Team

Mark C. Herzberg, 

Chief Executive Officer

Is professor, Department of Diagnostic and Biological Sciences, University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, director of the NIH/NIDCR-supported Minnesota Craniofacial Research Training Program, and recent-past associate director of the University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute.  He maintains an active NIH/NIDCR-supported research program focusing on the molecular basis of infection.  His current research program explores gene regulation in streptococcal biofilms and calprotectin as an innate intracellular antimicrobial and its role in periodontal infections in vivo.  The results of his research have been widely published in the peer-reviewed biomedical literature.

 

Karen F. Ross

Chief Scientific Officer

Brings expertise in the expression of antimicrobial proteins in eukaryotic cells.  Dr. Ross applies stable transfection of expression plasmids and mRNA expression constructs to augment the production of antimicrobial proteins in cells and tissue.  She has developed approaches to evaluate antimicrobial activity in vitro and in vivo. These technologies are central to Antibiotic Alternatives therapies. Karen obtained her PhD in Microbiology from the University of Otago, New Zealand before moving to the USA and taking a position as a Post-doctoral fellow and then Research Scientist at the University of Minnesota.  She has worked in collaboration with Dr. Mark Herzberg for over 20 years with a focus on how bacteria and virus interact with epithelial cells.  Ross is a faculty leader for the Graduate Biofilm Group at the University of Minnesota. The group meets once a month to share techniques, learn about the formation of biofilms in the body in health and disease and in the environment.