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Dale Pfost, Ph.D.

Dale Pfost, CEO of Acuity Pharmaceuticals, has been a biotechnology entrepreneur and leader in the commercialization of new drug discovery and development technologies and products for more than 20 years. He has been founding CEO of four biomedical companies, two of which progressed to become Nasdaq-traded public firms and a third which was acquired by an industry leader. In total he has been the CEO leading 15 separarate public and private financings raising over $250 million over the past twenty years. His first company, started while he was completing his doctoral dissertation, produced the innovative laboratory product known as the Biomek 1000. When SmithKline Beckman (SKB) acquired the company in 1984, Dale became the general manager of the Robotics and Automated Chemical Systems business at Beckman. Following its introduction in the mid-80s, the Biomek became the premier platform for high-throughput screening and DNA sequencing sample preparation. In 1988 Dale was recruited from SKB to be the founding CEO of UK-based Oxford GlycoSciences, where he helped to establish a premier proteomics and glycobiology drug discovery effort, growing that company to 90 employees, successfully making one acquisition and staging it for an IPO. In 1996 Dale returned to the U.S. to become the CEO of Orchid BioSciences, which over the next six years he helped grow to become the leading provider of genoprofiling and DNA testing services in forensics, paternity determination and disease susceptibility for prion diseases—performing approximately a million tests per year. Orchid was a leader in commercializing breakthroughs in high throughput genotyping, in first applying SNPs to forensics and paternity testing and in laying the groundwork for innovations in personalized healthcare. Under Dale’s direction, Orchid successfully integrated three acquisitions and became a public company in 2000. His professional interests include seeking improvements and innovations in both business practices and drug development processes. Dale is a licensed private pilot. He received a Ph.D. in solid state physics from Brown University and a B.S. in physics from University of California Santa Barbara.