a revolutionary treatment paradigm for tumors in bone
Management Team
Dr. Harry B. Skinner, M.D., Ph.D.
CEO and Co-Founder
Dr. Skinner is CEO and a co-inventor of radioactive bone cement and has been a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in the University of California system for 25 years. Dr. Skinner is an orthopaedic surgeon and a materials scientist and has well over 100 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Skinner has had experience with two start-ups, Norian (manufacturer of an injectable bone substitute that was eventually sold to Synthes, Inc.) and Kyphon (developer of kyphoplasty, sold to Medtronic for $4.2B). He has served as a panel member for the FDA, evaluating various orthopaedic devices. Dr. Skinner brings his knowledge of the orthopaedic market, orthopaedic surgery, materials science, and regulatory issues to Bone-Rad Therapeutics.
John S. Wimer
Chief Operating Officer, Member of the Board
Mr. Wimer has been an operations leader in the medical device companies for over 30 years in both the public and private sectors, primarily in start-ups. He has been involved in bone cements and orthopedics for over 25 years at companies such as Parallax Medical, Norian, Calcitec and for the last several years Bone-Rad Therapeutics. He has led all aspects of operations including R&D, Manufacturing, Logistics, Regulatory and Quality.
Dr. Sean M. Tutton, M.D. FSIR
Medical Advisory Board Member
Dr. Tutton is Professor and Director of the Division of Vascular & Interventional Radiology at the University of California San Diego with more than 20 years of Vascular and Interventional Radiology experience. He has presented and published numerous abstracts, articles and book chapters, and is a Fellow of the Society of Interventional Radiology and a member of the North American Spine Society.
Dr. Tutton received his degree from the UMDNJ-New Jersey School of Medicine and completed his residency and fellowship in Interventional Radiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. After eight years on the Northwestern University faculty at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Dr. Tutton moved to the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2005, and now leads the Division of Vascular & Interventional Radiology. He is a Professor of Radiology, Surgery, and, most recently, Palliative Medicine.
Dr. Tutton has a clinical and research interest in the curative and palliative treatments of spine and musculoskeletal cancers and their related complications, namely pain and fractures. He is a funded researcher and has participated in numerous clinical trials, most recently as the international Principle Investigator of a prospective randomized 300-patient trial in the minimally invasive treatment of vertebral fractures, securing FDA approval for a novel augmentation device. Improving the outcomes in cancer patients and relief of pain from vertebral and pelvic fractures through image-guided minimally invasive therapies has been his passion for the last 15 years.
Dr. Joyce H. Keyak, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
Dr. Keyak is a co-inventor of radioactive bone cement and has been the driving force for R&D of products and procedures related to internal radiation therapy, i.e. “brachytherapy”, for bone. Dr. Keyak secured $760,000 from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program to develop devices and procedures for combining brachytherapy with a bone-strengthening procedure for the spine, vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty. Dr. Keyak has over 25 years experience as Professor of Radiological Sciences, Orthopaedic Surgery, Biomedical Engineering, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California at Irvine (UCI). She heads the Bone Biomechanics Laboratory at UCI and is an expert on the structure and mechanics of bone. Dr. Keyak has over 70 peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Tadashi S. Kaneko, Ph.D.
Chief Financial Officer, Secretary, and Co-Founder
Dr. Kaneko is a mechanical engineer, biomedical engineer, and machinist who has worked with Dr. Keyak since April 2000. He has experience designing and fabricating equipment for orthopaedic research and is familiar with the use of bone cement to repair bone with tumors. Dr. Kaneko has 12 peer-reviewed publications and abstracts and completed his doctoral study in Biomedical Engineering at the University of California at Irvine. A significant portion of Dr. Kaneko’s doctoral dissertation involved the development and evaluation of a radiation transport modeling method for predicting dose distributions in vertebrae injected with radioactive bone cement.
Dr. Varun Sehgal, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
Dr. Sehgal is a medical physicist with experience developing brachytherapy techniques. Dr. Sehgal was responsible for the initial “proof of concept” that demonstrated feasibility of using radioactive bone cement to treat bone. He is a Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), is board certified in Therapeutic Radiological Physics by the American Board of Radiology, and is regularly involved in patient treatment at UCI. He also serves on the Special Brachytherapy Modalities Working Group of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM). Dr. Sehgal oversees the radiation aspects of the business, such as product development, dosing, radiation shielding, etc. Dr. Sehgal has 20 publications/presentations at national meetings and symposiums for medical physics and radiation oncology.