ROCKVILLE AND BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, January 6, 2014 – BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) and MIMETAS announced today that Todd Chappell, MBA, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for BHI, has been named General Manager, U.S. Affairs for MIMETAS. A Netherlands-based company, MIMETAS is establishing its offices within BHI’s headquarters in Rockville. MIMETAS and BHI created a U.S. subsidiary of MIMETAS to access the clinical, regulatory and scientific resources available in Central Maryland and to access the U.S. marketplace, the largest life sciences market in the world.
“We’re very pleased to add Todd to the MIMETAS team,” said Jos Joore, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer of MIMETAS. “Todd couples a vast experience in business creation with a profound understanding of biology and disease mechanisms. Most importantly, Todd shares our sense of urgency around enabling better medical treatment by using more predictive cell culture models.”
Previously, Mr. Chappell was the Vice President of Operations for Shape Pharmaceuticals, a portfolio company of HealthCare Ventures, LLC, where he oversaw all day-to-day operations involved in the development of a novel HDAC inhibitor for Cutaneous-T-Cell-Lymphoma. Prior to that, he was at CombinatoRx Inc. for eight years and served as Director of New Products. Mr. Chappell will be combining his role at MIMETAS with his existing EIR position at BHI.
“A U.S. market presence is of crucial importance to further expand the MIMETAS business model,” said Mr. Chappell. “The United States leads the way in driving enhanced models for development of new drugs and the MIMETAS Organ-on-a-Chip platform is an important option for early-stage drug development and later-stage therapy selection.”
MIMETAS’ OrganoPlatesTM contain 96 3D cell cultures that are each individually perfused with medium. The platform allows for arbitrary co-culture complexity without usage of artificial membranes and mimics gradients of signaling molecules similar to the human body. Moreover the microtiter plate platform is fully compatible to industrial screening and readout equipment.
“We identified MIMETAS as a high potential, fast-growing company,” said Rich Bendis, President & CEO of BHI. “The presence of MIMETAS in the state of Maryland is therefore mutually beneficial: it provides MIMETAS with access to top U.S. institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, NIH, and FDA while the presence of MIMETAS here will help generate high-tech jobs in the state of Maryland.”
MIMETAS currently is looking to fill a business development role. This new position will establish and manage the U.S. subsidiary in collaboration with BHI. Further information is available on the BHI website.
About MIMETAS
MIMETAS develops organ-on-a-chip technology for testing of new medicines in high-throughput on miniaturized organ and disease models. MIMETAS’ products are designed to offer increased predictive value as compared to laboratory animals and conventional cell culture models. The MIMETAS OrganoPlate™ platform allows 3D cell culture with continuous perfusion, membrane-free co-culture, boundary and gradient formation. In close collaboration with its customers, MIMETAS develops and validates customized disease, toxicology and transport models. Ultimately, MIMETAS will make its technology available for personalized therapy selection. Visit www.mimetas.com for more information.
About BioHealth Innovation, Inc.
BioHealth Innovation, Inc., is a regional innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant bio-health innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland. Learn more at www.biohealthinnovation.org.
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Media contacts:
Rich Bendis, President & CEO, 301-637-6439, rbendis@biohealthinnovation.org
Jos Joore, Chief Business Officer MIMETAS, +31 85 888 31 61, info@mimetas.com