Paul Blavin

CEO & Co-Founder

Paul is the co-founder and CEO of Mercy BioAnalytics. He began his career in 1986 as an investment banker with Citibank and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. He then served as the President of First Mercury Financial Corporation, a publicly-traded insurance company. He also co-founded and managed a private investment partnership – PWB Value Partners, L.P. – which began with three investors and $3.2 million under management. Over 14 years, the business grew to more than 80 investors and approximately $2.0 billion, consistently outperforming the S&P 500 Index, net of all fees and expenses.

Paul was born and raised in Southfield, Michigan just outside of Detroit. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with High Distinction with a BBA in Accounting from the University of Michigan, and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School.

Paul’s primary philanthropic focus is youth life transformation for those who need it the most and are least able to help themselves. Paul and Amy, his wife of 29 years, have immersed themselves in the following programs:

• Blavin Scholars – Programs at the University of Michigan and Northern Arizona University which provide holistic, wrap around support to youth who have experienced foster care to achieve their dreams of a post-secondary education and a better life. The Blavin Scholars Programs have supported over 100 scholars thus far with a graduation rate of approximately 95%.
• Freehab – A LA-based free, residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation center with up to 100 18-25 year old women in residence.  In the latter parts of their residency, each client is provided high-quality vocational training to enable them to gain employment and establish successful careers.
• Thrive Scholars – An elite post-secondary education opportunity for the most ambitious students (poor and almost all of color) in America’s lowest-performing public schools.
• Anti-Recidivism Coalition – A wraparound support and career services organization for men and women recently released from incarceration, and a national leader in criminal justice reform advocacy.
• Mully Children’s Family – A self-sustainable non-profit, empowering life transformation opportunities for abandoned children/orphans in Africa.

In 2015, Paul began an effort to harness the power of exceptional art to inspire hope, compel action, and ignite lasting impact. He is the Executive Producer of The Hunting Ground, an exposé on the epidemic of sexual assaults on college campuses, and Lady Gaga’s “Til It Happens to You” a Grammy, Emmy, and Oscar nominated original song written by Lady Gaga and Diane Warren who’s accompanying music video has more than 44 million views.  Additionally, Paul is an Executive Producer of the heartwarming, inspirational animal rescue documentary Harry & Snowman and Mully, the inspiring documentary of Dr. Charles Mully “Father of the World’s Largest Family” with over 13,000 rescued children. Paul is also the founding financier of One Community, a film and television co-financing company that harnesses the power of storytelling to inspire and encourage positive change in the world.

Eric Huang

Chief Scientific Officer

Eric is Chief Scientific Officer at Mercy BioAnalytics. Dr. Huang was most recently the Chief Scientific Officer at GelMEDIX, a start-up focused on ocular drug delivery using a proprietary hydrogel platform, where he was part of the executive team that launched the company and raised initial funding. Previous to that, he was the Chief Development Officer and first hire of Glympse Bio, a spinout from Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia’s lab at MIT focused on the development of bioengineered activity sensors for detection and monitoring of diseases. He led the team responsible for company launch through Glympse Bio’s first human clinical trial, which supported Series A and B financings. Other prior roles include General Manager and Head of Technical Operations at Acusphere.

Dr. Huang has a Ph.D. in Medical Science from Brown University, a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers, and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering also from Brown. He has been published in leading journals such as Nature Biotech and has been an inventor on multiple patents within the diagnostic space.

Joseph Sedlak

Scientific Founder, Advisor

Joseph is the Scientific Founder of Mercy BioAnalytics. Joseph graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan with a degree in biomedical engineering and entered the M.D./Ph.D. program at Harvard Medical School to pursue his mission to improve the lives of those with cancer. Since arriving at Harvard, Joseph focused on reducing the mortality and morbidity of cancer by seeking clinical opportunities to help care for cancer patients and studying in several research labs across Harvard and MIT. These research experiences included modeling the evolution of cancer resistance to small molecules, studying immunotherapy resistance, and biomarker assay development.

Informed by his experiences working with patients and the body of ongoing cancer research, Joseph critically assessed early detection as the largest unmet need in the field of oncology. The majority of early-stage, localized cancers can be cured by surgery alone. However, as cancer progresses and distant metastases have developed, surgery is rarely curative.

After gaining insight into the challenges of early cancer detection and seeing the need for detecting cancers earlier go unmet, Joseph dedicated his efforts to improving cancer screening by co-founding Mercy BioAnalytics. In July 2020, following a two year authorized leave of absence from Harvard Medical School, Joseph returned to the M.D./Ph.D. program. M.D./Ph.D. expected in 2025.

