Krishnan Chakravarthy, M.D., Ph.D.
Founding Chairman & CEO
Dr. Chakravarthy is an anesthesiologist who specializes in multi-modal pain management. He completed fellowship training in pain management at Harvard Medical School and at Massachusetts General Hospital, and residency training in anesthesiology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Chakravarthy earned his medical and doctorate degree from the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, and Affiliate Professor in the Department of Nanoengineering, Dr. Chakravarthy instructs medical students, residents and fellows at UC San Diego School of Medicine, in addition to running his own laboratory. His research interests include incorporating new technology into advancing pain care. This includes advancing the field of neuromodulation as well as using nanotechnology to develop new drug delivery and point-of-care device platforms to manage chronic pain. His research has been featured in national and international venues and has been published in top journals, including Anesthesiology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Pain.
Dr. Chakravarthy currently serves on the editorial board of several national and international peer-reviewed journals, and committees on organizations such as the International Neuromodulation Society, and American Society of Pain and Neuroscience. An entrepreneur, Dr. Chakravarthy is a founder of several biotechnology startup companies focusing on applications of nanotechnology in the pain space, and novel small molecule therapeutic development to advance pain care.
Ting Shen, M.B.A.
COO & Co-Founder
Ms. Shen has 12+ years working as a management consultant predominantly working for Ernst & Young (EY) and IBM across multiple industries such as finance, banking, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, utilities, high-tech, retail and consumer goods. As part of EY, she was a Senior Manager/Director in their Business Advisory Practices in San Francisco and New York. Some of her key clients were Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb. In addition to serving clients as a strategy consultant, she was responsible for building and running EY’s Social Media Lab, which focused on gathering and analyzing social media and digital data to provide clients with key insights for product development, competitive intelligence, and customer care/support for clients.
Ms. Shen has an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.A. in Neuroscience from Colorado College. Before attending business school, she worked as a United Nations/Peace Corp Volunteer with the World Food Program conducting food security assessments in the Ivory Coast, and with the World Bank to develop the micro-finance department for one of the top five banks in Kenya.
Graham Beaton, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder
Dr. Beaton has extensive expertise, leadership, and motivation necessary to successfully carry out the mission required for a start-up pharmaceutical company. He has over 22 years of experience in industrial science, the past 14 years of which have been in the successful management of research teams. He brings significant experience in all aspects of drug discovery, including medicinal chemistry, program management, and organic synthesis.
Prior to this endeavor, Dr. Beaton led research teams that identified multiple development candidates in H1-antihistamine and GnRH antagonist programs. The antihistamine program completed selection of the clinical candidate and the identification of a backup using a novel Phase 0 strategy. Following this, Dr. Beaton managed the discovery and pre-clinical selection of a series of novel small-molecule GnRH antagonists as backup to the current clinical compound Elagolix. Prior to joining Neurocrine, he was at CombiChem Inc. and DuPont pharmaceuticals, where he managed discovery efforts leading to the identification of lead molecules for pre-clinical proof of concept in 3 programs in cardiovascular, metabolic, and oncology disease areas. Prior to joining CombiChem, Dr. Beaton was a Research Scientist at Amgen.
Dr. Beaton did his postdoctoral work in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from The University of Birmingham in the UK. Dr. Beaton participates in several National Institutes of Health grant review panels to evaluate novel, early-stage compounds as viable therapeutics for IND filing.
Fabio Tucci, Ph.D.
Senior Director of Business Development & Co-Founder
Dr. Tucci is a drug discovery and development professional with close to 25 years experience in research and development. He currently serves as Chief Operating Officer at Epigen Biosciences in San Diego, a company he helped establish and co-found. Prior to Epigen, he successfully led programs in inflammation and metabolic diseases at Tanabe Research Laboratories, which were eventually transferred to Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation. At Neurocrine Biosciences, he played an integral part in the team that discovered Elagolix (Orilissa®), a potent small-molecule GnRH antagonist that has recently been approved by the FDA for the treatment of endometriosis. He earned his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) and had postdoctoral stints at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA
Satheesh Ravula, Ph.D.
Chief Business Officer & Co-Founder
Dr. Ravula is highly motivated to be part of a start-up pharmaceutical company with a mission to discover treatments for unmet medical needs. He serves as Chief Business Officer for Epigen and in his current role he is involved in medicinal chemistry, project management, business development, and corporate governance. Dr. Ravula has the necessary medicinal chemistry experience in various drug discovery programs of GPCRs, ion channels, and kinase inhibitors. Dr. Ravula served as a key medicinal chemist at Califia Bio and Neurocrine Biosciences for lead generation and lead optimization in various therapeutic areas. Dr. Ravula held a postdoctoral position at West Virginia University where he was involved in development of a palladium catalyzed glycosylation reaction for the de novo synthesis of oligosaccharides from achiral starting materials. He received his doctoral degree from Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) on stereoselective total synthesis of artemisinin and development of novel synthetic methodologies. During his research career, he has been inventor in patents/patent applications and authored/co-authored 20+ publications in peer-reviewed journals.
