Steven Idell, M.D., Ph.D.

Founder

Dr. Steven Idell is a clinical investigator who has been continually funded over the past 30 years by the National Institutes of Health for his work in the areas of acute lung injury and pleural diseases. He is a board-certified internist and pulmonologist who has also directed the Intensive Care Units at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler, Texas. He is now Vice President for Research, a Professor of Medicine and Temple Chair of Pulmonary Fibrosis at UTHSCT and was Director of an NIH-sponsored Program Project Grant to study the role of the fibrinolytic system in the pathogenesis of lung and pleural disease. Work from that project led to the development of scuPA as a treatment for pleural loculation and of a peptide-based approach for treating acute lung injury and pulmonary fibrosis. 

Dr. Idell also continues to manage patients in the UTHSCT Pulmonary Clinic. He has successfully obtained over $27 million in grant support from agencies including the NIH, The American Heart Association, The American Lung Association, and various foundations. He is the Director of the Texas Lung Injury Institute of UTHCT and has raised nearly $1 million of philanthropic support for lung injury research to develop novel experimental therapeutics from the community, grateful patients and various foundations in East Texas and has received commitment from the NIH RAID and SMARTT programs to perform IND-enabling studies with his lead therapeutic, LTI-01. In addition to his role as CSO, Dr. Idell also serves as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board and a Member of the Board of Directors.

Andrew Mazar, Ph.D.

Founder

Dr. Mazar has spent over thirty years working on the discovery, development and translation of new drugs and imaging agents at the interface of academia and industry.  He is a co-founder of Lung Therapeutics, Inc. and Actuate Therapeutics, two privately held, clinical stage bio-pharmaceutical companies developing novel therapeutics for lung diseases and advanced cancer, respectively.  He is also a co-founder of Monopar Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MNPR), a public clinical stage oncology focused biopharmaceutical company and serves on Monopar’s Board as a Director as well as the company’s Executive Vice President, Research and Development and Chief Scientific Officer. Prior to Monopar Therapeutics, Dr. Mazar was a co-founder and Director of the Center for Developmental Therapeutics at Northwestern University as we well as a Research Professor of Pharmacology. His research focused on mechanisms of tumor progression including chemoresistance and metastasis with a focus on the therapeutic targeting and imaging of these processes. In particular, his laboratory has focused on the role of urokinase (uPA) and its receptor (uPAR) in tumor growth, angiogenesis, and metastasis and more recently, the role of glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) in tumor chemo- and radiation resistance.  Dr. Mazar also severed as the inaugural Entrepreneur-in-Residence in the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute at Northwestern. While at Northwestern, Dr. Mazar was a co-founder of Tactic Pharma and the co-inventor of Decuprate (recently acquired by Alexion Pharmaceuticals for $848M), a novel treatment for patients with Wilson’s Disease currently in phase III clinical trials. Dr. Mazar is currently a member of the editorial board of Clinical Cancer Research and the External Advisory Board for NewCures at Northwestern University.  He has served on numerous advisory and study panels including as a charter member of the NIH Center for Scientific Review (CSR) Developmental Therapeutics Study Section; NCI, NIDDK, and NHLBI Special Emphasis Panels; VA Oncology Merit Review; AHA; and the Phillip Morris External Research Program.  He is also the co-author of 125 peer reviewed publications and 20 reviews and book chapters.  Dr. Mazar earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.