Company
Reaction Biology Corp. ("RBC") was founded to pursue new economies
in HTS and biochemical assays. RBC offers outsourced screening, profiling, and assay
development, at lower cost than traditional outsourcing labs. RBC also performs
NIH-funded research in technology development and early stage drug discovery. Screening
partnerships with industry partners are also part of the RBC portfolio.
RBC specializes in developing new nanoliter scale assaying methods. By carefully
scaling down enzyme and compound volume RBC is able to offer outsourced biochemical
assays at a much more economical price than other outsource or even in-house labs.
RBC's scientists have specifically studied the effects of miniaturization on standard
assays, and have selected the latest technology to maintain high levels of repeatability
and low error rates. RBC utilizes a proprietary suite of techniques in its low volume
well-based assays. While various low-volume technologies have been available for
some time, their combination must be carefully researched in order to maximize efficiencies
and minimize error rates.
See Career Opportunities
that are available with RBC.
Management
Haiching Ma, Ph.D. – Chief Technology Officer
Kurumi Horiuchi, Ph.D. – Director of Biochemistry
Konrad T. Howitz, Ph.D. – Director of Epigenetics
Sean Deacon, Ph.D. – Director of Research Services
Robert Hartman – Director of Information Technology
Cindy Spadaro – Administration and HR
Kerri Edwards – Accounting Manager
Matt Oristano – President
Board
Matt Oristano – Chairman
Mr. Oristano is President of Alda Inc, a private investment firm. In addition, he
serves on the board of USA Mobility Inc. (Nasdaq: USMO) and its audit committee.
He is also on the board of Crystalplex Corporation. From 1993 to 1999, Mr. Oristano
was Chairman and CEO of People's Choice TV Corp, a public wireless TV and internet
company, which he founded in 1988 and sold to Sprint in 1999. Mr. Oristano has a
degree in physics from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Tom Petzinger, Jr.
Mr. Petzinger is CEO of LaunchCyte, a biotechnology development firm. Mr.
Petzinger also serves as Chairman of Immunetrics Inc., Crystalplex Corp,
Proteopure Inc., and Knopp Neurosciences. Prior to co-founding
LaunchCyte, he spent 22 years at The Wall Street Journal, where he served as
Washington economics editor, deputy Washington bureau chief, millennium editor,
and weekly columnist. A Pulitzer nominee for numerous investigative stories, he
has also written three best-selling business books. He received his B.S. in
Journalism from Northwestern University, where he was a Richter International
Scholar.
Michael Kramer
Mr. Kramer is a Partner of Perella Weinberg Partners. Prior to selling his firm
Kramer Capital Partners to Perella Weinberg, Mr. Kramer was the head of Financial
Restructuring and a member of the Management Committee at Greenhill & Co. Prior
to Greenhill, Mr. Kramer was the co-head of the eastern region of Houlihan Lokey
Howard & Zukin and ran the Mergers and Acquisitions and Financial Restructuring
businesses. Additionally, Mr. Kramer was actively involved in the founding and development
of Houlihan Lokey’s merchant banking business.
Jonathan Kaufman, PhD
Dr. Kaufman is the CEO of Lipella Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Prior to
co-founding Lipella, Dr.Kaufman was Vice President and Chief Science Officer of
LaunchCyte LLC, a biotechnology corporate incubator. At LaunchCyte, Dr. Kaufman
was co-founder of Proteopure Inc. and Knopp Neuroscience Inc.; served as the
founding President of Crystalplex Corp.; served on the Boards of Reaction
Biology Corp., Crystalplex Corp., and Immunetrics Inc.; and served as Secretary
of Reaction BiologyCorp. Prior to joining LaunchCyte, Dr. Kaufman served on the
New Technology Committee in the Chemical Manufacturing Division of Merck& Co.,
and also served as a consultant to GlaxoSmithKline in the department of
bioinformatics. Dr. Kaufman received his MBA in Finance from the Wharton School,
and his PhD in Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania School of
Medicine.
Scott Diamond, PhD
Dr. Diamond is the scientific founder of RBC, he
is
the founding director of the Penn Center for Molecular Discovery. He holds the
Arthur E. Humphrey Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Dr. Diamond researches biotechnologies in several key areas: endothelial
mechanobiology, blood clot dissolving therapies, blood coagulation, nonviral
gene therapy, proteomics, and high throughput drug discovery. He has produced
over 120 publications and patents and has served on advisory committees to NSF,
NIH, AHA, and NASA, and has consulted extensively for industry and government.
Diamond is the recipient of the NSF National Young Investigator Award, the NIH
FIRST Award, the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award, the
AIChE Allan P. Colburn Award, and the George Heilmeier Excellence in Research
Award. Dr. Diamond is an elected Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society
(BMES). Currently, Dr. Diamond is the Director of the Penn Biotechnology Masters
Program, one of the largest in the country with more than 130 students. Dr.
Diamond also serves as Associate Director of the Institute for Medicine and
Engineering (IME). He received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in
1986 from Cornell University and his PhD from Rice University in 1990.
Haiching Ma, PhD
Dr. Ma is the Chief Technology Officer of RBC, where he developed and
implemented the current RBC technology and service platforms. Dr. Ma is the Principal Investigator for multiple SBIR
awards and an RO1 award from NIH all RBC totaling over 7 million dollars, and
which cover research topics including assay development for human kinome and
epigenome targets, toxicity predictions, chemical microarray HTS and cell death
prevention that reduce side effects from radiation therapies. Dr. Ma received
his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Medical School of The University of
Pennsylvania and continued his postdoc training there in the Institute for
Medicine and Engineering.
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Scientific Advisors
Scott Diamond, PhD –
Professor and Arthur E. Humphrey Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,
University of Pennsylvania.
Haiching Ma – Chief Technology Officer, Reaction Biology
Corporation
John McCall, PhD
Dr. McCall is the President of PharMac LLC, and a Senior Consultant in areas of
drug discovery, project management, project evaluation, and research organization.
He chairs an NINDS (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke) Development
Team investigating new therapies for spinal muscular atrophy, and is a member of
nine scientific advisory boards. He has over 50 patents and 55 journal publications.
Previously he was Vice President of Pfizer Global Research and Development and a
member of the Pfizer Global Technology Board. At Pharmacia Dr. McCall was Global
Vice President of Discovery Chemistry with responsibility for Structural and Analytical
Chemistry, Medicinal and Combinatorial Chemistry, Computational Chemistry, Cheminformatics,
and managed a global staff of 570.
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