Board of Directors

Since January 2019 has been CEO and a Director of Aruna Bio, an early stage neural exosome therapeutic company. He previously served as President and CEO of BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc. (“BDSI”) from January 2005 until January of 2018, a company he co-founded. While at BDSI he oversaw the FDA approval and commercialization of three products for pain and addiction medicine. Dr. Sirgo has over 35 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, involving clinical drug development, sales and marketing, business development and executive management. Dr. Sirgo spent 16 years in a variety of positions of increasing responsibility in both clinical development and marketing at Glaxo, Glaxo Wellcome, and GlaxoSmithKline, including Vice President of International OTC Development and Vice President of New Product Marketing. Dr. Sirgo was responsible for managing the development and FDA approval of Zantac 75 while at Glaxo Wellcome, among other accomplishments. From 1996 to 1999, Dr. Sirgo was Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc. (Nasdaq:PPDI), a leading contract service provider to the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Sirgo served on the Board of Directors and as Chairman of the Compensation Committee of Salix Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. (NASDAQ:SLXP), a specialty pharmaceutical company specializing in gastrointestinal products from 2008 until its sale to Valeant Pharmaceuticals in 2015. Dr. Sirgo is also Chairman of 9 Meters Pharma (Nasdaq:NMTR), a development stage gastrointestinal company, and Director of BDSI.

Ms. Catherine Coste has served as a Director of the Company since September 2020. Ms. Coste recently retired from Deloitte and Touche, where she was a senior partner and served as Deloitte’s Life Sciences Industry Executive Leader. She spent 32 years in both corporate and professional services positions leading global finance, internal audit and operations teams. During her career at Deloitte, Ms. Coste was directly involved with over 30 life science corporations, the majority of which were large-cap and medium-cap public corporations. Ms. Coste also has extensive public company Board experience, often attending multiple Board Committee meetings per month. Ms. Coste also has extensive experience in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, corporate risk analysis and management, cyber risk assessment, fraud prevention, IT systems analysis and upgrades, internal controls and corporate governance. Ms. Coste is a Certified Public Accountant.

Has served as a Director of the Company since April 2007. Since July 1, 2009, Dr. Emerson has served as Vice Chair for Clinical Programs and Chief of Clinical Pathology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California. From 1994 to 2009, Dr. Emerson was on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine School of Medicines where she served as Chief of Clinical Pathology and from 2000 to 2009, also served as the Vice Chair for Clinical Programs, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.