PANEL 4 • 2:10 – 2:55pm
Unveiling Tomorrow’s Solutions
Robert Bhisitkul, MD, PhD is a retina specialist at UCSF, combining patient care and surgery, teaching, and research work on novel treatments for chronic eye diseases, including clinical trials and translational laboratory studies. As a co-founder of Oculinea, he is advancing a development program for novel ocular drug delivery technologies. Dr. Bhisitkul serves as a medical advisor to companies in clinical development with early-stage therapeutics, and is on scientific advisory boards for pharma companies in the ophthalmology space.
Dr. Chung was appointed Chief Medical Officer of SparingVision in February 2021. In his role, he leads the clinical development and research into SPVN06, SparingVision’s flagship development asset, and is responsible for the clinical development of current and future pipeline products. Dr. Chung also leads the education of the medical community and patient advocacy.
Prior to joining SparingVision as CMO, Dr. Chung led the global medical strategy for ophthalmology at Spark Therapeutics, a leading rare disease gene therapy company and a member of the Roche Group. He played a pivotal role in the clinical development and approval of Luxturna™, the first gene therapy to be approved in the US for a genetic disease. During his time at Spark he served as the inherited retinal disease and ophthalmology expert across various company divisions and worked in medical affairs, clinical development and patient advocacy.
Mr. Wesley Jonse is the technical Co-Founder of Vonova with over 10 years of experience in both small entrepreneurial and Fortune 500 companies in the medical device industry. He is also a UCLA Biodesign fellow and seasoned engineer who has successfully led and managed the technical teams for 11 different electrophysiology devices at Medtronic and Acutus Medical. He has a Masters Degree in Medical Device Engineering from UCSD and an MBA from UCLA.
Passionate about driving change, Mr. Jones has dedicated his career to solving unmet clinical needs through the application of minimally invasive technologies.
Dr. Reyes is a biophysicist and entrepreneur with a passion for creating solutions to improve our health, environment and economic sustainability.
He has founded two companies focused on developing therapeutics to address serious medical needs as well as a tech company focused on connecting people and companies to socially conscious data solutions. His first company Eclipse Therapeutics, a City Hill-backed Biogen spinout focusing on cancer stem cell targeting therapeutics, resulted in a successful acquisition in 18 months.
Tyler Mizenko is the VP of Relationships and Business Development at Prendio where he drives the strategy and execution of the company’s global sales efforts along with alliances and partnerships. Tyler was instrumental in building and scaling Prendio’s sales strategy and execution, along with providing support to the executive leadership team. He has been a key player in negotiating and executing partnerships with the top global life science suppliers and the various Venture Capital firms that we have the privilege of working with today.
Prior to joining Prendio, Tyler held various roles at BioProcure working within the Procurement, Accounting, and Customer Success teams and helping to build the initial framework of their customer support team. Before joining the BioProcure team, Tyler was a professional baseball player for the San Francisco Giants.
