Management Team
Nobuyuki Ota PhD
Co-Founder, President & Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Ota is Co-Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of A-CUBE, INC. He also holds the post of Adjunct Professor at Tokyo University of Science.. Dr. Ota has a wide range of experience and knowledge of X-ray crystallography, NMR, and Molecular Dynamics Simulations.
Dr. Ota obtained his Ph.D. at Yale University (Dr. Axel Brunger's Lab), and his B.A. at Monmouth College, IL. Prior to co-founding A-CUBE, he completed a postdoctoral position and worked as a Researcher in Dr. David Agard's Lab of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California at San Francisco. He had been actively involved in projects on ligand recognition by proteins such as alpha-lytic protease and estrogen receptors. In particular, he was interested in investigating the mechanisms of agonism and antagonism for estrogen receptors using multidisciplinary methods. For drug design studies, Dr. Ota developed a novel method of a prediction for a complex of a flexible ligand in a flexible binding pocket named multi-conformation simulated annealing pseudo-crystallographic refinement (MCSA-PCR). This program package has been used to design drugs by a variety of pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore, he has been developing a novel simulation method for studying an intra-molecular signaling pathway.
Co-Founder, President & Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Ota is Co-Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of A-CUBE, INC. He also holds the post of Adjunct Professor at Tokyo University of Science.. Dr. Ota has a wide range of experience and knowledge of X-ray crystallography, NMR, and Molecular Dynamics Simulations.
Dr. Ota obtained his Ph.D. at Yale University (Dr. Axel Brunger's Lab), and his B.A. at Monmouth College, IL. Prior to co-founding A-CUBE, he completed a postdoctoral position and worked as a Researcher in Dr. David Agard's Lab of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California at San Francisco. He had been actively involved in projects on ligand recognition by proteins such as alpha-lytic protease and estrogen receptors. In particular, he was interested in investigating the mechanisms of agonism and antagonism for estrogen receptors using multidisciplinary methods. For drug design studies, Dr. Ota developed a novel method of a prediction for a complex of a flexible ligand in a flexible binding pocket named multi-conformation simulated annealing pseudo-crystallographic refinement (MCSA-PCR). This program package has been used to design drugs by a variety of pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore, he has been developing a novel simulation method for studying an intra-molecular signaling pathway.
Stefan Ryser PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Stefan Ryser is CEO since November 2011 and is also a Managing Partner in a biotech consulting firm which he founded with his partners from previous biotech venture capital funds. He is an experienced executive who held various positions in a large pharmaceutical (Roche) and a small biotech (Telik) company. As General Partner he raised and successfully co-managed two consecutive biotech venture capital funds with a combined total of more than $270 million under management (International Biomedicine Management Partners and Bear Stearns Health Inoventures). He served on Boards of Directors of eight public and private companies (Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Entelos, Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, Telik, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Cytokinetics, Raven Biotechnologies, Tolerx), and, in addition, of a non-profit research organization that focuses on third world diseases, such as malaria. He was Chief of Staff in R&D at Roche and during his career Dr. Ryser's R&D expertise focused on the integration of new technologies in the R&D process, increased productivity of R&D, and on therapeutic areas with major unmet medical needs such as oncology, bacterial and viral infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases, such as type 1 diabetes.
Chief Executive Officer
Stefan Ryser is CEO since November 2011 and is also a Managing Partner in a biotech consulting firm which he founded with his partners from previous biotech venture capital funds. He is an experienced executive who held various positions in a large pharmaceutical (Roche) and a small biotech (Telik) company. As General Partner he raised and successfully co-managed two consecutive biotech venture capital funds with a combined total of more than $270 million under management (International Biomedicine Management Partners and Bear Stearns Health Inoventures). He served on Boards of Directors of eight public and private companies (Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Entelos, Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, Telik, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Cytokinetics, Raven Biotechnologies, Tolerx), and, in addition, of a non-profit research organization that focuses on third world diseases, such as malaria. He was Chief of Staff in R&D at Roche and during his career Dr. Ryser's R&D expertise focused on the integration of new technologies in the R&D process, increased productivity of R&D, and on therapeutic areas with major unmet medical needs such as oncology, bacterial and viral infectious diseases, and autoimmune diseases, such as type 1 diabetes.
