Passion & Conviction
To build the team behind our EVF Foundation, diversity was important to appropriately represent all those impacted or involved with enterovirus. So we selected members who would represent the whole view of enterovirus and selected survivors, researchers, physicians and healthcare advocates to join our team. We are honored by each of them and the passion and conviction they bring to our work to fight enterovirus.
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MEET THE EVF BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Nora Chapman, PhD
Nora is a Research Scientist at the University of Nebraska Enterovirus Research Laboratory and Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska. Dr. Chapman studies persistent coxsackie infections in murine models of chronic myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy. She and her associates have demonstrated that selection of defective enterovirus in heart and other tissues leads to persistent infections despite active antiviral immune responses. Dr. Chapman is presently studying the mode of selection of these viruses and the effects of replication of these viruses upon infected cell function. Dr. Chapman and her associates at the University of Nebraska are further investigating Dr. John Chia’s work in regards to enterovirus in the gut biopsies.
John Chia, MD
John is the President of EV Med Research, Owner/Physician at Infectious Disease Med, and Assistant Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Chia is an infectious disease specialist and studies the role of enteroviral infections in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) Dr. Chia recently published original research from a study that found 135 out of 165 (82%) of CFS/ME patients had stomach biopsy samples that stain positive for enteroviral antigens compared with 7 out of 34 (20%) of the controls. He also found that 9 out of 24 (37%) of CFS/ME patients had enteroviral RNA in their gut tissues compared to 1 out of 21 controls. Currently, Dr. Chia is investigating treatment strategies for persistent enteroviral infections.
Andrew Chia, PharmD, MS
Andrew is the President of Sophora Health. Dr. Chia currently works in Regulatory Affairs at Genentech. Dr. Chia previously served as a research associate at EVMED Research. Dr. Chia received his Doctorate in Pharmacy and Masters in Regulatory Science from the University of Southern California. Andrew received his BS in Biological Science with Cum Laude in 2006 from the University of California at Irving. Having recovered from chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, Mr. Chia is dedicated to researching the role of enteroviral infections in CFS/ME.
Lisa Ross Faust
Lisa is the Co-Founder/Executive Director of the Enterovirus Foundation and the Co-Owner/Managing Partner for the Ross-Faust, LLC, dba Creative Experience Group (CEG), LLC, a full-service event, meeting and incentive company. After Ms. Faust’s personal experience with a persistent enteroviral infection that caused a systemic multi-organ illness and the subsequent infection of her daughter, she organized the Enterovirus Foundation dedicated to research, public awareness, and antiviral medications to help sufferers of both acute and chronic enteroviral disease.
Rachel Landphere
Rachel is the Co-Founder/Director of the Enterovirus Foundation. Ms. Landphere is an experienced director with a background in administration, project management, fund raising, brand awareness and presence marketing that makes her uniquely qualified to drive the start-up of the Enterovirus Foundation. As a project manager, Ms. Landphere has handled all aspects of large corporate event projects, including celebrity participation for fundraising events, brand promotion programs, client education seminars, and corporate outings. In addition, she has led campaigns to raise awareness for a variety of non-profits including the Anheuser-Busch beneficiary, the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the Georgia Chapter of Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, the American Parkinson’s Disease Association, and the Special Olympics.
Daniel R. McClernon
Daniel is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of bioMONTR. Daniel is also a former GlaxoSmithKline principal scientist with twenty-nine years of successful pharmaceutical industry experience in drug discovery, molecular diagnostics and business development. Daniel has participated in antiviral and anti-infective drug development, including discovery, preclinical, and phases I-IV clinical development programs, protocol virologist with extensive experience in assay development, drug resistance, clinical trial testing and NeuroAIDS research. He also leads numerous collaborative projects with major diagnostic companies for implementation/execution of molecular-based platforms. BioMONTR focuses on pharmaceutical, biomarker, and clinical diagnostic development within the infectious disease space. Mr. McClernon has over 30 years’ experience in drug discovery, molecular diagnostics and business development. He began his scientific career at Burroughs Wellcome pharmaceutical company where he studied DNA Topoisomerase and Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV). He co-developed a DNA cleavable complex assay used to screen anti-cancer compounds, and also worked on characterizing HSV clinical isolates for acyclovir FDA submissions. In 1995 Mr. McClernon began working in HIV clinical research, thus contributing to the FDA approvals of HIV drugs Ziagen, Trizivir, Lexiva and Combivir.
Steven Tracy, PhD
Steven is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and organizer of the Enterovirus Research Laboratory for the study entero- and picornaviral biologies. Dr. Tracy has studied the molecular biology, pathogenesis, and immunology of the Group B coxsackieviruses for 25 years. Together with colleagues, he cloned and characterized the RNA genomes of these viruses, demonstrated their ability to express biologically active proteins and antigenic epitopes, verified approaches to attenuating these viruses for use as vaccine and/or expression vectors, and explored their etiologic involvement in inflammatory heart disease. In additional collaboration, he developed new models to study the involvement of these viruses in either preventing or inducting type 1 diabetes. Most recently he collaborated in the discovery of a novel and unsuspected mechanism by which human enteroviruses can persist for long periods of time in the immune host. Dr. Tracy has published numerous research and review articles about human enteroviruses and the group B coxsackieviruses. He co-edited a definitive volume of Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology, Volume 323, titled “Group B coxsackieviruses.”