ArunA Biomedical, Inc, the first company to commercialize human embryonic stem cell derived products and services, announced that William T Sharp has been named as the company's president and chief executive officer. In addition to his ArunA leadership responsibilities, Sharp has also been appointed to ArunA's Board of Directors. Sharp succeeds ArunA founder Steven Stice, PhD, who will remain ArunA's chairman and chief scientific officer.
Sharp has more than twenty-five years of industry leadership experience. His experience spans Fortune 500 to emerging and mid-sized businesses in the life science tools, diagnostics and clinical markets and Sharp has played major roles in mergers and acquisitions of several companies. Most recently, Sharp served as chief commercial officer of BioProcessors Corporation, a venture-financed life science tools developer based in the Boston area, where he led global commercialization efforts of the company's proprietary high-throughput mammalian cell culture technology. Prior to BioProcessors, Sharp was senior VP of Business Development with Cellomics (acquired by Fisher), vice president of Business Development with Gentra Systems (now Qiagen), worldwide director for the Molecular Biology Business of Life Technologies (now Invitrogen), and vice president of sales and marketing with Heraeus Instruments. Sharp holds MS and BA degrees from The Pennsylvania State University.
"Steve Stice and ArunA's outstanding team of scientists are dedicated to discovering and developing tools that will ultimately create opportunities to improve the quality of life for millions of people suffering from devastating diseases," stated Sharp. "ArunA's first commercial product, ENSTem-A, is based on a proprietary technology licensed from the University of Georgia and is commercially available through a distribution relationship with Millipore Corporation. This product, along with several others in ArunA's near-term development pipeline, should help to accelerate the pace of research for scientists around the world. I am thrilled to be associated with a company on the leading edge of such a promising field. I look forward to leading ArunA as we proceed down a path of continuous and rapid development of enabling new products and services that will serve as a catalyst leading to the discovery of novel therapeutic compounds, tests for neurotoxicity and breakthroughs in understanding human development and diseases," said Sharp.
Located in Athens, Georgia, ArunA Biomedical, Inc. is a privately held biotechnology corporation dedicated to the discovery, manufacturing and commercialization of emerging new technologies in human embryonic stem cell research for use in drug discovery and basic research.