Team Potential
B. Kim Lee Sim, PhD
President, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Sim has led all process development and cGMP manufacture of Sanaria’s aseptic, purified cryopreserved Plasmodium falciparum sporozoite (PfSPZ)-based products that have been assessed in > 36 clinical trials in the U.S. and 10 European and African countries, and will soon enter phase 3 development. She is also president and CSO of Protein Potential, LLC (proteinpotential.com), which she founded in 2003. Protein Potential is currently focusing on a vaccine for shigellosis, ETEC diarrhea, and typhoid fever. Dr. Sim did her undergraduate (B.Sc., Honors, First Class) and graduate studies (M.Sc., Ph.D.) at the University of Malaya. After a post doctoral fellowship in molecular biology at Harvard School of Public Health, she was a research scientist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and adjunct faculty at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, a research assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and an Expert at NIAID, NIH. In 1993 she joined EntreMed Inc. as research director of molecular biology, and in 1999 was appointed VP pre-clinical R&D. At EntreMed, Dr. Sim established a development program for anti-angiogenic proteins for cancer therapy, and developed the process that led to cGMP manufacture of tens of kilograms of Angiostatin and Endostatin, anti-angiogenic proteins that entered phase 2 clinical trials. Dr. Sim has extensive experience with yeast and bacterial expression systems and recombineering technologies. She has >148 published scientific papers, and 29 issued and > 7 pending patents.
Stephen L. Hoffman, MD
Chairman
Dr. Hoffman has over 30 years of experience building and managing large, successful research and development programs. From 1987-2001 he was malaria program director, Naval Medical Research Center, where his team were leaders in subunit malaria vaccine development and sequencing the Plasmodium falciparum genome and published the first studies in the world showing DNA vaccines elicited killer T cells in humans. In 2001 he joined Celera Genomics as Sr. VP biologics and created a program to utilize genomics and proteomics to produce biopharmaceuticals, begin the field of personalized (precision) medicine, and sequence the genome of the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. He has held several professorships, chairs or serves on multiple advisory boards, is past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, authored > 465 scientific publications, and has > 60 patents. He is the most highly cited author in the world for scientific papers on malaria published between 1995 and 2005, was listed as the third most influential person in the world vaccine industry in 2015 when he received the Vaccine Industry Excellence Award for Best Biotech CEO. He received his BA from Penn, MD from Cornell, and Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and did residency training at UC San Diego. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine in 2004, and received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2016.