Q Therapeutics Management Team

Dr. Eppstein has over 28 years experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, with the last 18 in entrepreneurial roles.  She was founding CEO of Altea Therapeutics, a venture-backed company developing products for pain and diabetes.  Previously, she was Vice President of Corporate Development at TheraTech and was involved with the IPO, partnering, achieving profitability and subsequent sale of the company; earlier she was Director of Corporate Development and Head of Biochemistry, Virology and Tumor Biology at Syntex (now Roche).  Dr. Eppstein received a B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Grinnell College, a Ph.D. with honors in biochemistry from the University of Arkansas, and conducted research in virology and cell biology as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at University of California at Santa Barbara.

Steven J. Borst
Vice President of Finance and Corporate Development

 

Mr. Borst has 26 years of operational and venture capital experience, most recently as a General Partner of Utah Ventures, an early stage healthcare and information technology fund in Salt Lake City.  He has co-founded three other Salt Lake biotech companies.  He was previously associated with Frontenac Company and Capital Health Venture Partners, two Chicago-based venture funds, and served in senior executive management positions with two venture-backed healthcare portfolio companies, one of which he co-founded.  Mr. Borst has a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Vicki Farrar, Esq
Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Intellectual Property

 

Ms. Farrar is an attorney who has been engaged in private practice since 1977.  For over 15 years her practice has focused primarily on intellectual property litigation and counseling.  She began her career in private practice at Covington & Burling, in Washington, D.C., specializing in food and drug law.  Prior to moving her practice to Utah in 1995, Ms. Farrar was a partner in the Palo Alto office of Morrison & Foerester.  Previously she was a partner at Holme Roberts & Owen in Denver and of-counsel to Irell & Manella in Menlo Park.  She received a law degree from Wayne State University in Detroit, where she graduated summa cum laude, and a B.A. from American University in Washington, D.C., graduating summa cum laude.  Ms Farrar previously served as Vice President of Legal, Intellectual Property and Regulatory Affairs at Cognetix in Salt Lake City, developing CNS products.

James T. Campanelli, Ph.D.
Senior Director of Research and Development

 

Dr. Campanelli received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences, all from Stanford University.  Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois.  Dr. Campanelli heads up the cell isolation and purification activities at Q Therapeutics.

 

 

 

 

 

Mahendra Rao, MD, Ph.D.
Scientific Co-Founder, Chief Scientific Consultant

 

Dr. Rao is a world leader in glial stem cell biology and serves as Chief Scientific Consultant.  Dr. Rao received his M.D. from Bombay University in India, his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, and did his postdoctoral studies at Case Western Reserve University.  From 1994 to May 2001, he was a professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine, where his research focused on stem cells of the central nervous system.  Dr. Rao served as stem cell section chief in the Laboratory of Neuroscience at NIH's National Institute of Aging until October 2005, and joined Invitrogen as head of stem cell research in 2006.  He was also a member of the Biological Response Modifiers Committee (BRMC) that plays an advisory role to the FDA on cell-based therapies.  Dr. Rao currently is Vice President of Stem Cell Research at Invitrogen, Corp.