Daktari Announces Formation of Scientific Advisory Board

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 05, 2017 -- Daktari Diagnostics, a company focused on making “Anywhere. Care.™” a reality with its portable and ultrasensitive immunoassay-based CarePlatform™, today announced the formation of its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) comprised of global leaders in the diagnostic and biotechnology industries. The SAB will work closely with Daktari’s management team to advance the development of the Company’s rapid and clinically relevant point-of-care (POC) diagnostic solutions. 

“We are honored to welcome these luminaries in diagnostics research and development to our newly formed Scientific Advisory Board,” said Donald B. Hawthorne, President and CEO of Daktari. “The SAB shares our excitement about the potential of Daktari’s CarePlatform to revolutionize point-of-care testing. Their talents and experience will be invaluable as we develop products that enable patients to be linked to appropriate care, anywhere.”

The members of Daktari’s SAB include:

• Greg Hermanson: Greg Hermanson is the Chief Technology Officer and Principal at Aurora Microarray-Solutions, Inc., and President at Greg T. Hermanson, Inc., a bioscience consulting company. Mr. Hermanson has more than three decades of experience in the development of life science research and diagnostic products at companies including Thermo Fisher Scientific and Pierce Biotechnology. He specializes in bioconjugation and assay development.
• Stephen Lee, PhD: Dr. Lee previously served as a Chief Scientific Officer at OraSure, Inc. and Vice President of Research & Development at Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics. Dr. Lee has extensive experience in all areas of immunodiagnostic assay development, including POC devices, in areas of manufacturing and scale-up, verification and validation, regulatory submission, and product labeling and launch.
• Mihail Lungu, PhD:  Dr. Lungu previously served as a senior executive at Boehringer Mannheim (now Roche Diagnostics). Dr. Lungu has more than 30 years of research and development experience in electrochemical biosensors and batteries. He spent more than a decade at Boehringer Mannheim leading the development of electrochemistry-based in vitro diagnostic detection systems.
• Dominick Pucci, PhD: Dr. Pucci previously served as a Research & Development Director at Abbott Diagnostics, and has more than three decades of experience in diagnostics. He also held various prior roles in research and development, quality, and manufacturing at Abbott, including overseeing the development and launch of the TestPack product line, the opening of the first Abbott plant in Ireland, and the Hepatitis C Program.
• Robert Suva, PhD: Dr. Suva previously served as Divisional Vice President of Technology Futures at IDEXX Laboratories and Senior Scientist at SRI International. He has experience developing POC immunoassay, clinical chemistry and hematology diagnostic systems, as well as pharmaceutical formulations.
• Alan Thomson: Alan Thomson is the Technical Director at Relitect Ltd. Mr. Thomson has significant experience in the diagnostic industry in managing fundamental research, technical scouting, product launch and manufacturing, and on-market support for a number of currently available diagnostic products.
• Mehmet Toner, PhD: Dr. Toner is the Helen Andrus Benedict Professor of Surgery (Bioengineering) at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and is the founding director of the National Institutes of Health BioMEMS Resource Center. He is a pioneer in the development of clinical microfluidic tools and microelectromechanical systems with a broad range of applications in medicine and global health.             

About Daktari Diagnostics
Daktari Diagnostics, a privately held company based in Cambridge, Mass., is focused on developing ultrasensitive, point-of-care diagnostics that enable timely testing and access to healthcare so that patients around the world can be linked to appropriate care. Daktari’s immunoassay CarePlatform™ encompasses a proprietary diagnostic detection technology, a highly portable device, automated sample preparation with whole blood in a single-use disposable cartridge, and a wireless, cloud-based connectivity platform to allow seamless data management for enhanced clinical care. Daktari is initially developing three diagnostic products based on the CarePlatform™: a High-Sensitivity Cardiac Troponin (hs-cTnl) cardiac distress screening test, a Hepatitis C Virus Core Antigen (HCV-cAg) confirmatory test being developed in collaboration with Merck, and an HIV viral load monitoring test. For more information, visit www.daktaridx.com. 

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