Welcoming Kelly Londy, Chief Executive Officer, Innoblative Designs, Inc., joining the Summit from Ann Arbor, Mich.

Innoblative Designs, Inc. (“Innoblative”) is an advanced electrosurgical medical device company developing next-generation radiofrequency ablation (“RFA”) technology for cancer therapy and beyond. Spun out of Northwestern University and based in Chicago, IL, the Company’s pioneering work in RF energy has disruptive potential for treating solid cancerous and non-cancerous tumors beginning in its flagship markets of liver, breast, and lung.

Innoblative is dedicated to innovating technology to help surgeons effectively treat surgical margins to improve the standard of care, focus on better patient experience, reduce the cost of treatment, and provide solutions to address clinical needs.

Learn more about Innoblative and meet Kelly on May 27th by completing your RSVP here.

Introducing Neil McDonnell, PharmD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Seal Rock Therapeutics, Inc., joining the Summit from Seattle, Wash.

Seal Rock Therapeutics is targeting the liver to deliver a first-in-class NASH therapy.

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a severe, often lethal, liver disease characterized by inflammation and fibrosis (scarring) emerging from earlier-stage non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Exploding in prevalence by the global obesity and diabetes epidemics, approximately one fourth of the world’s population now have NAFLD. The resulting NASH frequently leads to liver cancer and cirrhosis and will soon become the number one reason for liver transplantation. Well over 16 million patients worldwide suffer from NASH, and with no approved drugs available, face little prospects for improvement. An effective NASH drug will prevent the pain and suffering of millions of people, helping to ease the tremendous societal and economic burden this disease inflicts across the globe. Founded to create new drugs for such serious, life-threatening, inflammatory, and fibrotic conditions, Seal Rock Therapeutics has successfully developed and is now advancing its lead drug, SRT-015, into clinical trials for NASH.

The process by which NASH arises from fatty liver is multi-factorial, but there is one common cellular pathway from which much of the inflammation, fibrosis, and cell death arise. As a central choke point, this common pathway makes an excellent target for disease control. Seal Rock’s drugs block this pathway by inhibiting the kinase ASK1, which acts as a key molecular “on-off switch” in regulating cellular injury. By identifying ASK1 as a critical therapeutic target and leveraging their specialized kinase expertise and know-how, the Seal Rock team has successfully designed a platform of drugs to inhibit ASK1. As an oral ASK1 inhibitor that goes selectively to the site of disease, the liver, Seal Rock’s first clinical candidate SRT-015 is ideally suited for NASH. Building upon this success, other ASK1 inhibitors from Seal Rock’s proprietary platform are being positioned toward other major inflammatory and fibrotic diseases including kidney, heart, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Neil McDonnell is the founding CEO of Seal Rock Therapeutics, created in 2016 to develop regenerative drugs for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases with inadequate treatment options. Neil has spent over 25 years in drug development and executive leadership roles in start-up biotechs, public biotechs and global pharmaceutical companies.

He has previous CEO experience as CEO of Metacrine, a San Diego-based biotech dedicated to developing drugs for NASH and diabetes. Before Metacrine, Neil was Senior Vice President and head of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease therapeutic area at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, responsible for the R&D and R&D pipeline strategy in these areas. Prior to this, Neil was Vice President of Program Management at the Seattle-based public biotech ZymoGenetics, where he oversaw all program development teams, and began his biotech career at Immunex, an oncology and immunology company acquired by Amgen.

Learn more and meet Neil at the May 27th Summit by completing your RSVP here.