Joseph Sedlak

Co-Founder

• Co-founder and Harvard Medical School MD/PhD candidate, expected 2025
• Committed to early cancer detection with training atMGH/MIT/Harvard
• Scientific inspiration for Mercy

Laura Bortolin, PhD

Co-Director of Research & Development

Laura is Co-Director of Research and Development at Mercy BioAnalytics. Laura graduated from the University of British Columbia with a first-class Honors degree in Zoology and has a Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard Medical School. After obtaining her Ph.D., Laura worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where she developed technologies for the detection and identification of biological warfare agents. She was part of the original team that developed the CANARY biosensor which has been fielded in various locations. Laura also led an effort to develop fast, easy, and fieldable sample-preparation technologies and devices to purify biowarfare agents from complex environmental samples.

Before joining Mercy BioAnalytics, Laura worked in the McCarroll laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where she developed a rapid and easy nucleus-extraction method for single-nucleus transcriptomic analyses of human brain samples.

Laura is the author of multiple patents and is leveraging this experience in tech dev and innovation to develop Mercy BioAnalytics’ novel approaches for the detection of early-stage cancer from liquid biopsies.

Daniel Gusenleitner, PhD

Head of Computational Biology

Dan is the Head of Computational Biology at Mercy BioAnalytics. He attained a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics at the University of Skövde, Sweden and a Master’s in Biomedical Informatics at the University of Applied Sciences Hagenberg, Austria. His drive to improve cancer patients’ lives brought him to the States where he did his doctorate in Bioinformatics at Boston University. For his Ph.D., he used cancer genomic models to predict the carcinogenic potential of chemical compounds in rat models with the National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIEHS), as well as molecular subtypes of lymphoma patients in collaboration with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI).

After graduation, Dan joined the Center for Immuno-Oncology at the DFCI where he focused on the discovery of predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy and co-authored several high impact peer-reviewed publications. His excitement to understand, structure and use clinical oncology data to enable precision medicine brought him to the Oncology Data Science group at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR). There he worked on multiple Phase II/III trials in the targeted therapy and immuno-oncology space, especially focused on melanoma.

Ultimately, Dan realized that the biggest impact in helping cancer patients is to discover their disease as early as possible. At Mercy, Dan drives the computational biomarker discovery process that empowers our data-driven decision making.

Daniel Salem, PhD

Co-Director of Research & Development

Daniel is Co-Director of Research and Development at Mercy BioAnalytics. Daniel graduated summa cum laude from the University at Buffalo with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. While at the University at Buffalo, Daniel was a recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

In 2013, he pursued graduate studies in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering Practice in 2015. Daniel completed his Ph.D. work in the Strano Research Group where he worked on the design and development of optical biosensors using single-walled carbon nanotubes. Over the course of his graduate work, he deployed these novel biosensors for biopharmaceutical characterization, food/water contaminant monitoring, and biomarker detection.

Inspired by his graduate work, Daniel is driven to develop new technologies that enable early disease diagnosis. As a member of the Mercy BioAnalytics team, he will dedicate his efforts to the design of a blood-based screening test for early-stage cancer.

Emily Winn-Deen, PhD

Sr. Vice President, Diagnostics Strategy

Dr. Winn-Deen (B.S., Chemistry, Lehigh University and Ph.D., Chemistry, Boston University) brings over 40 years of experience developing diagnostic and genomics assays using novel technologies to her position at Mercy BioAnalytics. She had numerous peer-reviewed publications, and is an inventor on 38 issued US patents.

Recent executive experience includes serving as chief strategy officer and advisor for Mesa Biotech, a start-up company focused on delivering simplified molecular diagnostic solutions for point-of-care applications, vice president of research services at AltheaDx, and vice president for diagnostics product development at Illumina. Previously she was vice president for both strategic planning/business development and genetics/oncology R&D at Cepheid and senior director of the genomics business area at Roche Molecular Systems. Dr. Winn-Deen’s molecular experience also includes directing the high throughput genotyping laboratory at Celera Genomics, developing the Applied Biosystems cystic fibrosis assay, and directing diagnostics R&D at Oncor, Inc. Her earlier career included development of clinical chemistry reagents, urinalysis test strips, and immunoassays for several Siemens Healthcare business units. For the past 10 years she has also owned and operated RxDx Advisors, a diagnostics and life sciences consulting company, where she focuses on helping clients formulate their corporate product development and market entry strategies.

