Management

David W. Scharp, MD
Founder, President, and CEO of Prodo Laboratories
dscharp@prodolabs.com

Trained and worked at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, as an academic surgeon and researcher in islet transplantation for nearly 30 years, producing over 200 publications with continuous NIH (National Institutes of Health) and JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) funding and 13 patents to date.

Collaborative studies with the late Paul E. Lacy, MD, PhD, pioneered much of the early progress in islet transplantation. Dr.’s Scharp and Lacy were also co-founding scientists of Cytotherapeutics in 1989 with Dr.’s Aebischer and Galetti and completed a clinical trial of encapsulated human islets in 1993.

Joined Neocrin Company in 1994 as Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief Medical Officer to develop encapsulated islet xeno-transplantation technology into a clinical product.

Co-founder of Novocell, Inc. in 1999 as Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief Medial Officer to develop a conformal PEG coating of human islets as an allograft product without requiring long term immunosuppression. Research and Development studies progressed from rodents through diabetic sub-human primates models. The islet processing and encapsulation technologies were advanced through process development activities into pre-GMP ready levels. The IND for encapsulated islet allografts was accepted in 2005 and a clinical trial begun in Type I diabetic patients.

In 2004, Novocell, Inc. merged with CyThera, Inc. with hESC expertise and formed the new Novocell, Inc., with Dr. Scharp as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer.

In 2006, Dr. Scharp founded Prodo Laboratories, Inc. and Invenio Institute, a not-for-profit California public benefit company focused on performing diabetes research. He has also formed Scharp Consulting to separate consulting opportunities from both Prodo Laboratories and Invenio Institute activities.