President and Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Alan Jacobs brings over 20 years of experience leading multi-international teams in the research and development of therapeutics and medical devices. His executive experience also encompasses fundraising, grant funding, regulatory allowances, manufacturing design, and intellectual property. He has been awarded numerous research grants, fellowships, patents, awards and honors, and has authored numerous publications. He has served on several committees, including the National Institutes of Health NINDS Stroke Progress Review Group, American Society of Experimental Neurotherapeutics, Health Technology Center Expert Panel Stem Cell Technology, and the American Society of Neurotransplantation and Repair.
He began his research and development career at Elan Pharmaceuticals where he designed and managed clinical drug trials, drug development protocols and safety infrastructures for investigations of Prialt in traumatic brain injury and peri-operative pain management. Prialt was subsequently approved by the FDA for the treatment of severe chronic pain. At Layton Biosciences he led the clinical development of a human neuron transplant to treat stroke patients. Dr. Jacobs led the international clinical development at Titan Pharmaceutics for Spheramine in Parkinson’s Disease and Probuphine for opiate dependence. Probuphine was subsequently approved by the FDA for the treatment of opiate addiction. Dr. Jacobs was the CMO and Vice President of Clinical Research at Stem Cells, Inc., where he led the clinical development of neural stem cell implantation for the treatment for Batten’s disease in children. His work has also contributed to two licensing transactions with big pharma, one for an Alzheimer’s disease treatment that was licensed to Astellas Phama, Inc. in a $760 million transaction, and development of a monoclonal antibody to prevent infections in patients on mechanical ventilators that was licensed to Sanof Pasteur in a $290 million transaction.
Dr. Jacobs was previously the President and CTO at PerceptiMed, where he invented technologies to eliminate medication errors in retail pharmacies and in-patient facilities. He led the company to the successful commercial launch of ScripClip, which is now being used in pharmacies across the US and Canada, and has dispensed more than three million prescriptions without error. He holds several patents for the IdentRx medication verification system and was the Principle Investigator on a US$1.5 million National Institutes of Health Fast-track clinical study of IdentRx in a long-term care facility. He was also the recipient of two Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project Grants, and a Small Business Innovation Research Grant for Producing Human Neuronal Cells to Treat Stroke.
Dr. Jacobs received a Bachelor of Science degree (Electrical Engineering) from Cornell University and a Master of Science degree (Electrical Engineering) from Stanford University. He also holds a Medical Doctorate from the School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the David Mahoney Institute of Neuroscience, University Pennsylvania, where he was a Fellow in the Medical Scientist Training Program of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and a Research Fellow in the American Heart Association. Dr. Jacobs completed an internship in General Surgery and was a resident in Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.