Dr. Winn-Deen has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on funded grants from the NIST Advanced Technology Program, the National Cancer Institute, and the US Department of Defense, and on grant review committees for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the National Cancer Institute.

Professional, federal-level volunteer activities have included serving on the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society (SACGHS) (2003-2006), the Centers for Disease Control’s Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee (CLIAC) (2007-2011), and on the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute’s (CLSI) Expert Panel on Molecular Methods (2010-2019). In these roles she has co-authored 10 whitepapers and consensus practice guidelines for clinical molecular testing. She was also a panel member, advisor, and grant reviewer for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Early Detection Research Network (EDRN)(1999-2002, 2009) and a member of the NCI Special Emphasis Panel on Clinical Assay Development for Cancer Diagnosis (2012-2014).

Dr. Winn-Deen has received a number of professional awards including the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) Northern California Section’s Harold Van Remortel Service Award (1993), their Outstanding Contribution to Clinical Chemistry through Science and Technology Award (2006), and AACC’s Outstanding Speaker Award (1997). Other awards include Behring Diagnostics’ Customer Acceptance Award (1981) and Behring Award (1985), and Applera Corporation’s Inventor Award (2001). In recognition of her career achievements, she was elected as a Fellow in the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry in 2000.

John Cavanaugh

Vice President of Clinical Affairs

John Cavanaugh is Vice President of Clinical Affairs at Mercy Bioanalytics. John has 25 years of experience in biotechnology and has held program leadership positions in global clinical operations in both mid-sized and start up biotechnology companies. He has most recently been a consultant to several pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients offering clinical development and clinical study operational planning services to help optimize the speed and efficiency of asset development. Prior to this John was the Vice President of Clinical Operations at Triplet Therapeutics, a start- up focusing on the treatment of repeat expansion disorders including Huntington’s disease, myotonic dystrophy and spinocerebellar ataxias. He has held prior clinical and program leadership roles at Biogen, Sarepta Therapeutics, Tolerx and Acusphere.

John holds a Master’s in Public Health from Boston University in Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

Anthony Couvillon, PhD

Sr. Scientist, Head of Antibody Discovery

Anthony is a Senior Scientist, Head of Antibody Discovery at Mercy Bioanalytics. After graduating from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Anthony joined the laboratories of Dr. Christopher Carpenter and Lewis Cantely at the Harvard Medical School/Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center where he worked as a research associate. This marked his foray into the world of cancer signaling and metabolism and Anthony credits his overall interest in cancer biology to time spent working with a number of incredible scientists during these formidable years. Work in the Carpenter and Cantley labs motivated him to enroll in a Ph.D. program at Vanderbilt University where he studied under the tutelage of Dr. John H. Exton, a pioneering HHMI investigator who introduced Anthony to GPCRs, their role in disease and neuronal function. After graduation, Anthony returned to Boston and the Carpenter lab where he studied the role of Rho family GTPases in immune cell development and function.

Frustrated by a lack of quality reagents to study many of the targets he was interested in, Anthony joined Cell Signaling Technology, Inc. where he spent over a decade generating and validating antibodies against key signaling proteins involved in cancer and other diseases. During this time, Anthony played an integral role in a number of industry-wide antibody validation initiatives working with antibody manufacturers, global research scientists from both academia and biopharma, non-profit organizations, research institutes, and government agencies to set standards by which all antibodies should be characterized. This work has led to a deep understanding of the pros and cons of various affinity-reagent technologies and how different strategies can be applied to successfully develop antibodies and similar reagents to even the most challenging targets.

Anthony most recently worked at Abcam, where he oversaw programs dedicated to raising antibodies and other affinity reagents to historically difficult targets. He is thrilled to join the Mercy team and hopes to use his years of experience in the antibody industry to identify or develop reagents that enable multiple generations of early detection assays.

Vera Imper, PhD

Senior Advisor, Corporate Development

Vera received her Ph.D. in Bioinorganic Chemistry from the University of Zagreb. in 1993. She was subsequently the Visiting Scientist at Syntex in Palo Alto, California. She held the position of Manager of Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Roche Bioscience before joining Biometric Imaging as Director of Business Development.

She was the WW Vice President of Business Development and a member of the Global Leadership Team for the BD Biosciences business. Vera was responsible for in- and out-licensing, strategic alliances and research collaborations with a focus on research and clinical diagnostics and for identifying and evaluating acquisition targets.

Recently, Vera led the Business Development and Alliance Management Team for Roche Molecular Solutions Business Area within Roche Diagnostics, and she was a member of the Roche Molecular Solutions Leadership Team.

