Board of Directors
Company Information Management
Board of Directors
Dr. William J. Link
NeoVista, Inc. Chairman, Managing Director Versant Ventures
Bill Link specializes in early-stage investing in medical devices at Versant. Prior to co-founding Versant Ventures, Bill was a general partner at Brentwood Venture Capital. He has a proven record of building and operating large, successful medical product companies. With extensive knowledge of medical devices, particularly in ophthalmology, his operating experience spans more than 23 years in general management in the healthcare industry.
Perhaps Bill's greatest operational success was as founder, chairman and CEO of Chiron Vision, a subsidiary of Chiron Corporation specializing in ophthalmic surgical products, which was sold to Bausch and Lomb in 1997. Prior to Chiron Vision, Bill founded and served as President of American Medical Optics, a division of American Hospital Supply Corporation, which was sold to Allergan in 1986.
While at Brentwood, Bill invested in a number of early-stage companies, including eyeonics (private), Genyx (sold), IntraLase (public), Intra Therapeutics (sold), OraMetrix (private) and Refractec (private). His Versant investments include the following private companies: AcuFocus, Cameron Health, Confirma, ForSight, Glaukos, Inogen, NeoVista, Rox Medical, Second Sight and Wavetec.
Before entering the healthcare industry, Bill was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Bill earned his Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University. In February 2002, the Orange County Engineering Council named Bill "Engineer of the Year."
David Guyer, MD
Venture Partner SV Life Sciences
David Guyer, MD, joined SVLS in May 2006.
Prior to joining SVLS, David was the CEO, co-founder and a Director of Eyetech Pharmaceuticals, Inc. prior to the company's acquisition by OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in 2005. Eyetech was a biopharmaceutical company that specialized in the development and commercialization of novel therapeutics to treat diseases of the eye.
At Eyetech, David led the firm through a series of events representative of the life cycle of a venture-backed portfolio company. These included closing private financing rounds totaling approximately $170 million, completing a $157 million initial public offering and a secondary financing. The company also developed and gained FDA approval for Macugen, a product to treat macular degeneration, which Eyetech partnered with Pfizer in a deal valued at over $750 million. This product achieved net sales of $184 million in its launch year, one of the top 8 percent of all recorded pharmaceutical launches. OSI Pharmaceuticals subsequently acquired Eyetech in a deal valued at $935 million.
Prior to founding Eyetech, David was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at the NYU School of Medicine.
David received a BSc from Yale College and an MD from Johns Hopkins Medical School.
Mr. Ryan M. Schwarz
Managing Director The Carlyle Group
Ryan M. Schwarz is a Managing Director focused on U.S. venture and growth capital opportunities in the healthcare sector. Ryan leads the healthcare investing practice in the U.S. Venture & Growth Capital Group with a particular focus on medical devices, medical technology and healthcare information technology. He is based in Washington, DC.
Ryan previously served as a Vice President in the healthcare group at Robertson Stephens & Co. He was also an investment banker at Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc.
Ryan received his J.D., magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and his M.B.A. with Distinction from Harvard Business School. He also received his A.B., magna cum laude from Duke University where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and was an Angier B. Duke Scholar.
Ryan is on the Board of Directors of AcuFocus, Inc., Endius, Inc., Fairchild Imaging, Inc., Liposonix, Inc., NeoVista, Inc., Primary Health, Inc., Proteus Biomedical, Inc. and Transport Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He was formerly a Director of ConnectiCare Holdings, Inc. (sold to Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York), and Heritage Health Systems, Inc. (sold to Universal American Financial Corp.).
Ryan also serves on the Boards of certain charitable not-for-profit organizations in the Washington, DC area.
Mr. Steven B. Waite
President & CEO, The Innovation Factory
Member of the Board; AcuFocus, NeoVista, Inc.
President and Member of the Board; Cellutions, OsteoLign
Duluth, GA
Through Steve's role as co-founder and CEO at The Innovation Factory, he is co-founder of LipoSonix, Cerebral Vascular Applications and NeuroNetics, as well as co-founder and Director of. AcuFocus, NeoVista, Cellutions and OsteoLign. Steve co-founded PrimeVision Health, Inc. and served as its CEO/President and Chairman from 1995 until 1999 when the company was merged into a public entity. PrimeVision provided managed vision and professional eye care products and services attaining annual revenues of $130 million in 1998. Prior to 1995, Steve co-founded HealthTech, which owned and operated diagnostic cardiology labs and became one of the leading providers of outpatient cardiology services in the US. Steve also co-founded SafeWaste, a leading processor of medical waste. HealthTech and SafeWaste were sold to public entities.
Steve holds an M.B.A in Finance and a B.A. in Biology both from Wake Forest University. He is a member of the Babcock Graduate School of Management's Board of Visitors.
