History of Medimabs

Mr. Wong is an experienced investment banker with vast experience in the capital markets, and brings to MédiMabs his financial and business expertise. As a CPA / chartered accountant, he is a co-founder and managing partner of Milton Capital Partners, an investment banking firm. He has been involved in several complex financing transactions, IPO transactions and debt restructuring on behalf of both creditors and debtors. He played instrumental roles in restructuring billions in distressed and defaulted debt, in Europe and North America. As a banker, he was responsible for relationship management of several multi-national public companies, and was involved in the debt and equity issues of several Fortune 500 corporations. Mr Wong has developed an extensive network in the medical and life science sectors, and he is on the boards of private, public and philanthropic organizations including the Goodman Cancer Research Centre (McGill University).

Dr. Cuello is a founder, shareholder, director and the MediMabs’ Advisory Committee lead member.  He is a well-established scientist, listed as a “Highly Cited Neuroscientist” by the Institute of Scientific Information, USA. He has authored more than 300 publications and has edited several books. Dr. Cuello has received numerous awards and academic distinctions. He has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has served in the Universities of Buenos Aires, UCSF (Univ. of California, San Francisco), Cambridge (England) and Oxford (England). He presently holds the position of Professor and Charles E. Frosst Chair in Pharmacology at McGill University. He also holds an Adjunct Professorship at The Scripps Institute, La Jolla, Ca, USA. He has been a consultant to Sandoz, Teva, Johnson & Johnson, PharMuigen, Santa Cruz, BioCapital and Synthelabo, among others. His extensive knowledge of antibodies arises from his close collaboration with Cesar Milstein (Nobel Laureate and creator of Monoclonal Antibodies). He has generated numerous monoclonal antibodies which are presently widely commercialized. In 2011, he was named Officer of the Order of Canada in 2011 and in 2018 a fellow of the Academy of Medical Science (UK).

Dr Youdim is the Finkelstein Professor of Life Sciences and Professor of Pharmacology at the Technion-Rappaport Family Faculty of Medicine, the Director of the Eve Topf and National Parkinson Foundation (USA) Neurodegenerative Disease Research and Teaching Centers of Excellence and the Chief Executive Officer of ABITAL Pharma Pipeline Ltd.

Dr Youdim is internationally renowned for his research in depressive illness, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. His research at Oxford University led to the discovery of the monoamine oxidase B inhibitor, l-deprenyl (selegiline) as an anti-Parkinson drug in 1975 which was responsible for changing the prospects of treating Parkinson’s disease and other neuro-degenerative disorders. His research at the Technion has led to the development of the second generation of monoamine oxidase inhibitor anti-Parkinson drug, Rasagiline and multifucntional neuroprotective anti-Alzheimers drug Ladostigil and more recently iron chelators HLA-20 and M30 for treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Rasagiline and its derivatives account for more than 90 international patents in the field of neuropsychiatric drug development held by Dr Youdim.

Dr Youdim serves as a consultant for several major international pharmaceutical companies and joined MédiMabs’ Scientific Advisory Board as well as the Board of Directors in 2015.

Mr. Madanes has been Director of the board of YPF S.A., the oldest oil company in Argentina, since 1991.He was Chairman of the Board (1997-1998), and was named Executive Vice-President in 1995. Prior to this position, he was CEO of Fate S.A. and Aluar 1976-1993, a leading Argentine industrial group comprising production of primary aluminum, manufacture of aluminum products and manufacture and sales of tires.He has also served as member of the Privatization Committee of the Economy Ministry (1989-1990). He holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Buenos Aires.