Reyna Simon PhD
Preclinical R&D
Broad industry experience in research and preclinical development, Limerick BioPharma, Telik, IntraBiotics, MetaXen, Gryphon Sciences, and Chiron
Preclinical R&D
Broad industry experience in research and preclinical development, Limerick BioPharma, Telik, IntraBiotics, MetaXen, Gryphon Sciences, and Chiron
Mark Johnson, PhD
Preclinical R&D
Founder Jovesis, VP Dey/Mylan, VP Discovery Laboratories, Corixa, MIT
Preclinical R&D
Founder Jovesis, VP Dey/Mylan, VP Discovery Laboratories, Corixa, MIT
Carolina Dallett MSc
Bioinformation Scientist
Carolina is a University of California graduate with bachelors and masters degrees in microbiology with her graduate work in a computer-science laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Kimmen Sjolander. She uses Hidden Markov Models to create sequence alignments for comparative analysis of genes. Carolina worked as the primary biologist in collaboration with a team of programmers, statisticians and computer scientists simulating biology intuition into algorithms. Her competencies include writing algorithms, perform complex sequence alignments, create datasets, overlay experimental data in sequence alignments and validation of algorithms analysis pipelines. Prior to joining A-cube, Carolina worked at Affymetrix as a Bioinformatics engineer where she worked with the Wellcome Trust on a major Genome Wide Association collaboration.
Carolina approaches biology using a multi-disciplinary approach.
Bioinformation Scientist
Carolina is a University of California graduate with bachelors and masters degrees in microbiology with her graduate work in a computer-science laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Kimmen Sjolander. She uses Hidden Markov Models to create sequence alignments for comparative analysis of genes. Carolina worked as the primary biologist in collaboration with a team of programmers, statisticians and computer scientists simulating biology intuition into algorithms. Her competencies include writing algorithms, perform complex sequence alignments, create datasets, overlay experimental data in sequence alignments and validation of algorithms analysis pipelines. Prior to joining A-cube, Carolina worked at Affymetrix as a Bioinformatics engineer where she worked with the Wellcome Trust on a major Genome Wide Association collaboration.
Carolina approaches biology using a multi-disciplinary approach.
Vanisree Velamoor, PhD
IP
MaxVal IP firm, headed more than 50 IP professionals, Vienna University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
IP
MaxVal IP firm, headed more than 50 IP professionals, Vienna University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Tony Difede
CFO
Former CFO of high tech and biotech companies, Senior Manager at Ernst & Young, KPMG
CFO
Former CFO of high tech and biotech companies, Senior Manager at Ernst & Young, KPMG
Santhosh Vadilvelu, PhD
Business Development and IP
Canaan Partners, Heller Ehrman and Forest Laboratories, IMP, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. BOD observer in private companies
Business Development and IP
Canaan Partners, Heller Ehrman and Forest Laboratories, IMP, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. BOD observer in private companies
Nigel Ten Fleming PhD
Executive Chairman
Dr. Fleming obtained his PhD from Cambridge University in Clinical Biochemistry, and his BA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar. He completed his postdoctoral research at Boston University school of Medicine (Diabetes), and then at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he taught for a number of years, becoming a Lecturer at the medical school and Tutor at Harvard College. He founded Athena Diagnostics (formerly Genica Pharmaceuticals), the largest genetic testing company in the US, which was sold in 2006 for $283 M. He worked at Athena Neuroscience in business development where he licensed Carbatrol ($80 M/yr) and the Lidoderm Patch (later divested, but now $900 M/yr). He has also founded and served as Chairman, G2B Pharma, and Minerva Healthcare, both drug reformulation companies. He has been an independent board member of companies that include: Exemplar (a subsidiary of Transgenic sciences Inc, a Nasdaq company); Impax Laboratories ( for 11 years), a mid-sized specialty pharmaceutical company (Nasdaq IPXL); The Institute of OneWorld Health (the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company); Genmedica Therapeutics, a diabetes therapeutics company; and been involved in a number of other biotech companies. He is the inventor on a number of patents and provisional applications.
Executive Chairman
Dr. Fleming obtained his PhD from Cambridge University in Clinical Biochemistry, and his BA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar. He completed his postdoctoral research at Boston University school of Medicine (Diabetes), and then at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he taught for a number of years, becoming a Lecturer at the medical school and Tutor at Harvard College. He founded Athena Diagnostics (formerly Genica Pharmaceuticals), the largest genetic testing company in the US, which was sold in 2006 for $283 M. He worked at Athena Neuroscience in business development where he licensed Carbatrol ($80 M/yr) and the Lidoderm Patch (later divested, but now $900 M/yr). He has also founded and served as Chairman, G2B Pharma, and Minerva Healthcare, both drug reformulation companies. He has been an independent board member of companies that include: Exemplar (a subsidiary of Transgenic sciences Inc, a Nasdaq company); Impax Laboratories ( for 11 years), a mid-sized specialty pharmaceutical company (Nasdaq IPXL); The Institute of OneWorld Health (the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company); Genmedica Therapeutics, a diabetes therapeutics company; and been involved in a number of other biotech companies. He is the inventor on a number of patents and provisional applications.