Michael D. West, Ph.D.
President & Chief Executive Officer – Dr. West received a B.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1976, his M.S. in Biology from Andrews University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989. He has extensive academic and business experience in age-related degenerative disease, telomerase molecular biology, and human embryonic stem cells. From 1998-1999 he was a Co-founder and Chairman of Origen Therapeutics of South San Francisco, California, a company developing transgenic technology in commercial poultry. From 1990 to 1998 he was the founder, director and Vice President of Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, California, where he initiated and managed programs in telomerase diagnostics, telomerase inhibition, telomerase-mediated therapy, and human embryonic stem cells.
Jose B. Cibelli, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Vice President of Research – Dr. Cibelli received his D.V.M. in Veterinary Medicine at the University of La Plata, Argentina in 1989, and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1998. From 1989 to 1993, he was a Veterinarian at the Cooperative of Artificial Insemination of Venado Tureto, Argentina, and has several years of research experience at the Department of Veterinary and Animal Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he did his doctoral dissertation (in the laboratory of James Robl) on the production of transgenic cattle. Dr. Cibelli is one of the pioneers in the area of cloning with transgenic somatic cells in bovine for the production of animals and embryonic stem cell-like cells. His work was focused in the production of transgenic cattle. In January 1998, Dr. Cibelli’s efforts lead to the announced the generation of the world’s first transgenic calves by cloning. This was followed by publications in Science, Nature Biotechnology and Nature Medicine.
Robert P. Lanza, M.D.
Vice President of Medical & Scientific Development – Dr. Lanza is a former Fulbright Scholar and has been nominated for a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. He has several hundred publications, including Principles of Tissue Engineering (2nd Edition coedited with Robert Langer and Joseph Vacanti, Academic Press, 2000), Yearbook of Cell and Tissue Transplantation (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), One World: The Health and Survival of the Human Species in the 21st Century (as editor, with Forewords by C. Everett Koop and former President Jimmy Carter), Pancreatic Islet Transplantation Series (Volumes I, II, III; Landes/CRC Press, 1994), Medical Science and the Advancement of World Health (Praeger/CBS Educational and Professional Publishers, 1985), and Heart Transplantation: The Present Status of Orthotopic and Heterotopic Heart Transplantation (MTP/Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1984). His most recent book (co-authored with DKC Cooper) is XENO: The Promise of Transplanting Animal Organs Into Humans (Oxford University Press). Dr. Lanza received his B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. As a student, he studied in the laboratory of Richard Hynes (Center for Cancer Research at MIT), Gerald Edelman (Rockefeller University), and Jonas Salk (The Salk Institute for Biological Studies). He also worked closely (and coauthored a series of papers) with the late Harvard Psychologist B.F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.
Robert H. Saglio
Chief Operating Officer – He was one of the principal founders of Avian Farms, Inc., a poultry genetics and breeding company, and one of the founders of ACT. Mr. Saglio is a graduate of Colby College, and has been associated with the poultry industry over his entire career.
Gunnar L. Engstrom, MBA
Chief Financial Officer – a former Director and Chairman of the Finance Committee of ACT Group. Mr. Engstrom was a Director of ATP Capital LP, a private equity fund dedicated to the field of life sciences, prior to joining ACT Group. Prior to ATP Capital LP, Mr. Engstrom spent seven years as a management consultant with McKinsey and A.T. Kearney. He holds a B.S. in Finance from Drexel University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.