Vera has served as an Advisory Board Member to HBA since 2015 and actively participated in the Silicon Valley Leadership Group from 2010-2016. She joined the Cytek Biosciences Board in December 2021.

Jason Millette

Lead Architect, Cloud and Infrastructure

Jason Millette is our Lead Architect – Cloud and Infrastructure. He is a consummate infrastructure and automation expert and has been deep in the opensource world as both a hobbyist and as an IT professional since 2003.

He comes to Mercy Bio with a background of Security, System administration, and Enterprise Architecture. He has built peta, and exa-scale platforms for global-reach clients from tiny MSB to some of the world’s largest finance, insurance, and pharmaceutical firms.

He led the architecture for Novartis’ data42 platform as well as being a key driver behind many digital lighthouse projects.

Prior to this Jason was involved in creating CSC/DXC’s CAPS platform (CSC Analytics Platform as a Service) which was sold and deployed at firms such as State Farm, Farmer’s Insurance, and others.

Jason’s passion is in finding less-than-efficient workflows and creating new ways of working which remove the technical hurdles for business users, scientists, and lab technicians.

Kelly Biette, PhD

Senior Computational Biologist

Kelly is a Senior Computational Biologist at Mercy BioAnalytics. She has a BS in Cell and Molecular Biology from Seattle University and did her PhD training in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. For her graduate work, Kelly studied how cis-regulatory elements integrate information to generate precise spatial and temporal patterns of gene expression during embryonic development.

After graduate school, Kelly was excited about the potential of precision medicine and joined the Oncology Data Science team at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. There she focused on the analysis and interpretation of high dimensional biomarker data from clinical trials at the interface of immuno-oncology and targeted therapy. In that role, she realized that despite tremendous advances in the treatment of cancer, the best hope in combating this disease is to discover it early. She is excited to apply her skills in data science to this mission with the team at Mercy.

Jonian Grosha, PhD

Scientist

Jonian is a Biomedical Engineer originally from Albania with particular interest in using cell-based approaches for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. He got his Master’s with honors in Cell and Tissue Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, where he utilized a chimeric antimicrobial peptide to create wound dressings that promote healing while fighting infections. His Master’s thesis work was a collaboration with Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he assisted in the recombinant expression and purification of this peptide. He then worked at Brigham and Women’s hospital to investigate biomarkers that predict the responsiveness of renal cancer patients to immunotherapies, an experience that piqued his interest in cancer diagnosis.

In 2018, Jonian started his PhD at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Rolle Lab where he developed functional models of vascular tissue. During this work, he generated a platform to create functional vascular engineered tissues from patients’ mesenchymal stem cells which can be used for disease modeling and personalized therapy screening. Additionally, in collaboration with Akron Biotech, he developed a high-throughput platform that quantifies the effects of cryopreservation parameters on engineered tissues.

Jonian is excited apply his skillset into the Mercy team’s efforts in accomplishing early-stage cancer detection.

Sanchari Banerjee, PhD

Scientist

Sanchari is a Scientist at Mercy BioAnalytics. She graduated from Madras University in India and has a PhD in Protein Biochemistry from Anna University, India. During her PhD, she developed a novel diagnostic kit for rapid detection of Shigella as a part of an EU project called “European Asian Challenge to Childhood Diarrhea (EAch ChilD)”. Owing to the large number of infantile death due to bloody diarrhea, especially in South-east Asia, this inexpensive, rapid detection kit is being used regularly in hospitals of rural South-east Asia.

In another project, Sanchari developed a very sensitive fluorescence based cyclic assay for a ubiquitous prokaryotic enzyme called Lipoprotein glyceryl transferase, which has led to the characterization and inhibitor studies and crystallization of the enzyme. This leads the way to develop an effective inhibitor for the enzyme, which is an excellent target for development of a broad spectrum antibiotic.

After obtaining her PhD, She joined the Teschke Lab at Molecular and Cell Biology Department at the University of Connecticut, where she set up the single molecule fluorescence lab and worked on the capsid protein of Bacteriophage P22 and it’s assembly pathway. Sanchari also developed biophysical protein assays in order to deduce the conformational change in the capsid protein of P22 during assembly. This work would lead to the development of an effective antiviral.

Sanchari is very motivated and passionate towards developing novel and easy assays for proteins, a skill she has for over 15 years. She is very excited to work at Mercy BioAnalytics and hopes that her skills can be really helpful in developing protein assays for early detection of cancer.

