Advisors and Collaborators

Scientific Advisory Board

Nathan Bryan, Ph.D.

Dr. Bryan is a world-renowned expert on nitric oxide and nitrosylation who has developed methods to detect nitric oxide and discovered that nitric oxide has an endocrine function of nitric oxide via the formation of S-nitrosoglutathione and inorganic nitrite. Dr. Bryan was hired to the faculty of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston by Dr. Ferid Murad and is now an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine.

“I have worked in the nitric oxide/nitrosylation field for more than 15 years and believe that GSNO Therapeutics’ GSNOR inhibiting technology is novel, innovative, and likely to produce many drugs to treat a wide variety of important inflammatory, oxidant-based, and fibrotic diseases. Furthermore, having worked with GSNO Therapeutics’ drugs in my own lab, I am impressed by their therapeutic activities and predict that they will be successful in the clinic. The only remaining clinical issue I see is potential toxicity, but I have seen no evidence of it at extremely high doses in my studies and GSNO Therapeutics’ recent safety results are quite encouraging in their lack of toxicity.”

– Nathan Bryan, Ph.D.

Thomas Hurley, Ph.D.

Dr. Hurley is the world’s leading expert on S-nitrosoglutathione reductase (GSNOR), having first cloned the full-length human GSNOR gene and expressed it in bacteria. He determined the crystallographic structure of GSNOR with GSNO Therapeutics’s inhibitors bound into the active site and has helped with the SAR of GSNOR and in vitro testing of its novel GSNOR inhibitors. Dr. Hurley is the Acting Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine.

“I developed the expression system for human GSNOR and solved its three-dimensional structure by X-ray crystallography. More recently, I solved the X-ray structure of GSNOR bound to several of GSNO Therapeutics’ original drugs which block the active site of the enzyme, and helped the company with its SAR work. I am impressed by the progress they have made on both the chemistry and biology fronts and strongly believe this progress has substantially reduced the risks associated with their development program.”

– Thomas Hurley, Ph.D.

David J. Lefer, Ph.D.

Dr. Lefer has been working in the fields of myocardial protection and coronary physiology for over 20 years and has made important contributions to these fields. Dr. Lefer’s laboratory was among the first to demonstrate the profound loss of endothelial cell-derived nitric oxide (NO) from the coronary circulation following coronary artery occlusion and reperfusion. A series of subsequent studies in both small and large animal models clearly demonstrated that oxidative stress occurring within the first few minutes of reperfusion significantly impaired NO generation by coronary endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS). Dr. Lefer’s laboratory was the first to report on the potent cardioprotective actions of NO in the setting of acute myocardial infarction and congestive heart failure in both small and large animal models. Dr. Lefer has investigated nitrite-based therapies in a number of models of chronic tissue ischemia and ischemia-reperfusion injury. Dr. Lefer is the Director of the Cardiovascular Center of Excellence and a Professor of Pharmacology at Louisiana State University School of Medicine.

“My work in NO and now GSNOR inhibition has led me to recognize the importance for the pharmacology of GSNO therapeutics’ GSNOR inhibitors. They are highly active in models of diabetes, NASH, heart attack, and heart failure and should lead to life-changing medicines.”

– David J. Lefer, Ph.D.

Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Murad won the Lasker Prize in 1996 and the Nobel Prize in 1998 for discovering that nitric oxide is the endothelial relaxing factor. That discovery forms one of the foundations of GSNO Thera’s technology. GSNO Thera’s compounds do not produce nitric oxide directly, although they are related to nitric oxide in that they increase the level of nitrosylation on critical proteins in therapeutic signal transduction pathways. Given his Nobel Prize in the nitrosylation field and current expertise in it, Dr. Murad supports and advises our drug discovery and development efforts. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

“I think that what GSNO Therapeutics is doing is some of the most exciting work in the nitric oxide/nitrosylation field. I can see many novels and important therapies coming from their work. It is well established as fundamental science that inhibiting GSNOR regulates the intracellular nitric oxide/nitrosylation pathways as pleiotropic signal transduction systems that have been in evolution for a billion or more years. The physiological role of this system is the maintenance and or restoration of homeostasis during various disease processes. Utilization of this GSNOR-regulated signal transduction system to correct aberrant cellular responses and restore tissue homeostasis is a novel therapeutic approach that takes advantage of normal self-limiting cellular mechanisms. The inhibition of GSNOR minimizes the immunological and cellular overreactions that result in many diseases with few, if any, off-target effects. GSNO Therapeutics has shown that inhibiting GSNOR has major therapeutic activities that should translate into important human drugs. Diseases of aging are obvious targets.”

– Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D.

Rebecca Sappington, Ph.D.

Dr. Sappington is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Wake Forest School of Medicine. The Sappington laboratory focuses on understanding the molecular and cellular events at the intersection of neuron failure, neuroinflammation, and pathological progression of neurodegenerative disease. To identify molecular pathways and cellular events involved in disease and develop pharmacological and regenerative therapies, we use a variety of approaches, including in vitro and in vivo experimental models, basic molecular and cellular biology, cell and tissue histology, electrophysiology, live-cell imaging, in vivo imaging, neural tracing, and neurobehavioral assays. Degeneration of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), whose axons form the optic nerve, share many cellular characteristics with neurodegenerative diseases elsewhere in the central nervous system (CNS), including Alzheimer’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease. These characteristics include: 1) functional failure that precedes cell loss, 2) axonal degeneration that precedes cell soma loss, and 3) induction of neuroinflammatory responses by glial cells. Dr. Pasquale and Dr. Sappington have collaborated for many years to research ocular diseases.

“GSNO Therapeutics’ drugs are very exciting in the ocular space. I can see many applications for unmet needs in ocular therapy, in neurodegenerative diseases, and in diseases of aging.”

– Rebecca Sappington, Ph.D.

Collaborators

Since its inception, GSNO Therapeutics has also utilized the knowledge and talents of many academic and industrial advisors and collaborators. Our academic collaborators include those from Duke University, The University of Maryland, Indiana University, The University of Texas, The University of Montana, Montana State University, The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the NIH, Johns Hopkins University, Louisiana State University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Wake Forest University Medical School, Stanford University, and Harvard University.

GSNO Therapeutics also utilizes industrial advisors from the biopharmaceutical consulting firm Synergy Partners, with Drs. James MacDonald and Catherine Strader, the principals of that firm, who are former colleagues of Dr. Bradley’s at Merck.