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Management Team and Board of Directors

Management Team

Peter P. Lee

Peter P. Lee, MD, Founder, Chairman and CEO

Dr. Lee is the founder of Osel, Inc. and inventor of the MucoCept technology. In addition to his role at Osel, he is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Lee has published over 50 articles in journals such as Nature Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Public Library of Science (PLoS), Medicine, and received many awards, including elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Department of Defense Era of Hope Scholar Award for Breast Cancer Research, American Cancer Society Research Scholar, and the Damon Runyon Scholar Award.

Chin Yao

Chin Yao, Vice President, Corporate Development

Mr. Yao has more than 17+ years of Fortune 500, startup technology, healthcare and venture capital experience primarily in senior management roles overseeing finance, business development, mergers and acquisitions, sales and marketing. Since 2002, Mr. Yao served as VP of Investments and most recently Managing Director for Trident USA and Suma Ventures which are affiliated, diversified, cross-border US-China venture capital funds investing in real estate, technology and biotech. In this capacity, Mr. Yao assisted in evaluating investment opportunities for the funds as well as taking an active senior management role as either interim CFO or VP of Corporate Development within the portfolio investments including his current role at Osel. Mr. Yao’s role in prior portfolio companies included taking a public company private as part of a turnaround, to leading the successful acquisition and integration of 10 companies in North America, Europe and Asia, helping raise close to $70 Million in private equity and driving the IPO preparation efforts for a leading US-China technology company. Prior to that, Mr. Yao co-founded and ran the leading Asian internet media, for which he helped raise close to $20 Million, and prior to that he had headed up finance and business development for small biotech company owned by Baxter International (BAX). Mr. Yao received his B.S in Finance and International Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Qiang Xu

Qiang Xu, Ph.D, Vice President, Research

Dr. Xu has over 18 years of experience in academia and industry from biotechnology start-up to pharmaceutical companies, with goals to develop therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of infectious and immunologic diseases. He is currently Vice President of Research at Osel, Inc., where he has served as the principal investigator for 8 grants funded by NIH and other Foundations. Dr. Xu started his biotechnology career at Bayer. Prior to joining Osel in 2001, he worked at Pan Pacific Pharmaceuticals as a director, and Scios, Inc. as a member of the Alzheimer Disease Discovery Program. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers, 50 conference presentations, and is the co-inventor of 10 patents or applications. Dr. Xu received his BS and MS in China and PhD from Kansas State University. He completed his postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tom Parks

Tom Parks, Ph.D, Director of Product Development

Dr. Parks is a 25 year veteran of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. He joined Osel in 2002 as the director of inflammation and vaccine research and has served as the director of product development since 2006. Prior to joining Osel, Dr. Parks served as the director of molecular biology and experimental therapeutics at Cellegy Pharmaceuticals, where he established research and drug development programs in the areas of skin inflammation and gastrointestinal diseases, and at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, where he spearheaded drug discovery programs in inflammation and autoimmune diseases and served on a number of compound development teams. Dr. Parks received his doctorate in physiology and pharmacology from UCSD and was a research fellow at Yale University in the laboratories of Jim Jamieson and Paul Greengard.



Board of Directors

Peter P. Lee

Peter P. Lee, MD, Founder, Chairman and CEO

See bio in Executive Management section.

Michael Cannon

Michael Cannon, Investor and Entrepreneur

Mr. Cannon is a 40 year veteran of the life science industry with deep chemistry background and international senior management experience overseeing R&D, manufacturing, business development and operations. Mr. Cannon spent the majority of his career with SICOR Pharmaceuticals a generic manufacturer of bulk corticosteroids, anti-cancer drugs and anesthetics where he started off as a chemist, but subsequently took leadership roles including Chief Scientific Officer, Divisional President, Head of Business Development and Board of Director. In 2004, SICOR was sold to TEVA for $3.4 billion. Mr. Cannon represents Diamondhide (investment fund founded by Mr. Cannon, Mr. Carlo Salvi (Former CEO of SICOR) and couple other former SICOR senior management) and also serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Trevi Health Ventures, a medical device-focused investment fund. In addition to Osel, Mr. Cannon also serves on the Board of Directors for WaterStone Pharmaceuticals, a vertically integrated pharmaceutical company in Wuhan, China.

Sandy Chau

Sandy Chau, Chairman Suma Ventures

Sandy Chau is the founder and Chairman of Suma Ventures. Mr. Chau has been a successful entrepreneur and investor, identifying major trends and actively participating in those trends either as entrepreneur or investor in multiple industries and multiple geographies. Mr. Chau was born in Shanghai, received his Chemical Engineering degree at UC Berkeley, and then became an early pioneer in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley where in early 1970s had started a semiconductor company, raised $15M USD venture capital, and subsequently sold company. From mid 70s until the 90s Mr. Chau split time between real estate and technology endeavors. He founded the AAMA (Asia America Multi-Technology Association) which has become Silicon Valley’s largest and most prominent organization bridging entrepreneurs, senior executives and investors doing business between Silicon Valley and Asia. He became an extremely successful real estate mogul in Greater China where he pioneered the department store concepts in China, and also subsequently became CEO of one of largest publicly traded real estate and construction development companies in the region. After seeing the trend of real estate prices topping out in Greater China in 90s, and seeing the opportunities being created from liquidity issues in US from the S&L crisis, Mr. Chau shifted his assets and holdings from China to US commercial real estate and through these investments in US had tremendous success. Mr. Chau then created Suma Ventures as a vehicle for channeling his technology investment activities where he has been actively leading investments over the last several years.

Robert Lee

Robert Lee, Executive Chairman of Achievo Corporation

Dr. Robert P. Lee, a 30-year veteran of the computer industry, is Executive Chairman of Achievo Corporation. Dr. Lee co-founded the company in 2002 and served as its CEO from 2002 through 2008. Dr. Lee was also president and CEO of Accela, Inc., one of the leading government automation software companies in the U.S. Prior to that, Dr. Lee was president and CEO of Inxight Software, Inc. Prior to Inxight Software, he was chairman, president and CEO of Insignia Solutions plc, a software company he took public in 1995. Dr. Lee also served as executive vice president at Symantec Corporation where he led the acquisition and integration of many companies, including Norton Computing. He was senior vice president at Shared Medical Systems Corporation (now merged with Siemens), and earlier in his career held various technical and business management positions at IBM and Computer Sciences Corporation. Dr. Lee is a member of the board of directors and advisor to several companies. Dr. Lee was formerly chairman and president of Silicon Valley's Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA) for multiple terms. Dr. Lee received a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and masters and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, all in computer science.

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