Stephen Brinton

Bioinformatics Manager

Stephen Brinton serves as the Bioinformatics Manager at Mercy BioAnalytics. He received his B.S. from Gardner-Webb University with a double major in Psychology and Computer Science. His original goal was to assist people in the area of mental health, but that goal quickly shifted to the field of computer science when he realized he had aptitude for all things digital and an interest in the promises that computer technology held. After graduation, Stephen decided to study physics and electrical engineering – but was quickly drawn back into the creative world of computers and completed a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

After completing his Masters degree, Stephen took a job as a Senior Systems Analyst at Unisys Corporation. The work dealt with programming machine language for large federal reserve machines. It was financially rewarding but lacked purpose, so after two years Stephen left (taking a huge pay cut) and began to teach computer science at Gordon College in Georgia.

The need for purpose stemmed from Stephen’s growing Christian faith, which exhibited itself in his new work with Gordon College’s Baptist Student Union. This drive for purpose ultimately led to 3 years of study at Asbury Theological Seminary, which culminated in a Master of Divinity degree, and was followed by several years of ordained pastoral ministry through the Southern Georgia United Methodist Conference.

This call to ministry, plus a renewed drive to exercise his gifts in both computer science and education, continued to serve as the catalyst for Stephen’s next career moves: first accepting a position as assistant professor at Union University (Tennessee), then later a position as a full stack web manager at SIM (Serving in Mission, South Carolina), and finally accepting an associate professorship at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. After eight productive years at Gordon College (which included completing Ph.D. coursework and candidacy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell), Stephen found himself called to pursue a new line of work: biotech computing.

This launched almost 9 years of challenging and fruitful work with Cell Signaling Technology (Danvers, MA). While at CST, Stephen met a variety of needs critical to the company’s goals in developing the highest quality antibodies, serving as a computer scientist, a bioinformatics programmer/analyst, a business analyst, and a bioinformatics manager. During these years, he built lab information systems, completed pipeline systems, data visualization software, and helped usher in the use of innovative technologies such as cloud computing, containers, and Kubernetes.

A common theme weaves itself throughout Stephen’s professional and personal life – using his gifts, abilities, and interests toward a purposeful, meaning-filled transformation in the world. It is this theme that drives Stephen’s priorities at home (where he is blessed with a wonderful wife and five terrific kids), and it is this theme that motivates all he does in the workplace. Stephen is thrilled, therefore, to be part of the shared mission at Mercy BioAnalytics and looks forward with hope and anticipation to the realization of Mercy’s goal: early-stage cancer detection.

Turgut Fettah Kosar, PhD, ALM

Director of Laboratory Operations

Fettah is the Director of Laboratory Operations at Mercy BioAnalytics. He brings 20 years of strong and diverse operations, leadership, training, and technical work experience. His background spans bioengineering, nanotechnology, chemical engineering, management, and technology entrepreneurship.

After completing a dual PhD program in Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and a one-year postdoc at the University of Washington (Seattle), Fettah joined Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) at Harvard University. He served at CNS in various technical and managerial roles for over eight years and then moved within Harvard to Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering as their Laboratory Manager. During his ten years of working at Harvard, Fettah also created and taught two courses (“Intro to Microfluidic Devices” and “Intro to Microscopy”) and received his master’s degree in management. In the spring of 2016, Fettah joined Indigo Ag – a small startup concentrating on microbe-based agriculture innovations – as their Senior Manager of Labs & Facilities to build up their facilities infrastructure and lab operations. Fettah was at Indigo for over four and a half years, during which he helped expand Indigo’s operations from 55 to over 1100 employees and to multiple sites in the U.S. as well as across the globe.

Before joining Mercy BioAnalytics, Fettah worked at Dewpoint Therapeutics as their Global Head of Facilities and Lab Operations. He is extremely excited to join the Mercy Team and aspires to serve Mercy’s mission by helping create and nurture a safe, efficient, creative, and collaborative workspace for all to enjoy and get inspired by, so they can produce their best.

Danny Lavoie

Lab Manager

Danny is honored to be the Laboratory Manager at Mercy BioAnalytics. His love and fascination with the human body, health, and disease led Danny into the sciences at a young age. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Losing family members and close friends to cancer makes Danny extremely passionate about helping the team at Mercy achieve their mission.

Danny has experience in research labs, clinical labs, and running clinical trials. Over the course of his career, he has taken on incrementally greater responsibility achieving success in laboratory leadership. He has developed a “servant leadership” mentality and thoroughly enjoys mentoring, supporting, and helping his teammates and colleagues achieve all their individual and team goals.

