About Us
Encellin is determined to help patients with chronic unmet clinical needs.
Encellin was founded based on the technology developed in the lab of Dr. Tejal Desai at the University of California in San Francisco. Encellin is a team of dedicated experts focused on the investigation and advancement of next generation therapies. We are determined to help patients with chronic unmet clinical needs.
Our Values
At Encellin we care deeply.
Integrity — do the right thing.
We are focused on on safety.
Passion – care deeply.
We care deeply about the patient.
Courage to be the change.
We are changing health care.
Leadership Team
Crystal Nyitray, PhD
CEO, Founder, Inventor
UCSF, Sanofi, YCombinator
Grace Wei, PhD
COO, Founder
U. Chicago, Max Planck, UCSF, YCombinator
Strategic ADvisors
Ronald Martell
Strategic Advisor, Founder
CEO Jasper Therapeutics
Mr. Martell is a serial biopharmaceutical entrepreneur and a founder of multiple biopharmaceutical companies, and has served on the boards of several others. He was most recently Founder and Executive Chairman of Indapta and Chief Executive Officer at Achieve Life Sciences, where he led the merger of the company with Oncogenex. Prior to that, he held similar roles at Sevion, NeurogesX and Poniard Pharmaceuticals. Earlier in his career Mr. Martell served as Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations at ImClone Systems, where he was instrumental in the deals with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck KGaA and built ImClone Systems' worldwide commercial operations and field sales force to market and commercialize Erbitux®. Before joining ImClone Systems, Mr. Martell worked for more than 10 years at Genentech in a variety of leadership positions, the last of which was Group Manager, Oncology. At Genentech, he was responsible for building the company's oncology franchise, including the launch of Herceptin® for metastatic HER-2 positive breast cancer and Rituxan® for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Mr. Martell began his career at Roche Pharmaceuticals.
Tejal Desai, PhD
Technology Expert, Founder
UCSF, BioE Chair
Dr. Tejal Desai is the Professor and Chair, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences; Inaugural Director, Health Innovations Via Engineering Initiative (HIVE), UCSF. Dr. Desai’s research brings together advanced micro and nanotechnologies, fundamental insight into cellular behavior in engineered environments, and novel pharmacologic delivery approaches to address disease treatment and clinical translation. Currently, her laboratory focuses on four highly interdisciplinary directions: 1. Hierarchical devices for enhanced cellular adhesion and paracellular drug transport; 2. Injectable and flexible nanoporous devices for rate-controlled long-term release of therapeutics; 3. Nanostructured coatings and scaffolds for pro-healing implants and in vivo modulation of fibrosis, and 4. Cell-based delivery platforms for autoimmune disease applications. She envisions a future of precision medicine, enabled by advances in nanotechnology, engineering, and cell biology directed to clinical challenges in disease treatment. By taking advantage of our understanding of how cells respond to engineered materials and our ability to fabricate precise structural domains, her lab seeks to design new platforms to overcome existing challenges in therapeutic delivery.
Greg Szot
Preclinical Advisor
Director of Islet Transplant Facility
Mr. Szot manages the Clinical and Research Islet Production Core facility at UCSF. His appointment is in the division of transplant surgery and as director of the Diabetes Research Center (DRC) Islet Core. He has over twenty-five years of extensive research experience and within the past seventeen years in the field of islet isolation and transplantation in both rodent, porcine, primate, and clinical human studies. During this time, he served as the director for the UCSF Islet Production Core and is responsible for isolating human pancreatic islets for clinical transplantation and for basic research. His involvement in both allogeneic and autologous clinical islet isolation and transplantation includes a comprehensive knowledge of GMP and GTP regulations. Throughout his career, he has accumulated considerable experience in developing and utilizing important immune-based assays including diabetes, bone marrow, organ, and cellular transplantation tolerance models (multiple rodent models, flow cytometry, etc.). He has experience in conducting IND Phase I & III clinal trials for cellular- and biologics-based therapies; including the production of monoclonal antibodies (OKT3ala-ala) and allogeneic islets for clinical diabetes studies. He has also mastered important immune monitoring assays, functional islet testing and assessment, and has utilized embryonic stem cell derived insulin producing cells for several pre-clinical studies.
Vern Norviel, Esq
Intellectual Property
Partner at WSGR
Vern Norviel is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and a senior practitioner in the firm's patents and innovations counseling practice. Vern has three decades of experience formulating successful strategies for life science companies and helping them develop IP programs. He represents a wide variety of companies, as well as venture capital firms, in areas such as therapeutics, diagnostics, nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, and personalized medicine. In fact, Vern's interest in the field of personalized medicine prompted him to become the first attorney to have had his or her entire genome sequenced and made available in a public database. He is annually recognized among the country's top life sciences attorneys in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business and has been named among California's top IP attorneys by the Daily Journal.
Mike German, MD/ PhD
Diabetes Advisor
UCSF Director of Diabetes Center, Diabetes Endocrinologist
Dr. German is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, Clinical Director of the UCSF Diabetes Center, Director of the UCSF NIH Diabetes Research Center (DRC) and Hillblom Islet Genesis Network, and Principle Investigator in the Hormone Research Institute and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. He cares for patients in the Diabetes Clinic and hospital wards, teaches medical students, graduate students and housestaff, and lectures at the Diabetes Center’s patient self-management courses. His group studies the formation and function of the insulin-producing beta-cells in the pancreas, how these processes break down in diabetes, hypoglycemia and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, and the translation of this knowledge into novel therapeutic strategies for these disorders. He is committed to the success of Encellin’s technology and has been an advisor to the company for technology conception.
Becky Foster
Go to Market
Becky Foster is an independent consultant to diagnostic labs, biotechnology manufacturers, digital health companies, and other developers of medical technology. She has spent 20+ years working on managed care and reimbursement strategy and policy. Prior to consulting, Becky was the Senior Director of Managed Care for Crescendo Bioscience. Her responsibilities included establishing Medicare coverage, developing patient assistance programs, and supporting billing and reimbursement efforts. She is experienced in developing billing and coding plans, leading the development of budget-impact and cost-effectiveness models, and creating and implementing strategies for obtaining coverage from private health plans. Before joining Crescendo Bioscience, she worked at Genentech and consulted to numerous biotech and pharmaceutical companies in the area of coverage and reimbursement. Becky has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master of public health degree in health policy and administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
