About Us

Oncocyte is a precision diagnostics company with a mission to improve patient outcomes by providing personalized insights that inform critical decisions throughout the patient care journey.

Our Team

Leadership

Josh Riggs

President & Chief Executive Officer

Josh joined Oncocyte Corporation in August 2020 and was appointed Interim Chief Executive Officer in December 2022, after serving as Senior Director Business Development and General Manager, Transplant. Josh is an experienced business leader and was previously the founder and principal of Intelliger Consulting, an organization devoted to consumer driven healthcare, and a principal at Bethesda Group, LLC, a boutique consulting group focused on helping small and mid-stage diagnostic companies and investment groups move emerging diagnostic content and platforms to market.

Anish John

Chief Financial Officer

Anish joined Oncocyte Corporation in September 2021 and was named Chief Financial Officer in August 2022, following a two-month period as Senior Vice President, Finance and interim Chief Financial Officer. He previously served as our Vice President of Operations and Finance, Transplant Business Unit. Anish brings over 15 years of financial and operations leadership experience in companies ranging from startup through Fortune 500 heavily matrixed global organizations in Biotech, Pharma, High Technology, Diagnostics, and Clinical Lab Services.

Anish harnesses his mix of operations and financial insight to strategically optimize investment allocation to fuel predictable and profitable company growth. Known as a collaborative and trusted advisor, Anish guides senior leadership through tradeoffs and portfolio decision-making. His passion for effective financial thought leadership is manifested in his belief that finding creative ways to invest in innovation is the key to building enterprise and shareholder value.

Before he joined Oncocyte, Anish earned a reputation for building high performance finance and accounting teams that function as business partners to enable company innovation. Most recently, as Senior Director of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) at Foundation Medicine, Inc. (wholly owned subsidiary of Roche Holding, AG), Anish evolved the financial planning and forecasting process that aligned strategy, business functions, and the product portfolio. He optimized forecast investment levels to drive double-digit 2020 revenue growth and profit expansion. He also led the development of robust scenario-driven forecasting models and FP&A processes to support insightful, agile decision making in periods of market uncertainty, including COVID-19 impact on trials and lab services.

Anish enabled business models to balance risks and opportunities across the portfolio of four core Diagnostics franchises while Senior Director of Finance, Americas Diagnostics, at PerkinElmer, Inc., a leading Fortune 500 diversified life science company (NYSE: PKI). Through his team’s efforts, the company’s Americas Diagnostics Division consistently grew annual portfolio revenues in the high single digits organically and delivered on plan revenues while expanding gross margins and gross profit over 150 basis points.

Anish holds a Master of Business Administration from Babson College in Wellesley and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Prof. Dr. Ekkehard Schütz, MD, PhD, FAACC

Chief Science Officer

Ekkehard (Ekke) joined Oncocyte in April 2021 through the acquisition of Chronix Biomedical. Ekke serves as the managing director of Chronix Biomedical GmbH, wholly owned by Oncocyte and CMO for Europe. As an adjunct professor, he teaches molecular genetics and diagnostics at the Georg-August-University.

Ekke received his training in laboratory medicine (chemical pathology) at the Dept. of Clinical Chemistry in the hospital of the Georg-August-University of Göttingen, where he worked from 1989 to 2001 under Prof. Dr. Michael Oellerich, a world expert in therapeutic drug monitoring and transplantation surveillance. He joined Chronix Biomedical Inc. (San Jose, CA) in 2001. He established its German subsidiary in 2002 as the R&D site of the company. Chronix became an industry leader in cell-free DNA (cf-DNA) diagnostics, which resulted in numerous scientific publications and a broad patent portfolio in cf-DNA diagnostics in cancer and transplantation with ten different patent families and multiple issued IP in the US and Europe of which Ekke is the inventor.

In 2014 was elected as a fellow of the National Academy for Clinical Biochemistry, which became the Academy of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (FAACC). Besides his broad experience in patenting, Ekke has published over 170 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, over 100 published congress abstracts, has received several international scientific awards, and serves as a reviewer for numerous international scientific journals, including PNAS, Clin Chem, Clin Biochem and NAR.