Chris Sedlak

Research & Development Engineer

Chris is a Research and Development Engineer at Mercy BioAnalytics. Chris graduated from the University of Michigan (UM) with a B.S.E in Biomedical Engineering. During Chris’ time at the UM College of Engineering, Chris delved into research and developed novel biomedical devices. Chris is most proud of developing an automated device with four other teammates for the quick detection of histamine from saliva.

Chris collaboratively created a chemistry method for the detection of histamine that resulted in a ten-fold time improvement from existing quantitative methods. This pushed the technology closer to being fast enough for first responders to use saliva histamine to screen patients for anaphylaxis. Chris found his passion for working on life saving technologies and is driven to develop and automate early detection methods for cancer.

Amy Blavin

Director of Guest Experiences

Amy is Director of Guest Experiences at Mercy BioAnalytics. Amy attended the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh majoring in Journalism. Amy was on the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and lead a group of former survivors back to their camps in Germany and Poland. Amy also serves on the board of Ready to Succeed which focuses on high level internships and career connections with former foster youth, as well as the board of Thrive Scholars. Her focus is to give respect, attention and love to those that are most disregarded in society. Amy enjoys competitive exercise, psychology classes, having the family together, cooking and entertaining.

Delaney Byrne

Associate Scientist

Delaney is the Associate Scientist in Bioconjugation at Mercy BioAnalytics. In 2019, she graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a minor in Art History.

During her undergraduate years, Delaney interned with the Bioconjugation team at Cell Signaling Technology in Danvers, MA. There, she developed skills in producing and validating high-quality antibody conjugates for a variety of research applications. At CST, Delaney also had the opportunity to pursue independent research projects, such as the development of a conjugate-based biomarker kit for the identification of senescent cells by flow cytometry. Having worked to facilitate exciting biomedical research, Delaney became passionate about getting personally involved in these meaningful efforts.

Upon graduation, Delaney joined the Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgery at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School as a research technician. At the CEMS, she pursued an interest in tissue engineering, working on a broad range of research. Select projects included supercooling biopreservation of hepatic cells, modeling nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, developing hydrogels for clinical applications, engineering spheroids and microtissues, and exosomal studies.

Delaney is thrilled to join Team Mercy’s mission to save lives through early cancer detection. She looks forward to using her conjugation background to help develop the Halo assay and is excited to benefit patients through her work.

MacKenzie King

ResearchAssociate

MacKenzie King is a research associate in the scientific program support team.  She recently graduated with her Masters in neuroscience from Brandeis University in the class of 2021. In addition, Mackenzie earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Neuroscience with a Minor in Psychological Sciences at the University of Vermont.

During her time at the University of Vermont, MacKenzie was a part of several research labs interested in investigating the biological and behavioral underpinnings to psychiatric conditions such as chronic anxiety disorders and addiction.  During her time at Brandeis University, MacKenzie was part of a research team investigating the configuration and stability of neuronal networks. 

MacKenzie then spent some time as a Behavioral Therapist and worked as part of the team that performed the diagnostic COVID-19 testing during the pandemic.  MacKenzie is very devoted to furthering knowledge in the field of science to help others.  She is excited to have joined the Mercy team and to be a part of a team that is dedicated to changing the course of cancer detection for the betterment of humanity.

Bilal Hamzeh

ResearchAssociate

Bilal graduated with his Bachelor’s of Science in Neuroscience from Trinity College in 2019, with a concentration in neurochemistry.

During his time at Trinity, Bilal conducted research across several different labs and fields. His early work involved discovering a new species of algae in Bermuda. He then went on to work mainly in molecular and behavioral neuroscience, studying the cellular underpinnings of behavioral phenomena in psychiatric models in rodents. His focus later shifted to include considerable work in the field of organic chemistry, devising new methods of extracting alkaloids and serving as a supplemental instructor.

After graduating, Bilal spent some time working at the Mailman Research Center at McLean Hospital. There, he furthered his experience with molecular biology, histology, and pharmacology, employing various assays and techniques researching psychiatric disorder models in mice.

Bilal is thrilled to have joined the Mercy team and to utilize his experience to further advance the efforts to revolutionize cancer diagnostics.

Britt Derrien

Chief of Staff

Britt is Chief of Staff and coordinates office support for the entire Mercy BioAnaltyics team.  With over 15 years providing administrative support to senior executives, Britt started her career working in the entertainment and fitness industries where she honed her office skills and ability for learning new skills in ever changing fast paced environments.

A Los Angeles native and fluent in French, Britt supports the Mercy team remotely from Los Angeles where she resides with her beautiful daughter, Gemma.

Britt is honored to be able to contribute to a such an incredibly important team effort at Mercy BioAnalytics.

