About Us
Executive Team | Back to Overview
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Keith Stoneback
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Stoneback’s diverse career brings a deep and broad base of business development experience to Agile Sciences. Having contributed to the success of several businesses in the start-up phase, as well as a few that required turnaround and/or repositioning; Keith has lead teams to compete and win in the healthcare services, medical device and hospital equipment space during the last 30 years. Throughout his career Mr. Stoneback has demonstrated a keen and intuitive focus on the customer, coupled with a relentless drive to define, validate and then consistently deliver the value proposition. Prior to joining Agile Sciences, Mr. Stoneback planned, organized and then implemented the US market launch of the unique and innovative patient monitoring product developed by Hoana Medical, the Hawaii-based medical device start-up. Prior to that assignment, Mr. Stoneback served as the president of the Health Management Services division of SHPS, an $85M/yr industry leader in providing disease management services to Fortune 1000 employers. Keith was promoted to that position after serving as the Chief Operating Officer for SHPS for several years. Prior to joining SHPS, he served as the CEO and/or president for several healthcare companies, including Surgical Laser Technologies (acquired by Photomedex) and AMSCO, a $300M/yr market leader in hospital decontamination systems. (AMSCO was acquired by Steris). At AMSCO, Keith served as the president of the Scientific Division and was a key member of the management team that took the company public in 1991, providing an 8X return for the private equity investors. Mr. Stoneback began his career with American Hospital Supply Corporation after graduating from Duke University in 1975.
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Steve Brand
President
Dr. Brand provides expertise in both the drug development and business development arenas, having worked extensively with venture-backed biopharmaceutical companies. Most recently, he was Director of Biotherapeutics at Argos Therapeutics, an immunotherapy company developing treatments for cancer, infectious diseases, and transplant rejection. He also held the position of Director of Pharmaceutical Development at BioStratum, a company focused on the discovery and development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of diabetes and cancer, and served as Senior Pharmaceutical Development Scientist and Clinical Research Scientist at CATO Research, a contract research organization working with early-stage and multinational pharma and biotech companies. Dr Brand has extensive experience in Chemistry Manufacturing and Controls, and preclinical and clinical development and strategy. He also brings an in-depth understanding of business development including structuring and negotiating licenses and technology transfer agreements. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Manchester, England, in 1993, and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
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Christian Melander
Founder and Chief Research Officer
Dr. Melander focuses on defining small molecules that inhibit and disperse bacterial biofilms. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University in 1998, and then worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech under the direction of Professor Peter Dervan from 1998-2001. From 2001-2002, Dr. Melander directed the organic synthesis department at Xencor, Inc. He returned to academic research as a Research Associate at The Scripps Research Institute in the Department of Molecular Biology in the laboratory of Professor Joel Gottesfeld. At Scripps, Dr. Melander utilized pyrrole/imidazole polyamides to treat colon cancer and Friedrich's ataxia. In 2004, Dr. Melander assumed his current position as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at North Carolina State University. Dr. Melander has received numerous awards, including an NIH Chemistry-Biology Research Training Grant and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship.
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John Cavanagh
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Cavanagh is the William Neal Reynolds Distinguished professor of Biochemistry at North Carolina State Unviersity. He is an expert in protein structural biology, particularly in how bacteria are able to protect themselves. Dr. Cavanagh received his Ph.D. in Chemistry/NMR spectroscopy from the University of Cambridge in 1988. He has held positions as a Senior Research Associate at The Scripps Research Institute, Director of Structural Biology at the Wadsworth Center (New York State Department of Health), Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences (SUNY) and Professor of Chemistry (Purdue). Since 2000 he has been Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Molecular & Structural Biochemistry at North Carolina State University. Dr. Cavanagh has served on numerous NIH and NSF grant review panels. He is author or co-author of over 90 peer-reviewed research publications and co-author of the well known and successful textbook "Protein NMR Spectroscopy." He has been awarded the Foulerton Gift & Binmore Kenner Fellowship of the Royal Society (1990), The Fullsome Award (1996) and NC State University Alumni Associations Outstanding Research Award (2005).
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Eva Garland
Director of Operations
Dr. Eva Garland has a broad background in environmental and surface science, with an emphasis on the morphological and reactive properties of biologically relevant species on surfaces. Dr. Garland holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in atmospheric chemistry from Caltech. She completed postdoctoral studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, under the direction of Prof. Tomas Baer. Dr. Garland has held faculty positions in Chemistry at Westridge School and at North Carolina State University. Her awards include an EPA STAR Graduate Research Fellowship, the Ahmanson Grant for Creativity for authoring an A. P. Chemistry Laboratory manual, and a Certificate of Merit Award from the American Chemical Society Division of Environmental Chemistry.