Michael Abrams, Ph.D.       Chair of the Science Advisory Board, Dr. Abrams has been active in the research, discovery and development of pharmaceuticals for over 20 years. In 1984, Dr. Abrams joined Johnson Matthey plc (together with its affiliates, “JM”) and in 1991, was promoted to Manager, Biomedical Research, worldwide for JM. In June 1996, Dr. Abrams AnorMED Inc. and served as President & CEO from 1996 to 2006.  He is an inventor on the patents that led to the development of the Bristol-Myers Squibb technetium-99m heart imaging agent, Cardiolite® and is a co-inventor on several products currently in clinical trials.  He is also a named inventor on an additional 15 patents and has authored over 60 scientific articles. Dr. Abrams is the Chief Executive Officer for Inimex Pharmaceuticals and serves on the Boards of Indel Therapeutics, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp. and the Centre for Drug Research and Development.  Dr. Abrams received a BA from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1978 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983.

 

Bruce McManus, M.D., Ph.D., F.R.S.C., F.C.A.H.S.       Dr. McManus serves as member of the Science Advisory Board, and is Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, at the University of British Columbia. He serves as Director of the UBC James Hogg iCAPTURE Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research and of the Providence Heart + Lung Institute at St. Paul’s Hospital. Since 2008, Dr. McManus also directs the Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF), one of the federally-funded Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR). Dr. McManus served as the inaugural Scientific Director of the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, from December 2000 until April 2006. Dr. McManus received BA and MD degrees from the University of Saskatchewan, an MSc in Applied Physiology from Pennsylvania State University, and the PhD in Exercise Physiology and Biochemistry from the University of Toledo. Dr. McManus is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the College of American Pathologists, the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Chest Physicians. He was co-recipient of the prestigious Max Planck Research Award with Dr. Reinhard Kandolf in 1991. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada as a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in 2002.  He received a UBC Killam Research Prize-Senior Scientist Category, and was elected as Fellow of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences in 2003. In 2005, he was elected as an inaugural Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and was honored with the Research Achievement Award of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society.  In 2006 Dr. McManus received the BC Innovation Council’s Lieutenant Governor’s Technology Innovation Award. He has been honored with the 2007 UBC Distinguished Medical Lecturer Award and 2008 David F. Hardwick Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. McManus was awarded the 2009 CSATVB Scientific Excellence Award of the Canadian Society for Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and recently, he was recognized as recipient of the 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award of the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology.

 

David Granville, Ph.D.       Member of the Science Advisory Board. See Management.