Ibukun Zabroski, PhD

Scientist

Ibukun started out as pharmacist where she interacted mostly with cardiovascular, diabetic and oncology patients. In this role, she noticed the need for additional medications to manage side effects associated with the use of chemotherapeutics and other medications. Her desire to contribute to an improved management of diseases in a targeted approach led to her enrollment for graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Ibukun graduated with a Ph.D. in BioMedical Engineering and Biotechnology with a focus in Cellular Biology.

As a graduate student, Ibukun characterized the impact of lipid-dense microdomains in the plasma membrane known as “Lipid rafts” on the homeostasis and signal transduction of an angiogenic receptor in endothelial cells. This knowledge can be used for the development of targeted therapeutics in the management of diseases resulting from aberrant angiogenesis such as cancers and cardiovascular diseases.

Ibukun is a passionate scientist and is committed to using her skills for early-stage cancer detection, an impactful field that remains untouched.

Jennifer Shepard

Scientist

Jennifer is a Cell and Molecular Biologist with the passion and expertise essential for success in the areas of drug discovery and development, spanning a dynamic career of 25+ years. Adept at novel assay development, most especially cell-based assay, for target disease model and discovery therapeutics.

While working in the human embryonic stem cell discovery field, she successfully brought Retinal Pigmented Epithelia cells, derived from human embryonic stem cells to clinical trials, to treat Macular Degeneration, the leading form of blindness in people.

Jennifer is co-author of multiple peer-reviewed journal articles/presentations, and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Saint Joseph’s College in North Windham, ME. While attending college, she was a Pathology Research Assistant at Maine Medical Hospital in Portland, assisting in the study of the pathological basis of Lyme Disease.

Jennifer is proudly a member of the United States Eventing Association, a competitive triathlon on horseback.

Stanley Lapidus

Chairman

• 30+ years successfully inventing and commercializing early cancer detection diagnostics
• Founded Cytyc, which revolutionized the Pap smear. Acquired for $6 billion
• Founded Exact Sciences which revolutionized early detection of colorectal cancer. Exact’s market capitalization has exceeded $22 billion

Paul Blavin

Co-Founder

• Serial entrepreneur and successful value investor

• Over 16 years, built and led a successful $2bn+ private investment partnership

• Founder of several highly successful social ventures

• Sole Funder of Mercy ($5.5 million) inception to November 2020

Paul Meister

• Retired Chairman of the Board of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. and Vice Chairman of Fisher Scientific International, Inc. prior to Fisher’s merger with Thermo

• President of MacAndrews & Forbes Incorporated from 2014-2018

• Chairman and CEO of inVentiv Health (now Syneos Health), a leading provider of commercial, consulting, and clinical research services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries from 2010-2014

• Earlier in his career, Mr. Meister served in a number of executive leadership positions at Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., The Henley Group Inc., and AlliedSignal Inc. (now Honeywell International, Inc.)

Sonja Hoel Perkins

• Managing Director of The Perkins Fund, has been investing in high technology for over 30 years

• Youngest General Partner in Menlo Ventures’ history. Awarded the Menlo Ventures “Investor of the Year Award” six times in seventeen years

• Invested in several startups that have achieved multi-billion-dollar valuations including Acme Packet, F5 Networks and McAfee Associates

• Worth Magazine has ranked her among the 100 Most Powerful People in Finance in the World

• Invested in over 60 companies throughout her VC career

Ted Snelgrove

Senior Executive Advisor

• 30+ years of life science business development success, including extensive early-stage experience
• Built and led the original molecular diagnostic commercial teams at Genomic Health (acquired by Exact Sciences for $2.8 billion) and Crescendo Bioscience (acquired by Myriad Genetics for $270M)

Barry Berger, MD

Lead Medical Advisor

Dr. Berger was the Chief Medical Officer for Exact Sciences Corporation for 20 years, and developed advanced DNA based tests for colorectal cancer screening. Prior to Exact Sciences, Dr. Berger’s clinical career was spent at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine of Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare. Dr. Berger is the past chairman of the Advisory Committee on Clinical Laboratories for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and is a currently serves on the executive committee of the Massachusetts Society of Pathologists and the Policy Committee of the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable. He has served as a panelist for the Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee. He received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania where he also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Immunology with Dr. Peter Nowell. Following a medical internship at Boston University Hospital, and two years as a general medical officer in the U.S. Air Force, he served as a resident and chief resident in Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Randy Schekman, PhD

Scientific Advisor

Dr. Randy Schekman is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He studied the enzymology of DNA replication as a graduate student with Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University. His current interest in cellular membranes developed during a postdoctoral period with S. J. Singer at the UC Diego. Among his awards are the Gairdner International Award, the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with James Rothman and Thomas Südhof. He served as the Editor of the Annual Reviews of Cell and Developmental Biology and as Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the NAS and eLife. Beginning in 2018, Schekman has served as the Scientific Director of “Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s Disease” a major philanthropic effort organized along with The Michael J. Fox Foundation to identify molecular and cellular mechanisms in the initiation and progression of Parkinson’s Disease (https://parkinsonsroadmap.org).

