Bernhard Kreymann, Adj. Prof., MD, founder, invented the Hepa Wash® procedure and has been fulltime CEO of Hepa Wash GmbH since its foundation in July 2005. He was interims head of the nephrology department of the University Hospital rechts der Isar. Bernhard has gained in-depth expertise in extracorporeal blood purification systems and several years of experience in treatment of patients with liver failure. In 1995, he developed his first liver support therapy: Single-Pass Albumin Dialysis (SPAD) which is clinically effective but not cost-efficient enough to be applied on a large scale. Based on the experiences with this first system he invented in 2002 the Hepa Wash procedure and founded Hepa Wash® to bring this new technology to market.
Katja Rosenkranz, Ph.D., Dipl. Biochemistry, is a biochemist by training and did her Ph.D. in neurobiology at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Munich. She is working at Hepa Wash since January 2007 and is responsible for the administrative, financial, and operations management of the company as well as business development issues. Previously, she worked for 4 years as an investment analyst at PolyTechnos Venture-Partners in Munich.
Werner Pfingstmann, Dipl.-Ing. and CEO of IBP Medical GmbH, a company focused on the development and worldwide distribution of measurement instruments for maintenance of dialysis machines. He is an experienced engineer with in-depth expertise in dialysis technology who developed his first dialysis machine (Miro1, later sold by Baxter) about 30 years ago while at Mirotec and a new innovative hemodialysis device about 2 years ago. In addition, he managed the development of various other projects in the medical device arena. He is working with Hepa Wash since September 2007 and is managing the development of the final Hepa Wash liver assist device.
Catherine Schreiber, Dipl. Ing. Mechanical Engineering, Dipl. International Business Management, studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Munich. She has been working with Hepa Wash since 2006 and developed and built the laboratory prototype for Hepa Washs animal studies. Catherine is supervising the developmental process, and finalizing the specifications and the risk analysis of the Hepa Wash® device.
Ahmed Al-Chalabi, MD, M.Sc. Medical Engineering, MB Ch.B., is responsible for the planning, preparation, execution, and analysis of the preclinical studies and future clinical studies as well as regulatory approval. Ahmed has worked for three years as a physician, received his master’s degree at the TU Munich, Germany, in 2006, and has been working at Hepa Wash since 2005.
Zejian Yang, M.Sc. Medical Engineering, B.Sc. Human Medicine, is mainly in charge of the studies of albumin stability and the albumin detoxification capacity and will later be responsible for the supervision of the clinical studies of the Hepa Wash® device in China. Zejian has been working with Hepa Wash since the beginning of 2007.
Jack Florio, R.Ph., MBA, had a 28 year career at Eli Lilly and Company and was most recently Exec. VP Corporate Development at Vital Therapies. He joined Hepa Wash in 2008 and is responsible for commercial operations, reimbursement, partnering and public relations strategy and implementation for US and China.