A Collective Vision For Better Cancer Therapy
The SageMedic Story
SageMedic Corp. was founded by Dr. Chris Apfel and his wife Dr. Brigitte Apfel, both California licensed physicians. While Dr. C. Apfel’s clinical research work in preoperative care has changed clinical practice worldwide, he was disappointed to see that even today cancer treatment has still a long way to go. First, his mother lost her battle to painful ovarian cancer. While watching her ordeal, his father declined anti-cancer therapy when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and subsequently succumbed to the disease.
This experience drove him to find more effective therapies for cancer patients. He left the clinical department at University of California, San Francisco, received an MBA from Wharton to compliment his scientific education. He also became a life science impact investor and subsequently, the SAGE Oncotest™ was born.
SageMedic is now a registered California lab that is fully accredited in accordance with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) by the Commission on Office Laboratory Accreditation (COLA) and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Now SAGE can begin commercializing the Oncotest™ to generate early revenue and clinical case studies.
If making a huge difference intrigues you, please reach out to join us as an impact investor, collaborator, scientist, advisor, consultant, patient advocate, or just to learn more.
Leadership
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.
John Fruehauf, MD, PhD
Acting Chief Medical Officer
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.
Board
Arra Yerganian, BSc
Board Member
Arra Yerganian, Board Member and Head of Marketing leads our sales and marketing initiatives. Arra has been a Chief Marketing Officer of several publicly traded companies, including One Medical and Sutter Health and his mission is to help leaders be bold and grow to make a tangible impact for our society. Arra is also on the Board of various non-profits, including the Dean’s Advisory Board for the Boston School of Public Health.
William Werkmeister, MPA, MBA
Board Member
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.
Eyal Granit, BSc
Board Member
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.
Other Team Members
Amanda Natalizio, PhD
CLIA Advisor
Dr. Natalizo provides SageMedic with guidance to ensure compliance with Clinical Laboratory Amendments (CLIA) regulations to help meet all regulatory requirements and optimize the operational processes. She serves as lab director for several clinical diagnostic labs and is the founder of Molecular Mom and Helix Molecular Solutions LLC. Dr. Natalizo holds a PhD in Genetics & Molecular Biology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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.
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®).