Schekman’s laboratory investigates the mechanism of vesicular traffic in the secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells. Currently the lab investigates the mechanism of biogenesis of extracellular vesicles including how small RNAs are sorted for secretion in exosomes and the means by which these vesicles are internalized and function in target cells.

Ellen Goldberg

Marketing

• 20+ year career focused on developing and commercializing ground-breaking technologies in life-threatening and life-altering diseases
• Led marketing at Genomic Health. Launched the Oncotype DX® Breast Cancer Assay, a standard of care test which empowers over 80,000 women annually to make better decisions about chemotherapy

Floyd Taub, MD

Senior Executive Advisor

• Founded and led Digene, the company that revolutionized cervical cancer screening and rewrote cervical cancer prevention. Digene was ultimately acquired by Qiagen for $1.6 billion

Alberto Gutierrez, PhD

Regulatory Affairs

• 35+ year career at the FDA

• FDA Director, Office of In Vitro Diagnostics

• Expert in preclinical and clinical testing of in vitro diagnostics

Beth Karlan, MD

• Dr. Karlan is Professor and Vice Chair of Women’s Health Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA

• Authored over 300 research publications focused on ovarian and other women’s cancers as well as inherited cancer susceptibility. American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor

• Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journals Gynecologic Oncology and Gynecologic Oncology Reports.

• Chair of Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance’s Scientific Advisory Committee

• Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology

Charles “Chip” Landen, M.D.

• Associate Leader of the Women’s Oncology Program in the UVA Cancer Center
• 2010-2020 Best Doctors in America® List
• 2006 Gynecologic Cancer Foundation / Carol’s Cause Outstanding Paper Award
• ACOG Donald F. Richardson Memorial Prize Paper Award
• Department of Defense Ovarian Cancer Academy Award Scholar

Bo Rueda, PhD

• Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School

• Director of Vincent Center for Reproductive biology at the MGH Cancer Center

• Manages MGH’s ovarian cancer biobank

Amy Bregar, MD

• Director, gynecologic oncology sub-internship for medical students and lead faculty for the resident gynecologic oncology rotation at Massachusetts General Hospital
• Assistant in Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School
• Research interest includes clinical trial development for novel therapeutic regimens and early detection for patients with gynecologic cancer
• Member of the new investigators committee and the Older Adults Working Group of the national NRG (formally Gynecologic Oncology Group or GOG) 
• MGH site PI for a phase I-II randomized multicenter trial evaluating the safety, dosing, efficacy and biological activity of a novel IL-12 plasmid formulated with PEG-PEI-Cholesterol Lipopolymer  
• MGH clinical site PI of a multicenter biomarker study utilizing newly available detection and sample collection technologies investigating tumor DNA in uterine lavage and serum proteins in women undergoing surgery for suspected ovarian cancer

David Ransohoff, M.D.

• Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Pioneer in clinical trials to evaluate molecular biomarker discovery

• First “Rules of evidence” to evaluate diagnostic tests (NEJM 1978), cited 1500 times; methods papers in Science, Nature Reviews

• Guidelines-making: advisor to US Preventive Services Task Force

• Co-PI on Exact Science clinical study

Steven Skates, Ph.D.

• Associate Professor of Medicine (Biostatistics), Harvard Medical School
• Over 25 years and co-author of 50+ peer-reviewed articles on the early detection of ovarian cancer
• Trial Management Committee of UKCTOCS, the world’s largest prospective ovarian cancer screening trial (215,000+ women over 15 years)
• Co-inventor of ROCA, Risk of Ovarian Cancer Algorithm

Christine Berg, M.D.

• Senior author on five early cancer detection randomized control trials. Project officer for the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO), a randomized control trial with 155,000 participants and the National Lung Screening Trial with 53,454 participants
• 40 years as a practicing physician. Research focus on cancer screening
• Chief, Early Detection Research Group, Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD (2004-2012)
• Author, over 130 Peer Reviewed Original Scientific Publications, 10 Publications, New England Journal of Medicine