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Developed multiple novel immunoassays and immunology products for start-up biotechnology company. Founding Director, Research and Development for privately held company in San Diego.

Oversaw innovation and entrepreneurship at Mitchell Cancer Institute resulting in 5 spin-out biotechnology companies in the area of cancer diagnostics, cancer therapeutics, cancer biomarkers.

Served on technical advisory boards for angel investors, and State-based innovation councils. Provided due diligence reports to equity investors on research-based and clinical devices for cancer detection, diagnosis, and patient stratification.

Expert has 15+ years' experience in the pre-clinical development use of pro-apoptotic methods for the treatment of cancer including gene therapy, cross-linking of pro-apoptotic surface molecules, and combination therapies. She holds 4 patents in this area and has been co-investigator on clinical trials using pro-apoptotic therapy for the treatment of both hematopoietic and non-hematopoietic tumors. She has also been involved in the design and implementation of biomarker studies correlating apoptotic induction and therapeutic outcome.

Expert has 15+ years' experience in pre-clinical development and clinical translation of therapeutics for the treatment of human cancers including lung cancer, head and neck cancers, melanoma, glioma, and non-melanoma skin cancers. Biological therapies include local, intrathecal, and systemic cytokine administration, ex vivo activation of lymphocytes, small molecules, and combination modalities. Her translational research using adenoviral p53-mediated delivery in tumors provided the groundwork for clinical trials in non-small cell lung cancer, multiple patents, and a spin-out company that became publicly traded on the NASDAQ (Introgen Therapeutics). She has collaborated in multiple Phase I, II, and III clinical trials using AdvexinTM and designed and implemented assays supporting phase I and II clinical trials (monitoring and pre-clinical development) and was an advisory board member of the Keck Gene Therapy Center at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Expert has 20+ years' experience in cancer immunology, cancer biology, and cancer research spanning the areas of basic tumor biology, metastasis, apoptosis, skin cancer development, lung cancer therapeutics, gene therapy, vector payload design, cytokine biology, lymphocyte activation, antigen presentation, and immune suppression. She has been actively involved in cancer stem cell isolation and characterization, biomarker discovery for the early detection of ovarian and pancreatic cancer, and drug discovery efforts over the last decade.

Expert has written INDs and served as co-investigator on a number of clinical trials for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma, glioma, melanoma, head and neck cancer, and non-small cell lung cancer. She holds 4 patents related to the induction of apoptosis for the treatment of a variety of human cancers. She has collaborated in multiple Phase I, II, and III clinical trials using AdvexinTM and designed and implemented assays supporting phase I and II clinical trials (monitoring and pre-clinical development) and was an advisory board member of the Keck Gene Therapy Center at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Expert was co-investigator on a multi-institutional PO1 grant aimed at the development of novel pro-apoptotic clinical therapies for non-small cell lung cancer. She also has experience in the design of biomarker studies for non-small cell lung cancer clinical trials.She has served as the head of translational sciences for the Mitchell Cancer Institute for the past 8 years.

Expert is designated as a "Skin Cancer Expert" by the American Cancer Society. She has 10+ years of experience in UV-induced carcinogenesis in animal models and her work in this area has been the subject of national and international news reports.Expert has experience in animal models for primary and metastatic melanoma. In addition, she has been co-investigator on a number of clinical trials for the treatment of melanoma using biological therapy and experience with biomarker design in this therapeutic setting.

Expert consulted with a mid-sized biopharmaceutical company on intellectual property strategy and proof-of-principle experiments necessary to advance a pre-clinical cancer therapeutic into clinical development.Expert consulted with a major research University on the development of a new medical school including capital and infrastructure, research hiring and infrastructure, and core laboratory development.Expert consulted with a start-up company on the development of a cancer diagnostic for ovarian cancer.Expert consulted with a start-up company on clinical trial design, collection, and assay development for a cancer diagnostic for pancreatic cancer.Expert consulted with equity investors on market differentiation and barriers to market entry for a novel research assay device,