David Hanzel, Ph.D.
Metabiomics is pleased to announce the addition of a new key member to our management team. Dr. David Hanzel has joined Metabiomics as our President and Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Hanzel has an ideal background in the science and business of DNA sequencing, health care products and services development, and investment finance to lead the next phase of clinical study and development to bring our microbiome diagnostics to market starting with our assays for colon polyps and colorectal cancer in the USA and China. David will lead and manage our USA clinical study programs including development and Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval of our Clinical Study Protocol for the CP-CRC test in the USA in collaboration with the Metropolitan Gastroenterology Group and Chevy Chase Clinical Research (MGG/CCRC) in nearby in Maryland. We have also added Dr. Louis Korman, MD to our team as Chief Medical Officer who is a leading clinical researcher and gastroenterologist associated with MGG/CCCR.
David Hanzel has been working with us for the past year and a half on our Life Sciences Advisory Board before joining Metabiomics full time in July. For the prior 6 years he was a partner at X/Seed Capital, a seed stage venture fund focused on breakthrough life sciences innovation. Before X/Seed, he was a Vice President at Pacific Biosciences responsible for Product Marketing, Reagent Development and Nanofabrication for next-generation single-molecule DNA sequencing. David joined Molecular Dynamics (eventually General Electric Healthcare) in 1991 until 2004 working in Research, Development, Marketing, and Sales and as the Principal Scientist and scientific lead for Cell Based HTS, the INCell 3000.
Throughout his career Dr. Hanzel has had leading technical and business roles in the development of a variety of DNA sequencing and analysis platforms dependent on quantitative fluorescent detection; including: Confocal-microscopy (high-throughput screening and diffraction limited), DNA sequencing (single molecule and capillary/Sanger), Microarray (hardware, arrays and analysis). David received his B.A. and Ph.D. in Gastrointestinal Physiology from the University of California, Berkeley and a Postdoctoral Fellowship from Cornell University Medical College. He is the author more than 20 scientific papers, multiple chapters and holds issued and published patents in fields including surface chemistry, gene discovery and protein design.