Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer: John C. Fini

Mr. Fini has over 35 years of leadership experience in the management of sponsored research, with a specific focus on financial stewardship & compliance. 

Mr. Fini began his career at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (a Harvard Medical School affiliate). He moved from there to Dartmouth Medical School and then to the University of Lowell. Prior to entering the biotech entrepreneurial space, Mr. Fini spent more than 17 years overseeing a portfolio of nearly $1 billion dollars as the Financial Director for Research Management at the Massachusetts General Hospital (a Harvard Medical School affiliate), and then at Partners HealthCare System (a merger of multiple Harvard affiliated hospitals, including MGH).

After leaving the Harvard hospitals, Mr. Fini spent several years doing private consulting, serving academic clients on both the east and west coasts. This led to the founding of Proteris Biotech in 2014.

Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer: M. Elizabeth Fini, Ph.D.

Dr. Fini is a molecular biologist, best known for her scientific contributions to our understanding of diseases of the eye. She has more than 30 years of leadership experience in academia as a scientist, professor, mentor and administrator. She currently serves as Professor of Ophthalmology, Tufts University School of Medicine at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. She holds multiple NIH and foundation grants in support of her basic research program.

Dr. Fini’s first faculty appointment was at Harvard Medical School. From there she moved to New England Eye Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, then to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.  In 2008, Dr. Fini joined USC in Los Angeles as Professor and Vice Dean for Research at the Keck School of Medicine. In July 2008, she was also appointed as Director, USC Institute for Genetic Medicine. She continued in this position until the department was closed in 2017. Shortly thereafter, she accepted an offer to return to Tufts.

Dr. Fini earned her doctoral degree in biology at Dartmouth College and did postdoctoral training at Dartmouth Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Immunology and Model Systems: Sharmila Masli, Ph.D.

Dr. Masli is an Associate Professor in the department of Ophthalmology at Boston University, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. She is a trained immunologist with over 20 years of academic research experience. Her research focus is in ocular immunology as it pertains to ocular inflammatory conditions. Prior to joining Boston University, Dr. Masli was an Assistant Professor in the department of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Scientist at Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston where she was also appointed as the Director of Flow Cytometry Core Facility.

Her research identified novel molecular and cellular immunoregulatory pathways and helped establish and validate a pre-clinical mouse model of ocular surface disease. Through extensive longitudinal analysis of this mouse model her research has identified several underlying immunopathogenic mechanisms. Translational studies based on her laboratory findings have led to identification of genetic and tear biomarkers with clinical utility in diagnosis and stratification of dry eye patients. She has collaborated and consulted with several industry partners on early drug development programs.

Dr. Masli received her Ph.D. in Immunology from Northeastern University in Boston and completed her post-doctoral fellowship in ocular immunology from Harvard Medical School.

Drug Formulation and Delivery: Anuj Chauhan, Ph.D.

Dr. Chauhan currently serves as Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. Prior to that he was a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the City University of New York and completed postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Chauhan is an expert in drug formulation and delivery, particularly for ophthalmic applications. His work in this area has received much attention in the popular press including, CNN Headline News, and was listed in Reader’s Digest Medical Breakthroughs 2004. Based on a recent bibliometric analysis (Bibliometric and visualized analysis of ocular drug delivery from 2001 to 2020, J. Controlled Release, 2022), he is the most productive and impactful author in ocular drug delivery. Dr. Chauhan has co-founded multiple startup companies including Glint Pharmaceuticals and Tear Clear.

Manufacturing: Mark R. Wilson, Ph.D.

Dr. Wilson has more than 25 years of leadership experience in academia as a scientist, professor, mentor and administrator. He is currently a Senior Professor in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. He previously served as faculty Associate Dean (Research) and is currently Deputy Director (Industry Partnerships) of the Molecular Horizons Research Institute at UOW.

Dr. Wilson discovered the molecular chaperone function of clusterin and is arguably the world’s expert in the field. His lab has been leading the development of methodologies for the large-scale production of recombinant human clusterin. He co-authored on our team paper demonstrating clusterin efficacy in treating mouse dry eye.

Medical & Clinical Affairs: Brian Levy, O.D., M.Sc.

Dr Levy has spent his career in ophthalmology and is a proven leader with a depth of experience in Drug and Device Development, Clinical Development and Medical Affairs. Dr. Levy has successfully led 5 New Drug Applications (NDA’s) in Ophthalmic Pharmaceuticals, all approved and commercialized.