Yuh-Min (Johnson) Chiang, PhD

Senior Vice President, R&D and Product Development

Johnson joined Oncocyte Corporate in September 2021. Prior to joining Oncocyte, Johnson holds the Chief Technology Officer in Alveo Technologies, an IVD company focusing on development of cutting edge molecular diagnostic tests for Over The Counter (OTC) and Point-Of-Care (POC) applications. Johnson led the teams to develop the COVID-19 be.well Test for a successful US clinical trial and obtained the CE mark and UK approval.

At Alveo, Johnson also participated in fundraising of about $50MM in 4 years, including winning the XPrize Grand Award for Rapid Covid Testing Competition. Before Alveo Technologies, Johnson was the Head of Systems Integration & Molecular Biology at Foundation Medicine, Inc. and held senior management positions at Life Technologies and Thermo Fisher Scientific where he led systems design, integration, verification and validation for qPCR and next-generation sequencing platforms, including Oncomine Dx Target Test as the very first NGS-based CDx test approved by FDA. Johnson also worked at Cepheid where he oversaw a few key product developments from the concept to commercialization under FDA regulation. He has extensive experience and successful track records in product development (device, instrument, SW, and assays) as well as design control for 510k and PMA applications. Johnson also owns several patents and published numerous biotechnology papers.

Johnson holds a Ph.D. degree focused on BioMEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) from University of California, Irvine. He received his Master in Engineering from The Ohio State University and Bachelor of Applied Chemistry from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan.

Meet Our Scientific & Medical

Advisors

Photo of Dr. David R. Gandara

David R. Gandara

MD

Dr. David R. Gandara is a Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine and the Director of Thoracic Oncology at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center (UCDCCC). He is an internationally known clinician-scientist and lung cancer thought leader.

He has led many notable research projects in lung cancer, including early therapeutics trials at various phases, cooperative group trials through the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG), and multi-institutional translational science projects.

Dr. Gandara has been selected for many awards and honors, including the lifetime Scientific Award from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). He is the principal investigator for a National Cancer Institute (NCI) UG1 award to UCDCCC for Cancer Clinical Trials. He also is currently the principal investigator for UCDCCC for the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) dream team award in KRAS-mutated lung cancer, and served as clinical director for the joint Jackson Laboratory (JAX)-UCDCCC patient-derived xenotransplant (PDX) program in lung cancer. He is past chair of the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) Lung Committee, and is founding co-chair and current member of the NCI-directed Investigational Drug Steering Committee (IDSC).

Dr. Gandara has written over 700 articles, book chapters, abstracts and editorials. He is past editor-in-chief of the journal Clinical Lung Cancer. He served as president of the IASLC from 2009-2011 and served as treasurer from 2013–2017. He is a prior member of the board of directors and secretary-treasurer of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

Photo of Dr. Robert L. Ferris

Robert L. Ferris

MD, PhD, FACS

Dr. Robert L. Ferris is the Director of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. He is also Hillman Professor of Oncology, and Professor of Otolaryngology, of Immunology, and of Radiation Oncology. Certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology, he treats patients with benign and malignant tumors of the head and neck, including the thyroid and salivary glands, oral cavity, throat and voice box (larynx).

He regularly performs robotic, endoscopic, minimally invasive approaches to thyroidectomy and partial laryngectomy, in order to preserve function and speed the return of speaking, swallowing and breathing.

Dr. Ferris is also developing and implementing immunotherapy (cancer vaccines) to treat head and neck tumors. His research focus is in trying to understand how to stimulate the body’s immune system to eliminate cancer. The goals of this research are to boost the body’s immune response against cancer and to try to prevent cancer from recurring (or to prevent it from occurring in the first place).

Dr. Ferris was trained at Johns Hopkins, where he received his MD and PhD in Immunology, a residency in Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, and subspecialty training in head and neck oncologic surgery.

