BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Maxwell Stock
President and CEO

Max comes from Signum’s parent company, Signum Biosciences, where he was a co-founder. He oversees day-to-day operations to ensure close coordination between the business and R&D efforts. He majored in Molecular Biology at the University of Colorado, conducted research at Synergen Inc., and was involved with previous start-up companies before coming to Professor Stock’s Princeton laboratory to help develop the technologies that Signum is commercializing. A co-inventor on multiple patents, he is responsible for business development as well as smoothly implementing the company’s R&D and product development.

Jeffry Stock, PhD
Chairman

A tenured full professor in the departments of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at Princeton University , he is one of the world’s leading experts in signal transduction and global cellular regulation with over 150 original scientific articles in the area. He is an elected fellow of the American Society of Microbiology and a winner of the Humboldt Prize. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biochemistry and BMC Microbiology, and he serves on the Centers Review Committee for the National Institute of Drug Abuse. He is a co-founder of Signum Biosciences and Cadus Pharmaceuticals (KDUS). Professor Stock is best known for his seminal work on the biochemistry of signal transduction in micro-organisms. He is the force behind our science, which is why our laboratory is located near his Princeton research laboratory.

Gregory Stock, PhD
Board Member

Dr. Stock is co-founder of Signum Biosciences and My Mercury Risk Inc. Prior to Signum, Dr. Stock directed the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine. He has broad scientific, media and business experience, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and won the Freund-Porter Entrepreneurship award, he has a PhD in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. He has authored a number of books on the implications of new technology, particularly in the life sciences, and several best-sellers on human ethics and values..

Stephen Modzelewski
Board Member

Has been active in the field of finance since 1982, when he joined Salomon Brothers, which is now a part of Citicorp. In his 5 year tenure there, he created various mathematical models for valuing fixed income securities, developed the conceptual framework for “option adjusted spread,” which has become a standard analytical metric for complex fixed income securities. In 1988, he and a colleague left Salomon and established the hedge fund Parsec Trading Corp., which has been a successful fixed income arbitrage fund for over 13 years. At the end of 2002, Modzelewski established his own trading and investment firm, Maple Engine L.L.C., a private multi-strategy investment and trading fund focusing on speculative trading and venture investment. He serves on the Boards of the Reason Foundation and the Institute for Justice.

Yoichi Kambara
Board Member

Rohto Pharmaceutical Co.’s Managing Director, Corporate planning & administration.  He is an energetic and dynamic leader with a progressive global vision for the growth and development of Rohto’s shareholder value. He has served as the President of Medicare Systems at Rohto Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. , Managing Director of Tokyo Mitsubishi Toshin Toshi Komon K.K since June 2001,  President and Representative Director at Mitsubishi Tokyo Wealth Management Shoken K.K since March 2002 and has been a Director at Rohto Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. since June 6, 2008. He has led Rohto’s visionary long-term investments in R&D and has directed the continuous and dramatic growth of sales in recent years in spite of a weak economy in Japan. In the short term he has focused all activities on the goals of achieving further growth in Rohto’s operations and improving earnings by introducing value-added products and using the overseas network to expand operations. Strategically Rohto will continue to concentrate on sales of beauty care products and reinforce R&D capabilities, primarily at Rohto Research Village Kyoto, in order to develop and launch new products globally. Our mutual research collaboration will contribute to Rohto’s strategic goals, while enhancing the commercial, business development and market focus of Signum’s research priorities. We look forward to a productive and long-term relationship.

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD

Scott Vafai, MD
Board Member

Dr. Vafai is Director of the Mitochondrial Therapeutics Accelerator at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His research group is developing novel therapeutics targeting mitochondria in rare and common disease. Dr. Vafai is also a co-founder of Metavention, a medical device company that is developing sympathetic denervation as a therapy for type 2 diabetes. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Medical School and is clinically trained in internal medicine and endocrinology.

Jeffrey Cummings, MD
Board Member

Dr. Cummings is Director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas. Previously he was the Augustus S. Rose Professor of Neurology and Professor of Psychiatry and Bio-behavioral Sciences at UCLA. He founded and directed the UCLA Alzheimer’s Disease Center and the Deane F. Johnson Center for Neurotherapeutics at UCLA. Dr Cummings interests embrace clinical trials and the development of new treatments for neurodegenerative disorders and other neurological diseases. He is past president of the Behavioral Neurology Society and of the American Neuropsychiatric Association and in 2005 was named Edward Henderson State-of-the-Art Lecturer by the American Geriatrics Society. He has authored or edited 20 books and over 450 peer reviewed papers.

Khalid Iqbal, PhD
Board Member

Dr. Iqbal is currently Professor and Chairman, Department of Neurochemistry, at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Staten Island, New York and co-founded the biennial International Conferences on Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Disorders, (ICAD). Dr. Iqbal has authored over 200 scientific papers in prestigious American and international scientific journals and edited eight books on research advances in Alzheimer’s disease. His major research interests are the neurobiology of Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders, especially the molecular mechanisms of neurofibrillary degeneration. His pioneering studies on neuronal protein pathology and discoveries of the involvement of the tau protein and its abnormal hyperphosphorylation in Alzheimer disease have won him several prestigious honors and awards, including the Potemkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology and the Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Association.

