MEEX Speaker
MCGEEHAN John K.
Vice President of Operations Ascendance Biotechnology, Inc. Medford, MA, USA
Biography
Mr. McGeehan joined Ascendance Biotechnology, Inc. (“Ascendance”) (formerly Hepregen Corporation (“Hepregen”)) in March, 2009. During Hepregen‘s start-up phase, Mr. McGeehan was responsible for successfully scaling-up the company’s micropatterned co-culture technology, which was exclusively licensed from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”). In addition to being responsible for all operations and scientific groups at Ascendance, Mr. McGeehan is currently engaged in driving the commercialization of the Hepregen® line of application-directed assay kits and associated services worldwide. Mr. McGeehan has more than 25 years of technical and management experience in the biotechnology industry. He was a co-founder of ActiMed Laboratories, Inc. (“ActiMed”), a medical device company. As vice president of operations at ActiMed, Mr. McGeehan guided the development, scale-up, manufacture, and clinical trials, of the ENA•C•T® Total Cholesterol test. Prior to ActiMed, Mr. McGeehan was employed in positions of increasing responsibility at a division of E. Merck. At E. Merck, he managed the construction and start-up of a $1 million dry powder manufacturing facility. He leveraged the company’s fluid bed granulation technology into five distinct diagnostic reagent product lines, taking over 100 products to successful market introductions. Mr. McGeehan was also a founder of Innova Medical Technologies, Inc., providing general consulting and product development services to medical products companies. Mr. McGeehan holds a B.A. in biology from Millersville University and a M.S. in biomedical engineering from Drexel University. He is named as an inventor on seven US patents, including a key patent that provides tools essential to the routine, reproducible and economic manufacturing of the Hepregen line of high quality HepatoPac® and HepatoMune® products.