Mr. John N. Hendrick
President & CEO of NeoVista, Inc.
Mr. Hendrick has nearly three decades of executive experience, building both early stage medical device companies as well as large divisions in Medical device Corporations. During his tenure, Mr. Hendrick has participated in the development, manufacture and sales of products in the field of Cardiology, Urology, Orthopedics and Ophthalmology.
Currently, he is CEO of NeoVista, Inc. a company in the field of Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Prior to his accepting the role of CEO with NeoVista, Inc., he was the EVP and General Manger of the Medical Division of Sanmina-Sci, a $12 billion dollar contract manufacturing corporation. Mr. Hendrick was the first employee of the Medical Division that over a two year period grew sales from $200 million to over $600 million, creating the largest medical device contract manufacturing organization in the world. Prior to Sanmina-Sci he was the COO of VidaMed, Inc. a urological company for the treatment of Benign Prostate Hyperplasia. Mr. Hendrick was involved taking the company through a successful IPO which lead eventually to the acquisition of the company by Medtronic, Inc. Prior to VidaMed, Inc., Mr. Hendrick held executive positions in Allergan Medical Optics, Baxter and American Hospital Supply.
Mr. Steve Martin
Founder, CIBA VISION Optics
Steve Martin founded CIBA VISION Optics in 1980 and CIBA Vision Ophthalmics in 1990. He and his team grew sales of the combined companies to over $1.2 Billion with more than 6,000 employees.
CIBA Vision is a world leader in research, development, manufacture and marketing of soft contact lenses, lens-care products and ophthalmic pharmaceuticals. Mr. Martin was President of CIBA Vision Corporation USA until 1998.
Until his retirement in June 2001, Steve acted as a venture opportunity liaison on entrepreneurial life science projects for Swiss giant Novartis. He continues to help entrepreneurs find venture capital funding through Merritt Capital Services where he is a General Partner.
Steve has personally successfully negotiated more than 70 licensing and acquisition deals with values ranging from $1 million to $320 million. He has assisted several start-ups in raising equity capital.
His worldwide business contacts include decision makers in organizations such as: Alliance Technology Ventures, ALZA, Bausch & Lomb, Cordova Ventures, Croft & Bender, Domain Associates, The FDA, Johnson & Johnson, Kleiner-Perkins, Merck & Company, The Nobel Foundation, Noro-Moseley Partners and Solvay Pharmaceuticals. He has served as a director on the boards of numerous public and private companies. Steve currently is a director of La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (LJPC-NASDAQ) and OcuCure Therapeutics, Inc. (private).
Steve is a graduate of Wake Forest University and attended the Woodrow Wilson College of Law. He holds 6 issued U.S. Patents for his inventions and a number of European patents. Steve was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps. He and his wife Judy now live in the North Georgia Mountains.
Mr. Bill Greene
General Partner, MPM Capital
Dr. Greene is a General Partner at MPM Capital, based in the San Francisco office. He joined MPM in 2002 and focuses on biopharmaceutical and medical device investments. Current and prior investments include Alsius, Inc, Archus Orthopedics, Barrier Therapeutics(BTRX) , Cotherix (sold to Actellion), Endogastric Solutions, Idun (sold to Pfizer), Intercell AG (Vienna stock exchange, ICLL), Neovista, Inc, Quatrx Pharmaceuticals, and Synergia Pharma. Dr. Greene's experience prior to MPM includes biotechnology drug development, academic research and the practice of medicine. From 1998-2002 he served as a Senior Clinical Scientist and Epidemiologist at Genentech where his responsibilities in clinical strategy, trial design and management, regulatory interactions and safety monitoring spanned projects and products in several therapeutic areas. From 1991-1998, Dr. Greene was at Yale Medical School where he trained in Internal Medicine and Diagnostic Radiology, taught medicine and did clinical research. Dr. Greene has been a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale (clinical epidemiology), a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholar at the NIH (neurobiology), and has done research at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Padua, Italy. He has published widely, taught and practiced medicine, and has managed a private medical practice. He has been awarded the Henry Christian Award for outstanding research from the American Federation of Clinical Research and is a member of the American College of Physicians and the Society for Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research. He received a BA degree from Wesleyan University and an MD degree from UCSF, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine.
About MPM Capital
MPM Capital L.P. is a global investment management firm focused solely on life sciences investing. One of the largest investment management firms dedicated to the life sciences sector, MPM Capital has offices in Boston and San Francisco. MPM's portfolio ranges from start-ups to large capitalization public companies, with a primary focus on biopharmaceutical and medical device companies nearing commercialization of products or those companies that already offer product-driven opportunities. The firm manages over $2.4 billion in assets through the MPM BioVentures family of venture capital funds and the MPM BioEquities public market funds. More information on MPM can be found at apital.com.