Photo of Dr. Daniel F. Hayes

Daniel F. Hayes

MD, FASCO, FACP

Dr. Daniel F. Hayes is the Stuart B. Padnos Professor of Breast Cancer Research at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. Dr. Hayes received undergraduate, master’s and medical degrees from Indiana University, followed by a residency in internal medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center/Parkland Memorial Hospital and a fellowship in medical oncology at Harvard’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI).

He has led the breast cancer programs at DFCI (1991-1996), Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center (1996-2001), and the University of Michigan from 2001-2016.

Dr. Hayes’ research interests are in the field of experimental therapeutics and cancer biomarkers, especially in breast cancer. His work has been particularly focused on development and validation of cancer biomarker tests, such as HER-2, CA15-3, circulating tumor cells and pharmacogenomic markers. He has been instrumental in establishing international guidelines for the use of tumor biomarker tests, including criteria for their clinical utility.

Dr. Hayes has served as chair of the SWOG Breast Cancer Translational Medicine Committee, and he was an inaugural member and chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Tumor Marker Guidelines Committee. Dr. Hayes served on the ASCO Board of Directors, and served a 3 year term as President of ASCO from 2016-2018. He is a Fellow of ASCO, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a past Komen Scholar, and a member of the Association of American Physicians and the American Clinical and Climatologic Association. He was the inaugural recipient of the ASCO Gianni Bonadonna Award in breast cancer.

Photo of Dr. Fred R. Hirsch

Fred R. Hirsch

MD, PhD

Dr. Fred R. Hirsch is Executive Director at the Center for Thoracic Oncology in The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai (TCI) and the Joe Lowe and Louis Price Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is also Associate Director of Biomarker Discovery for TCI.

Before joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Hirsch was a Professor of Medicine and Pathology at the University of Colorado for 18 years and Chief Executive Officer of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) for five years.

Dr. Hirsch has received a number of awards and honors, including the IASLC Mary Matthews Award for Translational Research in Lung Cancer in 2007; the Japanese Lung Cancer Society Merit Award in 2010; the Addario Foundation Lecture Award in 2015; and the Wuan Ki Hong Lectureship Award in 2019. He has contributed to more than 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is an internationally renowned authority on lung cancer treatment and research.

Dr. Hirsch’s career in lung cancer research spans more than 25 years and includes translational research, targeted therapies, and early detection of lung cancer. His research has helped identify and validate prognostic markers for lung cancer outcomes and biomarkers for personalized lung cancer therapies that illustrate how these therapies work and who is most likely to benefit from them.

Photo of Dr. John M. Kirkwood

John M. Kirkwood

MD

Dr. John M. Kirkwood took his MD at Yale University (1973) and completed postgraduate work at Harvard/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (1978). He served as the founding Associate Director and Chief of Medical Oncology at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, where he has directed the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Program since 1986, and served as PI of the Pittsburgh SPORE in Melanoma and Skin Cancer (2008-2019) and held T32 Training Grants for Medical Oncology and for Melanoma and Skin Cancer.

Dr. Kirkwood is Principle Investigator for ECOG-ACRIN at the University of Pittsburgh and Co-PI of the Lead Academic Performing Site (LAPS) at the University of Pittsburgh (2019-present). He has been Chairman of the ECOG-ACRIN Melanoma Committee (1989-2019) and assumed the position of Chairman of the ECOG-ACRIN Prevention Subcommittee in 2019. He founded the International Melanoma Working Group and has chaired this (2005-present); he founded the Regional Melanoma Consortium of tristate institutions and has chaired this 2014-present, bringing new collaborative trials to the region.

Dr. Kirkwood’s research focuses upon the immunotherapy and molecular therapy of advanced melanoma, and the development of adjuvant therapies as well as the therapeutic prevention and early detection for melanoma. He has led >300 trials of investigational therapy, with an emphasis upon immunotherapy and molecular/immunological translational research. He has developed new approaches to adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapies at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, and in the National Clinical Trials Network through ECOG-ACRIN. Dr. Kirkwood was the PI for the pivotal study that led to the first FDA approval for adjuvant therapy of melanoma with IFN alfa-2b in 1995 and was senior author of the most recent adjuvant trial leading to approval of molecularly targeted adjuvant therapy in 2018 (Combi-AD).

