Board of Directors

Dr. Weickert has been developing drugs, devices and startup companies for 29 years, many in the anti-infective therapeutic area. He has co-founded and/or led startups as CEO of Pacylex Pharmaceuticals, illumiSonics, Sonescence, and SEA Medical Systems, CBO of Strategent Life Sciences, Corium, and Therashock, COO of Greenfire Bio and Ohm Oncology, VP of development at SciDose and Auspex. At startups, he raised Seed through Series C capital and established partnerships worth more than $180 Million. He has extensive experience developing anti-infectives, as CEO of Sonescence, a Phase 2 stage drug delivery startup addressing skin and soft tissue infections including involving MRSA, as Senior Program Executive at Nektar where he set up an anti-infectives business unit and directed the flagship anti-infective product from inception through Phase 2, as CBO of Therashock developing a new theory and therapy for sepsis, and as an advisor or consultant for companies like Pulmatrix, Taris, and Lightline. Michael has prepared over 40 business plans including for the Nobel Prize winner Dr. Luc Montagnier and has driven product development from pre-clinical through Phase III/NDA. He obtained Orphan Drug and Fast Track designations for anti-infective products in the US and EU. Prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry, he was at the National Cancer Institute at NIH. He received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Holbein has over 35 years of experience: first as an infectious disease expert with Defense Canada, then Associate Professor in Medicine at McGill University, and finally, a technology developer commercializing life sciences biotechnologies in Canada, the EU and Australia. Bruce pioneered research on the roles of iron in bacterial infection and host defenses, designed DIBI, co-founded Chelation Partners, and initiated and managed the various collaborative proof-of–concept studies on DIBI.

Bruce is also an Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University. He has a Ph.D. in microbiology/ biochemistry from the University of Guelph and has more than 100 scientific publications and 25 industrial patents.

Mr. Drage was the original seed investor in Fe Pharmaceuticals and has invested multiple times since the founding. Following a career in M&A focused on selling to strategic buyers, he founded, grew, and successfully exited several businesses before becoming a full-time venture capitalist in 2005. Currently he does equity investing through Heroiq Capital where the primary criteria for investing is “Number of lives positively impacted”. Since 2015 he has also provided venture debt through Runway Finance Group. James is a graduate of INSEAD’s Master’s in Change program and also studied at Royal Roads and Dalhousie Universities.

His interest in Fe Pharmaceuticals came after his eldest daughter almost died from an antibiotic resistant septic shock infection. Thankfully she recovered but the experience showed him the great need for solutions in the areas of antimicrobial resistance, sepsis and others that Fe Pharma is working to solve.

Dr. Duliege is a senior executive with extensive experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. She is currently Chief Medical Officer for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network overseeing PanCAN’s Precision Promise℠ clinical trial. Previously she was the Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Rigel Pharmaceuticals, EVP and Chief of Strategic Development at ChemoCentryx, and VP then CMO and Head of Research and Clinical Development at Affymax. Under her leadership, her teams completed extensive development programs and obtained FDA approval of Rigel and Affymax’s lead products. Dr. Duliege also worked at Chiron and Genentech on various programs including an HIV vaccine and sepsis treatment. Prior to her career in the biopharmaceutical industry, Duliege was an epidemiologist with the National Institute of Science and Medical Research in Paris. Dr. Duliege received her MD degree from Paris Medical School.

She also holds a masters in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She continues to practice pediatrics as an Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Duliege serves on the board of CIRM, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and on boards of nonprofits dedicated to causes such as the prevention of HIV and improving access to healthcare in developing countries.

Dr. Nivaggioli is CEO of Avicena Group where she raised more than $160M NIH funding for neurodegenerative diseases (ALS, Huntington and Parkinson’s), moving the programs from Phase I to III and then successfully licensed the programs. She founded CN Partners, LLC, a private equity fund investing in a broad range of healthcare and high-tech companies. She was also CEO of Peninsula Skincare labs, a dermaceutical company and partnered the products with several overseas pharmaceutical companies and was CEO of QuRetino, a dermatology company that developed drugs for acne vulgaris. She started her career at Gillette and then Oral-B developing consumer products. She received her Ph.D. in Bioorganic Chemistry from University of Toronto and completed her postdoctoral research at MIT.

Dr. Patricia Beckmann joins the Chelation Partners Board as an independent director. Patricia’s career spans research, operations, law and venture capital. She is the Managing Director of BioStrategy, a management consulting firm focused on life science company development. Patricia spent most of her career at Immunex Corporation (now Amgen) in Research, Administration and Law. She is co-inventor of the drug Enbrel for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (peak annual sales ~$8B) and was awarded National Inventor of the Year in 2000 from the Intellectual Property Owners Association. She was a life science Investment Specialist at Vulcan Capital (deploying over $120M in various investment vehicles) and a member of the original strategy team establishing the $100M endowment to the Allen Institute for Brain Sciences in Seattle. She was founding Chief Scientific Officer at diagnostics company Homestead Clinical, funded by the venture-backed Accelerator Corp. Additionally, she was President of the Oregon Translational Research and Development Institute (OTRADI) where she developed an incubator model for university start-ups, created a fund for company projects and received the US Department of Commerce i6 Challenge Award. Further, she founded the Life Science Washington Institute, an organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneur development and was Managing Director of WINGS, an angel investment group dedicated to med-tech investing in the northwest.

Patricia earned her undergraduate degree at The Evergreen State College in biology, chemistry and art and her PhD in biochemistry and pharmacology from the University of Arizona, College of Medicine. She is a two-time Fulbright Fellowship recipient and a Kauffman Fellow in venture capital. She pursued postdoctoral studies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Sweden) and as an NRSA Fellow at the National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, MD). She has over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications and more than 40 issued U.S. Patents.