SAN DIEGO, Sept. 8 Biomatrica, Inc., the leader in room temperature sample storage and stabilization, today announced several key appointments that will expand the breadth of leadership and commercial experience of its management team. This will position the company for continued rapid growth in the development and commercialization of products for the life sciences, sustainability, biobanking and forensics markets.
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Martin Latterich, Ph.D., has joined the company in the role of senior director of research and development, Marylinn Munson has been appointed as vice president of business development for Biomatrica and Omoshile Clement, Ph.D., joined the company as the new marketing manager. Additionally, Francois Ferre, Ph.D. and John Thompson have been named to the company's board of directors.
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"The hiring of Martin, Marylinn and Omoshile represents a critical, planned extension of our management team and provides an important foundation to our growth and progression strategy for 2009 and beyond," said Judy Muller-Cohn, CEO and co-founder of Biomatrica. "We are also pleased that Francois and John have joined the Biomatrica board of directors. Their leadership experience will be integral in the company's continued success."
About the new appointees:
Martin Latterich, Ph.D.
Dr. Latterich brings over 15 years of technical and leadership experience to Biomatrica, including expertise in growth technologies, such as proteomics, genomics, systems biology, diagnostics, personalized medicine, cell biology, protein biochemistry, and clinical sampling technologies. Dr. Latterich's previous experience includes associate professor and Tier I Canada Research Chair, McGill University and principal investigator, Montreal Proteomics Network and Pharmacogenomics Center at the University of Montreal; director, Proteomics, Illumina, Inc.; principal scientist, Head of Proteomics, Diversa Corporation and assistant professor, The Salk Institute. He was a post doctoral fellow in molecular and cell biology for HHMI and University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Latterich earned his Ph.D. in cell biology and a B.S. (Honors) in biochemistry and molecular biology from Durham University, U.K.
Marylinn Munson
Ms. Munson has over twenty years of business development, sales, marketing, and scientific experience in the life science industry. Prior to joining Biomatrica, Ms. Munson served initially as the director of North America sales, and later as the director of global sales operations at Illumina during her four year tenure there. As a result of the partnerships and business development activities she led at Illumina, she is the recipient of 2008 USDA National Technology Transfer Award and the 2009 Federal Lab Consortium Award, which are both considered among the highest awards for outstanding efforts and technology transfer provided by the USDA and Federal Lab Consortium. Preceding her experience at Illumina, Ms. Munson worked at Agilent Technologies, Nanogen, Amersham Pharmacia Biotech and Molecular Dynamics. Ms. Munson graduated from the University of Oregon and earned her B.A. in Chemistry.
Omoshile Clement, Ph.D.
Dr. Clement brings over 10 years of scientific marketing experience in the life science/biotechnology industry. Prior to joining Biomatrica, Dr. Clement was a senior product manager for informatics, systems and software at Illumina, Inc. In this role, he managed all of Illumina's data analysis software, assay workflow automation and robotics supporting microarray technologies. Previous work experience include managing the product marketing team at Bio-Rad's Informatics Division, and at Accelrys managing a suite of drug design, discovery and pre-clinical evaluation software products. Dr. Clement was a post-doctoral fellow at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (a U.S. Department of Energy-run nuclear research facility). Dr. Clement received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and a B.Sc. in Chemistry from University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Joe Markee
Joe Markee serves as Chairman of the Board at Biomatrica and is also a Managing Director of Express Ventures. He brings to Biomatrica extensive experience in early stage company formation, capital raising, corporate management, and public and private corporate governance. Joe's startup experience encompasses Primary Access as a founder and senior manager, Copper Mountain Networks as founding CEO, CTO and Chairman, and Figure 8 Wireless as CEO.
Francois Ferre, Ph.D.
Dr. Ferre is the co-Founder of Althea Technologies. He is a highly experienced leader in cancer research and HIV clinical development. Dr. Ferre has held management positions at Cytometrics and The Immune Response Corporation. He is a leader in gene quantification and biomarker development with over fifteen years of experience in the field. Dr. Ferre completed his post-doctoral training at University of California, San Diego and received his Ph.D. in molecular oncology from the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France. Dr. Ferre won the 2005 E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year award in the Life Sciences category.
John Thompson
Mr. Thompson was most recently senior vice-president of strategy and corporate development with Invitrogen Corporation where he was responsible for the strategic planning of activities for the company along with mergers and acquisitions, ventures and in-licensing initiatives. Prior to his work with Invitrogen, Mr. Thompson served as senior vice president, strategic and business development as well as vice president, financial services/ treasurer for Dexter Corporation, a global specialty supplier- supplying materials to the aerospace, electronics, food packaging and medical markets. Mr. Thompson's former positions with Life Technologies Inc. (a subsidiary of Dexter Corporation) included senior vice president and general manager, Americas Research Product Division and vice president finance, secretary and treasury. At Life Technologies, Mr. Thompson was responsible for the development, manufacturing and sale of life science products to researchers in the Americas.
Mr. Thompson spent eight years as an audit manager for Ernst and Young prior to joining the life sciences industry. He received his degree from Cleveland State University, with a B.B.A. in Accounting. He has also served on the board of directors for Advanced Applied Adhesives, a San Diego based company.
About Biomatrica(R), Inc.
Biomatrica (www.biomatrica.com) is a San Diego-based biostability company that provides innovative technologies for stabilizing, processing, storing and shipping biological samples at room temperature. The core technology is designed for use in preserving complex biological samples and assays and is based on the principles of anhydrobiosis ("life without water"), a natural mechanism that allows multicellular organisms to survive extreme environments. Biomatrica's current products stabilize DNA and RNA with no sample degradation, thus labs can reduce their reliance on freezers and drastically reduce shipping costs. Biomatrica products are used in laboratories performing life science research, from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to academic research and forensics laboratories. Custom services to stabilize additional sample types are also available. Biomatrica also offers SampleWare(R) software, an easy-to-use, customizable laboratory management database that provides scientists with the means to store and organize their sample data, and directly supports samples stabilized by Biomatrica technology. For more information about the SampleMatrix technology and the Biomatrica products utilizing this technology platform (DNAstable(R) for DNA, RNAstable(R) for RNA and CloneStable(R) for bacterial DNA), visit: www.biomatrica.com.
Contact: Heidi Chokeir, Ph.D., or Martina Schwarzkopf, Ph.D. Russo Partners (619) 528-2217 (212) 845-4292 [email protected] [email protected]
SOURCE Biomatrica, Inc.
