We’re thrilled to wel­come two new bril­liant team mem­bers to Kan­vas Bio: Dr. Mar­guerite Pri­or, our new Vice Pres­i­dent of Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs and Qual­i­ty Assur­ance, and Dr. Kevin Keo­ma­nee-Dizon, an opti­cal physi­cist who will serve as our Prin­ci­pal Engineer. 

Read on for a brief Q&A to learn more about Mar­guerite and Kevin, and how they’ll be con­tribut­ing to our mis­sion of unlock­ing the pow­er of the microbiome:

Q: What did you do before join­ing Kanvas?

A, Mar­guerite: I’ve been work­ing in reg­u­la­to­ry affairs in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try for more than a decade, both with rare dis­ease devel­op­ment pro­grams and the FDA’s Expe­dit­ed Pro­grams for Seri­ous Dis­eases and Con­di­tions includ­ing Fast Track Des­ig­na­tion, Accel­er­at­ed Approval, Break­through Ther­a­py des­ig­na­tions and Pri­or­i­ty Review. I start­ed my career at Inter­cept Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, a liv­er dis­ease com­pa­ny, and lat­er joined Fed­er­a­tion Bio, where I dis­tilled com­plex issues relat­ed to nov­el live bio­ther­a­peu­tics (LBPs) for dis­cus­sion with the FDA. I was proud to guide the com­pa­ny to a suc­cess­ful Inves­ti­ga­tion­al New Drug (IND) fil­ing for a nov­el LBP com­posed of over 148 micro­bial strains man­u­fac­tured in 7 drug sub­stances – mak­ing it the most meta­bol­i­cal­ly com­plex and phy­lo­ge­net­i­cal­ly com­plete LBP to go into humans! Most recent­ly, I led Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs at Walk­ing Fish Ther­a­peu­tics, an engi­neered B cell company.

A, Kevin: I worked in acad­e­mia as a physi­cist. My research cen­tered on devel­op­ing new light micro­scope tech­nolo­gies for bio­log­i­cal imag­ing and explor­ing a vast range of the liv­ing world, from sin­gle-mol­e­cule bio­physics, to DNA orga­ni­za­tion and gene reg­u­la­tion, to neuroscience. 

Q: What are some of your aca­d­e­m­ic highlights?

A, Mar­guerite: At the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, I led the devel­op­ment of a small mol­e­cule neu­ro­pro­tec­tive agent that was advanced to IND-enabling stud­ies for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and recent­ly com­plet­ed a Phase 1 clin­i­cal study. Work­ing on this pro­gram inspired me to tran­si­tion to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try to con­tribute to the trans­la­tion of nov­el ther­a­peu­tics from pre-clin­i­cal to clin­i­cal devel­op­ment, so more patients can ben­e­fit. I have a B.Sc. in Indus­tri­al Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Ph.D. in Neu­ro­science from Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin in Ire­land. I also com­plet­ed two post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ships inves­ti­gat­ing ther­a­peu­tic approach­es in Alzheimer’s dis­ease at the Lern­er Research Insti­tute, Cleve­land Clin­ic and the Salk Institute.

A, Kevin: I did my under­grad­u­ate work at Loy­ola Mary­mount Uni­ver­si­ty and received a Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in 2021, fund­ed by the Alfred E. Mann Insti­tute. I was then a Robert H. Dicke Fel­low in Exper­i­men­tal Physics and Fel­low of the Cen­ter for the Physics of Bio­log­i­cal Func­tion at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. In 2023, I was award­ed Prince­ton’s Dean for Research Inno­va­tion Fund for New Ideas in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences, serv­ing as co-PI.

Q: What does your role at Kan­vas involve?

A, Mar­guerite: As VP of Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs and Qual­i­ty Assur­ance, I’m respon­si­ble for the exe­cu­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of reg­u­la­to­ry and qual­i­ty strate­gies across Kan­vas Bio’s port­fo­lio of ther­a­peu­tic pro­grams and tech­nolo­gies, and pro­vid­ing strate­gic reg­u­la­to­ry and qual­i­ty guid­ance through­out the prod­uct devel­op­ment life­cy­cle. I’ll be devel­op­ing and exe­cut­ing a com­pre­hen­sive, glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry and qual­i­ty strat­e­gy that ensures Kan­vas prod­ucts com­ply with the rig­or­ous stan­dards set by glob­al Reg­u­la­to­ry Author­i­ties. I’m excit­ed to lever­age my reg­u­la­to­ry strat­e­gy expe­ri­ence from Fed­er­a­tion Bio, in par­tic­u­lar, to help Kan­vas guide the devel­op­ment path of LBPs by work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the FDA. 

A, Kevin: I’ll be invent­ing and refin­ing pur­pose-built micro­scope tech­nolo­gies, lever­ag­ing my back­ground in optics to improve our spa­tial biol­o­gy plat­form. We’re push­ing the bound­aries of opti­cal microscopy – par­tic­u­lar­ly for high-res­o­lu­tion mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing over large vol­umes – and are cur­rent­ly con­struct­ing a new micro­scope that promis­es to improve the Kan­vas plat­form by orders of mag­ni­tude in speed and effi­cien­cy. My mis­sion is to ensure Kan­vas is and remains at the fore­front of bio­log­i­cal imag­ing. And I’m super excit­ed about the prospects of apply­ing advanced imag­ing tools to enable new insight into host-micro­bio­me inter­ac­tions and to unlock nov­el therapeutics.