Dr. Kirkwood is Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Usher Professor of Medicine, Dermatology, and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He was elected to the Association of American Physicians in 2015 and to the Giants of Cancer Care in 2016. He is currently a member of multiple professional organizations including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association for Cancer Research, Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer and the Society for Melanoma Research.

Photo of Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz

Heinz-Josef Lenz

MD, FACP

Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-leader of the Translational Science Program at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz is Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, J Terrence Lanni Chair for Cancer Research in the Division of Medical Oncology and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

An active researcher, Dr. Lenz’s National Cancer Institute-funded laboratory is developing novel agents in his preclinical models in GI cancer. Lenz, a transformational clinical investigator and translational scientist, was the first to measure intratumoral RNA levels associated with efficacy of 5-FU and oxaliplatin and led the first prospective randomized Phase II trials using gene expression from FFPE specimens. He also discovered that primary tumor location of colorectal cancer (CRC) is an independent predictive and prognostic marker, now in the NCNN guidelines. His paper on Consensus Molecular Subtyping identified novel subgroups that are predictive and prognostic in CRC, now used globally in drug development. He has been the Co-PI of the UG1 CA 062505 for the last 20 years and leads the NCCC site for the NCI UM1 (CA186717 with City of Hope, (UC Davis), and Stanford. He is Chair of the Translational Medicine Subcommittee in SWOG GI, member of the NCI Gastroesophageal Task Force and Clinical Trial Planning Committee, as well as the Investigational Drug Steering Committee. Lenz accelerates translational and clinical research, and provides training and mentoring in the design and implementation of investigator-initiated trials.

Dr. Lenz earned his M.D. degree at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany. In 1991, he completed his internship, residency and fellowship training at the Eberhardt Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. He obtained special fellowship training at Universität Wien (Austria), George Washington University and Harvard Medical School. In 1991, he received the prestigious Research Fellowship Award from the “Deutsche Krebshilfe” (Bonn, Germany). He completed his research fellowship in biochemistry and molecular biology at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center before joining the faculty of USC in 1994. He was awarded a Career Development Award from STOP CANCER (1994-1997). Based on his research, he also received a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in 1994. In 1995, Dr. Lenz was selected for the prestigious ASCO Career Development Award, as well as an NIH Mid-Career Development Award. He has published over 540 peer reviewed manuscripts with an h-index of 101.

Photo of Dr. Ignacio I. Wistuba

Ignacio I. Wistuba

MD

Dr. Ignacio I. Wistuba is Head ad interim of the Division of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Professor and Chair of the Department of Translational Molecular Pathology with Joint appointment in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, and co-director of the Khalifa Institute of Personalized Cancer Institute at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

He is also the director of the Thoracic Molecular Pathology Laboratory, director of the UT Lung Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) Tissue Bank, director of the ECOG-ACRIN (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group-American College of Radiology Imaging Network) Central Biorepository and Pathology Facility, pathologist for the SWOG Lung Cancer Committee and the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium, co-director of the pre-CLIA Genomic Testing Developmental Laboratory. He is associate editor of Annals of Oncology and Cancer Prevention Research.

Dr. Wistuba’s major research interest is the elucidation of the molecular abnormalities involved in the pathogenesis and progression of lung cancer and other solid tumors. He has co-authored over 600 papers in peer-reviewed journal and several book chapters. His research interests also include identifying new molecular targets, validating biomarkers for targeted therapy and immunotherapy, and identifying molecular markers associated with lung cancer and other solid tumors development, progression and metastasis development using annotated human specimens. He is principal investigator (PI) and co-PI on several molecular pathology and biomarker projects supported by multi-investigators and multi-institutional grants, and research agreements, including MD Anderson NCI Cancer Center Support Grants Tissue Bank and Pathology Resource, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Multi-Investigators Research Awards, two NCI-U24 grants supporting the ECOG-ACRIN Central Biorepository and Pathology Facility and the MD Anderson Center Immune Monitoring and Analysis Center (CIMAC).

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