Management

James Bone, PhD - President & Co-founder. Jim earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the UNC Chapel Hill and a PhD from Baylor College of Medicine. He was a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Sharon Dent's lab at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and then later in the lab of Dr. C. David Allis at the University of Virginia Health Science Center. After leaving the Allis lab, Jim worked for Upstate Biotechnology (now part of Millipore-Sigma) for six years, directing their efforts commericializing products for epigenetics and chromatin biology research. After leaving Upstate, Jim was a founder of Lake Placid Biologicals, and worked later for Active Motif after their acquisition of the company.

Michael-Christopher Keogh, PhD - Chief Scientific Officer. Michael earned his PhD in Molecular Immunology from Imperial College London and completed postdoctoral studies in the Thrombosis Research Institute (London) and with Dr. Steve Buratowski at Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining EpiCypher he was a Principal Investigator in the Department of Cell Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His work has focused on many key oncology research areas including cell-cycle regulation, DNA repair, epigenetics, gene expression and genetic networks.

Martis Cowles, PhD - Chief Business Officer. Martis is a developmental neuroscientist with a strong background in neuronal development and regeneration. He earned his Bachelor of Science from San Diego State University and began his industry career at Illumina as a research associate in the high-throughput genomics services laboratory. Martis then earned his PhD from the University of California San Diego, studying transcriptional networks that control adult neurogenesis and brain patterning using flatworms as the model organism. Prior to joining EpiCypher in 2015, Dr. Cowles was a Ruth L. Kirschstein postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Eva Anton's laboratory at UNC Chapel Hill where he studied developmental signaling pathways that underlie cortical stem cell function in the developing mouse brain.

Zu-Wen Sun, PhD - Vice President, Product Development. Dr. Sun joined EpiCypher after serving as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He received a PhD from the LSU Health Sciences Center. He performed his post-doctoral studies with Dr. Michael Hampsey at the UMDNJ - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and then later with Dr. C. David Allis at the University of Virginia Health Science Center. He is widely recognized for his pioneering work on understanding how histone ubiquitination affects chromatin structure and gene expression.

Andrea Johnstone, PhD - Senior Director of Product Development. Andrea joined EpiCypher in 2016 to apply her background in epigenetics and drug discovery to innovate tools for the epigenetic research community. She earned her PhD with the mentorship of Dr. John Bixby in the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis (University of Miami Miller School of Medicine). Her predoctoral studies, supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, used phenotypic high throughput screening to identify and characterize novel therapeutic approaches for spinal cord injury. As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Claes Wahlestedt (Department of Psychiatry, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine), Andrea identified novel epigenetic signaling pathways underlying neuropsychiatric disease. She applied these insights to establish and implement drug development pipelines; work that identified preclinical candidate compounds.

Mark Kaderli - Senior Director of Sales. Mark earned a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Bacteriology from UC Davis and spent the first eight years of his industrial career as a Production Manager at Stratagene Cloning Systems, where he was responsible for oligo synthesis, cell biology, PCR and nucleic acid analysis product lines. In 1996, he moved to Austin, Texas to run manufacturing, quality and supply chain operations as VP of Manufacturing for ten years at Ambion, Inc. After the successful sale and integration of Ambion's reagent business by Applied Biosystems, Mark launched a private consulting and contract sales business, representing multiple small start-up biotech companies over the past eleven years. He joined EpiCypher in late 2013 as an internal sales and business development representative.

Matt Meiners, PhD - Senior Director of Production. Matt is a protein biochemist with a strong background in protein-DNA interactions. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from East Carolina University. Matt went on to earn a PhD from the University of North Carolina, studying DNA damage and repair mechanisms. Matt joined EpiCypher in 2014 as a Research Scientist and has led EpiCypher’s efforts in the production of nucleosomes and nucleosome-based technologies.