San Diego, CA, May 11, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mindera Health™, the developer of Mind.Px™, the first realization of precision medicine in psoriasis, has announced a change in its executive leadership team. The company has announced industry veteran Ron Rocca will succeed George Mahaffey as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Rocca will also serve as a Director of the company. Mr. Mahaffey, who joined the company in 2020, helped lead the company’s transition from the R&D stage through the commercial launch of Mindera Health’s first test.
“On behalf of the board, I want to thank George for his valuable contributions to Mindera Health,” said Joe Cook, III, Chairman of Mindera Health and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mountain Group Partners. “We are grateful for all that he has helped us accomplish since taking the helm and wish him the best in his future endeavors.”
“It has been my pleasure to work with such a talented team of professionals over the past three years and to assist in bringing the Mind.Px precision medicine test to market. I wish the company all the best as they expand usage of this important and innovative technology,” said Mr. Mahaffey.
“I am extremely excited to join the Mindera Health team. With a total addressable market of over $2 billion in the U.S. alone, Mind.Px has the opportunity to enable huge improvements in patient care while reducing the overall healthcare spend on this disease. In addition to psoriasis, Mindera Health’s proprietary platform also provides access to rich biomarkers that will enable us to develop precision medicine tests for a wide range of diseases,” said Mr. Rocca.
Mr. Cook went on to say, “We are very excited to have Ron join Mindera Health as we ramp up our commercial efforts with Mind.Px and advance a number of additional tests in our pipeline. Ron’s demonstrated commitment to help physicians improve patient care while driving commercial adoption and reimbursement aligns well with the mission of Mindera Health.”
Mr. Rocca brings over two decades of biotech and diagnostics industry experience, including eleven years of developing and commercializing diagnostic products for autoimmune-related diseases. His prior role was President and CEO of Exagen Inc. (NASDAQ: XGN) which commercialized a suite of testing products enabling healthcare providers to improve care for patients through the differential diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Prior to Exagen, Mr. Rocca served as Vice President, Sales and Marketing, and as General Manager, at Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical and diagnostic company focused on diseases in gastroenterology and oncology. He helped grow the company’s sales to $200 million-plus annually before playing an instrumental role in the $1.4 billion acquisition by Nestlé Health Science S.A. in 2011. Prior to Prometheus, Mr. Rocca was the General Manager of Alpharma Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company. Earlier in his career, Mr. Rocca served in senior sales and marketing management positions for Elan Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a neuroscience-focused biotechnology company.
Mr. Rocca received a B.A. in Marketing and Personnel Management from Towson University. Mr. Rocca will assume his new role at Mindera Health immediately.
About Mind.Px™
Mind.Px is the flagship test of Mindera Health, designed to prospectively predict a patient’s response to expensive biologic drug classes prior to therapeutic selection and treatment. Using a scalable, minimally invasive dermal biomarker patch that captures over 7,000 biomarkers per sample along with data analytics, Mind.Px materially improves patient outcomes and significantly reduces healthcare system costs of expensive biologic treatments.
About Mindera Health™
Mindera Health is a private San Diego-area company developing and commercializing next-generation medical technology to enable a new era of skin analytics at the molecular level. Using a proprietary dermal biomarker patch, next-generation sequencing, and machine learning, Mindera Health technology generates clinically validated data to reduce healthcare system costs and improve patient outcomes. Mindera Health is a CLIA and CAP certified laboratory and has received ISO 13485:2016 certification. Find out more at www.minderahealth.com.
About Mountain Group Partners
Founded in 2002, Mountain Group Partners is a Nashville-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies in the life sciences and disruptive technology sectors. The firm brings over 100 years of combined operational experience and has invested in more than 60 companies. www.mtngp.com
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