Message From Our Founder
I am a California licensed physician, known for my track record in clinical research that has changed perioperative clinical care for patients. However, my sense of accomplishments faded when cancer struck home. First, my mother lost her painful fight to ovarian cancer. And seeing this, my father declined anti-cancer therapy, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Only then, I realized that – despite of significant advances in genomic testing – for most cancer patients the most effective treatment is still unknown.
Thus, to find better ways to predict the most effective therapy for a patient, I left the clinical department at UCSF, got an MBA from Wharton, became a life-science impact investor, and started SageMedic. Thanks to the support of many investors and a great team, we’re ready to pursue clinical calibration and validation studies and to collaborate with other companies developing new drugs for cancer patients.
If making a huge difference intrigues you, please reach out to join us as an impact investor, collaborator, scientist, advisor, consultant, or patient advocate, or just to learn more.
Management, Board, and Advisors
Chris Apfel, MD, PhD, MBA
Founder, CEO, & Chairman of the Board
California-licensed physician, clinical researcher with 100+ publications including NEJM, impact investor, board member and advisor to over a dozen of life science startups. MD/PhD from the University of Giessen, Germany, and MBA from Wharton, U Penn.
Brigitte Apfel, MD
Co-Founder and Treasurer
Pulmonologist with significant experience in the treatment of lung cancer, UCSF-trained psychiatrist in private practice. MD from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Lynda Chin, MD
Board Director
Founder & CEO of Apricity Health. Previously Founding Chair of the Department of Genomic Medicine at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Chief Innovation Officer of the University of Texas System. Professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School and member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Dr. Kali Freeman, MD
CLIA Lab Director
Dr. Freeman, MD, a board-certified pathologist, oversees quality assurance, compliance and all other regulatory requirements of our CLIA laboratory. She brings extensive experience as a CLIA laboratory director and training in both anatomic and clinical pathology (Univ of Chicago and UC Davis). She received her BA from Drake University and her MD from the Ohio State University.
John Fruehauf, MD, PhD
Scientific Advisor
Professor of Clinical Medicine and Director of Clinical Pharmacology and Developmental Therapeutics, Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Research Center, Univ of California, Irvine. Extensive track record of governmental and industry grants and cancer related patents. Previously, chemotherapy resistance research at the NCI, Chief Scientific Officer at Oncotech, developer of the extreme drug resistance assay. MD/PhD from Rush University.
Eyal Granit, BSc
Board Observer
Eyal is an investor of SAGE and is our first Board Observer. He is the Founder and CEO of Escapade Ventures, Co-founder and Managing Member of Codex3, and an angel investor. Eyal is a veteran of the tech industry with 20 years of wide-ranging experience working on avionics and air traffic control systems, virtual machines, distributed databases and file systems, cloud environments, networks, and consumer products. Eyal holds a BSc in Computer Science and a BSc in Mathematics from Technion.
Benjamin Krantz, MD, MBA
Scientific Advisor
Benjamin Krantz, MD, MBA, advises us on clinical trial design and health economics. He is an Assistant Professor at the NYU Langone Medical Center and CEO of Advanced Proteome Therapeutics Corp. He received his BA from the Univ of Pennsylvania and his MD and MBA from Tufts University.
Brian Leyland-Jones, MD, PhD
Scientific Advisor
Chief Medical Officer and Scientific Advisory Board Member for the National Foundation for Cancer Research and Chief Scientific Officer of The Darwin Foundation. Dr. Leyland-Jones held leadership positions at Cornell, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Emory University, and the NCI, and helped develop leading drugs for breast cancer (platinum drugs), and targeted therapies trastuzumab (Herceptin®) and bevacizumab (Avastin®).
Amanda Natalizio, PhD
CLIA Advisor
Ricardo Parker, PhD
Director of Cancer Research
Ricardo directs our cancer research activities leveraging his experience at the NCI and Director of the CLIA lab at Oncotech, who developed the extreme drug resistance assay. Ricardo is also a Professor and Director of the BS Program at the National University. He holds a PhD in Microbiology from Oregon State University and MS in Biology at Tennessee State.
Richard Serbin, JD
IP and Strategy Advisor
Richard advises SAGE on IP, Strategy, and Investor Relations, leveraging his experience as an FDA regulatory attorney, consultant and patent attorney in healthcare. Previously, Richard was Chief FDA Counsel for Revlon. Furthermore, at Johnson & Johnson he as both Chief FDA Counsel and VP of Corp Development. Richard holds Board Director positions in several life science companies. He holds a B. Pharmacy from Rutgers University; a J.D. from Seton Hall Law School; and a Master’s in Trade Regulations and Law from NYU.
William Werkmeister, MPA, MBA
Board Director
Bill is a Founding Partner of the International Cancer Impact Fund and serves on the Advisory Board of the National Foundation for Cancer Research. Bill holds a BS from Cornell, an MPA from Harvard, and an MBA from Yale.