Yigong Shi, PhD
Board Member

Dr. Shi is Dean of the School of Life Sciences, and Professor of the Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Previously, he was the Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor in the department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. He has determined the crystal structure of several critical apoptotic proteins, and is a world leader in x-ray crystal structure determination. For his research contributions, Dr. Shi has received a number of recognitions, including the 2003 Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award from the Protein Society.

Jeffry B. Stock, PhD at Princeton University

Signum has extensive ongoing interaction with the Research laboratory of Jeffry Stock, Ph. D., in the Dept. of Molecular Biology. Signum licensed its foundational PP2A and AFC technology from Dr. Stock’s laboratory which
continues to do basic research to elucidate the underlying biochemistry of these systems. Dr. Stock’s laboratory has been able to perform various sophisticated tests on some of Signum’s active agents, and continues to be a source of knowledge and expertise.

Donald C. Lo, PhD at Duke University

Dr. Lo is Co-Director of the Center for Drug Discovery at Duke University. His work focuses on translating basic neuroscience research into identification of novel therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders. Application of high content screening techniques in intact neural tissues forms the cornerstone of his works in the areas of Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

New York State Institute For Basic Research In Developmental Disabilities

In collaboration with Khalid Iqbal, Ph. D., a pioneer in Alzheimer’s neurofibrillary degeneration Professor and Chairman, Department of Neurochemistry, at the NY State Institute for Basic Research, Dr. Iqbal’s lab is exploring the effects of our STMs in various rate and mouse models in Alzheimer’s.

M. Maral Mouradian, M.D., Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

M. Maral Mouradian, M.D., is the William Dow Lovett Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center of Neurodegenerative and Neuroimmunologic Diseases at the Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She was named the chief editor for “Neurotherapeutics” and her work focuses on the molecular pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease and follows an extensive career that has led to the development of important therapeutics for treatment of this disease.

Research Partners

Signum has received grant funding from federal and research foundation sources that have allowed critical advancement of our science and validate its importance.

Angus C. Narin, Ph. D., Yale University

Dr. Narin is the Charles B.G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine. He is an expert in the structure and function of protein kinases and phosphatases. His particular interests have focused around dopamineric signal transduction with implications for a broad range of neurological conditions including Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and ADHD.

The National Institutes Of Health (NIH)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research.

Corporate Partners

 Signum partners with some of the top skincare and cosmetics companies in the world to bring breakthrough science to the skin of millions.

Neora International, LLC, headquartered in Addison, Texas, is a relationship marketing company that markets breakthrough products validated by science. Since its August 2011 launch, Neora has reached record-breaking sales and earned industry accolades while building millions of consumer fans along the way. Led by an award-winning executive team with more than 200 years of collective industry experience, Neora is committed to developing and distributing anti-aging products that are rooted in real science, produce real results, and improve consumers’ lives. Our partnership will contribute to Neora International’s strategic goals and future products to be developed utilizing Signum’s technologies and research capabilities. We look forward to a productive, long-term relationship.

Rohto is a Japan-based company that manufactures and sells a wide range of products including skincare, eye care, and oral medicines. Headquartered in Osaka, Rohto has 20 subsidiaries and five associated companies, giving them broad reach in the Japanese markets. We jointly develop new applications and products with Rohto’s RVK (Research Village Kyoto) facility. Our partnership includes a semi-exclusive license for Arazine™ in Japan only. In addition Rohto has made a significant investment into Signum and have a seat on our Board of Directors. We will continue to contribute to Rohto’s strategic goals, while enhancing the commercial, business development and market focus of Signum’s technologies.

We have partnered with Dermata Therapeutics, LLC , a private specialty pharmaceutical company developing innovative prescription drugs for dermatological conditions. We have out-Licensed SIG-990 (aka DMT200/DMT210) to Dermata Therapeutics for the topical treatment of rosacea. SIG-990 (aka DMT200/DMT210) is a novel, first-in-class anti-inflammatory compound which has the potential to both reduce erythema and decrease the papules and pustules associated with the disease. The Investigational New Drug (IND) application for SIG-990 (aka DMT200/DMT210) has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and SIG-990 (aka DMT200/DMT210) is thus ready to be evaluated in subjects. Dermata has obtained an exclusive worldwide license to SIG-990 (aka DMT200/DMT210) and is responsible for the clinical development of the product. Dermalogix will receive milestone payments and royalties on revenues of the product.

We have partnered with Elizabeth Arden, Inc., on an exclusive global license for the cosmetic functional ingredient Arazine™ (N-acetyl-S-farnesyl-cysteine) as well as developing new screening methodologies to measure the anti-oxidant potential of other product ingredients. Arazine™ was recently launched as a key ingredient in Elizabeth Arden’s Prevage® Anti-aging + Intensive Repair Daily Serum product. We look forward to collaborating with Elizabeth Arden’s efforts in producing innovative, high quality skin care products supported with robust scientific data.