetings, protocol simulation workshops and study rejuvenation meetings

Leonard P. Ruiz Jr., Ph.D.

Dr. Ruiz is the President and a Director of the non-profit International Medica Foundation that he also helped to form. The foundation focuses on healthcare products for needy families in developing countries.

He has over 30 years of domestic and international experience and accomplishments in business development, technology transfer and strategic partnering in the biotechnology, biopharmaceutical, and food industries. He has recently been a strategic advisor to the Elk Run Biotechnology Center being developed near Rochester, MN. Dr. Ruiz has successfully licensed the pediatric, oral rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield® from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which is now being developed by the International Medica Foundation.

His prior responsibilities also included the CEO of The SOTA TEC Fund, a non-profit foundation that operated a business development fund in Minnesota which funded projects with business development potential at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota. His previous experiences included President of Global Genomics Capital, Inc. (GGC), a business development fund in Los Angeles where he had a key leadership role in developing the business and technology strategy for GGC and in successfully merging GGC into the public company CytRx Corp. (NASDAQ:CYTR). Dr. Ruiz has also been the CEO of several biotechnology companies and he has led the development of a successful animal biologics business. He was Director of Corporate R&D for Land O Lakes Inc. (LOL). His international experiences included projects in Africa, New Zealand, Malaysia (World Bank) and Pakistan (USAID).