Dr. Levy currently serves as Chief Executive Officer for InflammX. Prior to that he was Chief Medical Officer at Aerie Pharmaceuticals where he was a member of the Executive team that took the company public through a successful IPO. Prior to that he spent 15 years at Bausch & Lomb as Vice President R&D and then Chief Medical Officer for the Corporation. In these evolutionary roles he was responsible for Global Clinical and Product Development, Global Product Safety and Medical Affairs. Prior to joining Bausch & Lomb,

Dr. Levy was Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, completed NEI courses in Epidemiology and Biostatistics in Vision Research and was a clinical investigator for numerous products in development and an advisor and consultant to the ophthalmic industry. Dr. Levy holds an appointment as Clinical Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine.

He is a healthcare advisor to Spindletop Capital and has served on the boards of both public and private companies developing products in Ophthalmology. He received a Doctor of Optometry degree from the University of California at Berkeley and did his post-graduate work in Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Eye at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where he received a Master of Science degree.

Legal Affairs, Len Nannarone, J.D.

Mr. Nannarone is an attorney for Nannarone Law Group, with offices in Scituate, Massachusetts and Mountain View, California. He focuses his legal practice on start-up corporate transactions, secured lending, mergers & acquisitions, initial employment contract and offer negotiations, general corporate representation, securities and finance transactions. He currently represents several venture capital funds and start-ups, including Proteris Biotech.

Mr. Nannarone received his J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law. .

Patenting and Licensing, Christopher Moulding, M.B.A.

Mr. Moulding currently serves as Associate Director in the Office of Technology Licensing at the City of Hope, Duarte, California. He previously served in a similar capacity at the University of Southern California, where he worked closely with Dr. Fini in developing the patent portfolio that Proteris Biotech is licensing.

Mr. Moulding has been involved in Technology Transfer for over 25 years, having held licensing positions at UCLA, Caltech, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and USC.  He worked at Genentech, Chiron, and Systemix in business development, and was a co-founder of Recombinant Capital. 

Mr. Moulding began his academic career as a research associate at Harvard Medical School and NIH, and thereafter he earned an MBA from Stanford Business School. 

Stephen C. Pflugfelder, M.D.

Dr. Pflugfelder is an academic ophthalmologist and clinician-scientist with internationally recognized expertise in dry eye. He currently serves as Professor, Director of the Ocular Surface Center, and the James and Margaret Elkins Chair in Ophthalmology in the Cullen Eye Institute of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. 

Dr. Pflugfelder is a leader in the field of dry eye research.  He developed the first mouse model of dry eye disease and identified a causal role for MMP9 in collaboration with Dr. Fini. He co-authored on our team paper demonstrating clusterin efficacy in treating mouse dry eye.

Shigeru Kinoshita, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Kinoshita is an academic ophthalmologist and clinician-scientist with internationally recognized expertise in dry eye. He served from 1992-2015 as Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Kyoto, Japan. He currently serves as Professor and Chair, Department of Frontier Medical Science and Technology for Ophthalmology.  

Over the course of his career, Dr. Kinoshita has built a reputation in the global ophthalmic community as an innovative researcher and a pioneering spirit, particularly in the fields of ocular surface and corneal wound healing. His group was the first to identify clusterin expression in the corneal epithelium its down-regulation in severe mucin-deficient dry eye, and its localization in amyloid deposits associated with corneal dystrophies. His group also identified clusterin expression by the corneal endothelium and its presence in the aqueous humor. He co-authored on our team paper demonstrating clusterin efficacy in treating mouse dry eye.

Reza Dana, M.D., M.Sc., M.P.H.

Dr. Dana is an academic ophthalmologist and clinician-scientist with internationally recognized expertise in the immunology of dry eye. He has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of inflammation pertaining to the ocular surface, including dry eye.

Since 1995, Dr. Dana has been a full-time member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He currently serves as the Claes Dohlman Professor and Vice Chair of Ophthalmology, and Associate Chief of Ophthalmology for Academic Programs, at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear. He also serves as Senior Scientist & W Clement Stone Scholar, Schepens Eye Research Institute; Director, Cornea & Refractive Surgery, Massachusetts Eye and Ear; and Director, Cornea Center of Excellence.