SAN DIEGO, July 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Mindera Corporation has announced that George W. Mahaffey was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer, and will also serve as a Director of the Company.
Treatment of chronic skin conditions is a major cost burden to the health care system. In particular, moderate to severe psoriasis patients often require very expensive biologic drug therapies. Physicians cannot predict which patients will respond to a specific class of specialty drugs. Lack of therapeutic response leads to frequent specialty drug switching, further increasing costs and complicating disease management.
Mindera has a developed a novel platform to extract thousands of biomarkers (RNA, DNA, proteins) from an individual patient via a dermal biomarker patch. Captured RNA is then sent to a CLIA lab for Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS). Using Machine Learning, these biomarkers are correlated to clinical outcomes data from myriad psoriasis patients who receive specific biologic drugs, resulting in predictive analyses for personalized drug responses. Systemwide, predicting biologic responses through Mind.Px can result in both improved patient outcomes and billions of dollars of annual cost avoidance to the healthcare system.
“I am excited to join such an innovative company positioned to lower high costs on the healthcare system,” said Mr. Mahaffey. “By capturing and understanding RNA from the dermis and epidermis, Mindera can use personalized information to change clinical practice, save healthcare spend, and potentially improve outcomes. I am excited to lead this effort.”
“When setting out to hire a CEO for Mindera, we were looking for an experienced CEO who could quickly start to harvest the incredible value of our patented, dermal biomarker patch,” said Joe Cook III of Mountain Group Partners, lead investor and Director at Mindera. “George’s experience in the Life Sciences space and particularly in the dermatology market makes him the ideal leader to accelerate our plans to bring about personalized medicine to dermatology as we help transform the way dermatology patients are diagnosed and treated.”
Mr. Mahaffey brings over three decades of pharmaceutical, biotech, and device industry experience including thirteen years of developing and commercializing dermatological products and services. His prior role was President and CEO of Clarify Medical which commercialized a novel connected home phototherapy device used by chronic skin disease patients. He previously served as President and CEO of Lithera, Inc., later renamed Neothetics, a specialty pharmaceutical aesthetics company, where he successfully completed an IPO in November 2014. Mr. Mahaffey served as CEO of Peplin, Inc. after its acquisition by LEO Pharma A/S in 2009. His prior role at this skin cancer company was Peplin’s Chief Commercial Officer. Mr. Mahaffey also served as Sr. Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cotherix, Inc. where he led commercialization of Ventavis® (iloprost), an orphan drug to treat Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. He was instrumental in the acquisition of the company by Actelion Ltd. in 2007. Mr. Mahaffey worked at Scios, Inc. where he led the commercial launch of Natrecor® (nesiritide) to treat acutely decompensated heart failure. The company was acquired by Johnson and Johnson in 2003. A prior role was Director of Marketing at Neurex, Inc. which was acquired by Elan Pharmaceuticals in 1999. He held various sales and marketing positions at DuPont Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Mahaffey has a BS Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Delaware and an MBA from the University of South Florida.
About Mindera:
Mindera is a private San Diego-area company developing and commercializing next-generation medical technology to enable a new era of skin analytics at the molecular level. Using a proprietary dermal biomarker patch, Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) and Machine Learning, Mindera technology generates clinically validated data to reduce healthcare system costs and improve patient outcomes. Find out more at www.minderahealth.com.
Contact: info@minderahealth.com