Dr. Chase is the former Chairman of the MédiMabs Board of Directors and is the business/ scientific advisor to the Company. His previous experience in the life science and biotech sector includes various senior executive and CEO positions in several world class biotech companies such as Glaxo Canada (GlaxoSmithKline), Connaught Vaccine (Pasteur Merieux Connaught), ImmunoVaccine Inc. and Shire Biologics Inc. He was also a member of the board of directors for public companies such as Conjuchem Inc., Acambis PLC, QLT Inc. Most recently he was involved in the sale of Medicago Inc. to Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, as its Chairman of the Board as well as formerly being President and Chief Executive Officer at Advanced Proteome Therapeutics, a public company developing innovative antibody drug conjugates.

Dr Phil Gold, is a respected physician, scientist, and professor. In 1968, Dr Gold he co-discovered with Samuel O. Freedman the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), which resulted in a blood test still used in the diagnosis as a tumor marker and management of people with cancer.  He is the Douglas G. Cameron Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Physiology and Oncology, at McGill University. He was Chairman of the Department of Medicine at McGill and Physician-in-Chief at the Montreal General Hospital. In 1978, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and promoted to Companion in 1985. In 1989, he was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 1978, he was awarded the Gairdner Foundation International Award, for outstanding discoveries or contributions to medical science. He was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal and the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal. In 2010, he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, and in May 2018 he was granted an honorary doctorate of science at Queen’s University.

Dr. Franco is James McGill Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology, and Chairman, Department of Oncology, at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine. He was previously a faculty member at the Université du Québec, Senior Researcher and Head of the Epidemiology Unit at the  Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Brazil. Dr Franco holds BSc (1975) and Licentiate (1976) degrees in biology from UniCamp (Universidade de Campinas, Brazil), and master’s (MPH) and doctoral (DrPH) degrees in public health microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a Guest Researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, and a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology during 1984 at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, and at Louisiana State University, in New Orleans. Dr Franco’s research has focuses on the following topics: molecular epidemiology and prevention of cervical cancer and human papillomavirus-associated diseases, cancers of the upper aero-digestive tract, prostate, endometrium, and childhood tumours; studies of epidemiologic methods for evaluating efficacy of cancer screening strategies; the impact of measurement error in epidemiology; and studies of societal and clinical influences on cancer patient survival. Much of his research has been international, with collaborative projects in Canada, Brazil, Mexico, the Congo Republic, United States, and with the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in France.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of Preventive Medicine (2013-18) and Founding Editor of Preventive Medicine Reports (2014-18) and serves on the editorial boards of several bio-medical journals He has served in several scientific or grant review panels as well as an advisor to the US President’s Cancer Panel (2012, 2013).  Dr Franco was inducted as Officer of the Order of Canada (2016), and over the span of his career received several awards and honours in cancer, epidemiology and biostatistics, and recognition as a CIHR Distinguished Scientist, and holds the James McGill Professorship

Dr Tremblay is a James McGill Professor and former director of the Goodman Cancer Research Centre at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.  Dr. Tremblay has been recognized at each stage of his scientific career by awards that recognize his excellence as a cancer researcher. He is the Jeanne and J-Louis Levesque Chair in Cancer Research, honoured with the Robert L Noble Award of the Canadian Cancer Society and is Chevalier of the Ordre National du Quebec.

His laboratory works on characterizing the function and regulation of several members of the Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase (PTP) gene family using both biochemical and genetic approaches.  Dr. Tremblay has over 10 patents filed and over 140 publications in the field of Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases and he is a recognized figure internationally on this gene family and their function in cancer, diabetes and neuroscience. Based on his expertise, he served on several boards of biotech/pharma industry companies, two of which he initiated the foundation, and he continues to pursue various research projects in partnership with the private sector. He served as the first coordinator of the Quebec Node of the Terry Fox Research Institute and was member of the Scientific Committee of the Québec Consortium for Drug Discovery.
He is recipient of an FRSQ chercheur national; honored as the Jeanne and J.–Louis Lévesque Chair in Cancer Research and as a Fellow to the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada.

He recently undertook several new assignments, such as; being the secretary general of the International Society of Pathophysiology, and a member of the Advisory Committee on Research for the Canadian Cancer Society.