Leadership Team
Pierre Cassigneul is the President and Chief Executive Officer for XDx. Mr. Cassigneul has more than 25 years of senior management experience in the healthcare and medical device industries, both in Europe and the United States, including the global launch of several successful high-tech products. He joined XDx from the consulting firm, Stone Bridge Management LLC, where he was an operating partner. Formerly, as the Vice President of Diabetes Management at Becton Dickinson & Co, he oversaw completion of the product, clinical trials and regulatory submissions. Mr. Cassigneul has held top management positions at Bayer in the diabetes self-testing business unit, where he developed and launched a new patient-monitoring system; Ortho Diagnostic Systems (J&J) in the AIDS and hepatitis business unit, where he launched a complete line of blood screening products; and Abbott Laboratories in the diagnostic division, where he launched the first HIV test for screening the European blood supply. He serves on the board of The Personalized Medicine Coalition. Mr. Cassigneul holds a management degree from the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Reims, France.
Dr. James Yee is the Chief Medical Officer for XDx. He brings more than 25 years of research and development experience. Most recently, Dr. Yee served as Vice President and Head of Development for Celera Genomics, where he built the development organization at Celera South San Francisco and led clinical research and therapeutic development activities for cancer and immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. Prior to his work at Celera, Dr. Yee served as Vice President of Clinical and Preclinical Research for the Inflammatory and Viral Diseases Unit at Roche Pharmaceuticals. In this role, he led the team responsible for selecting and evaluating compounds for clinical drug development and oversaw groups responsible for toxicology, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, bioanalytical chemistry, analytical chemistry, formulations, regulatory affairs, project management and clinical research. Earlier in his career, Dr. Yee held a variety of research and development positions of increasing responsibility at Syntex Corporation, including Vice President and Director of the Institute for Clinical Medicine. Dr. Yee received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley in electrical engineering and computer science. Dr. Yee went on to earn a Ph.D. in biophysics at UC Berkeley. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine to earn his medical degree, and he is board certified in internal medicine.
Jean-Frederic Viret is the Chief Financial Officer for XDx. Dr. Viret joined XDx after 10 years in the finance departments of biotechnology companies, including Anesiva, a publicly traded specialty pharmaceutical company where he served as CFO. Previously, Jean was Associate Director of Finance at Tularik. He worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, serving various biotech clients. Dr. Viret brings a unique background to this position, having earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Universite Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France. He was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. Jean also earned a master in business administration from Cornell University and a B.S. in Engineering from the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, in Nancy, France.
Tod Klingler, Ph.D., is the Vice President of Information Sciences for XDx, managing data analysis, algorithm development and software development for the company’s proprietary technology. Dr. Klingler joined XDx with 10 years of experience in the genomics industry. Prior to joining XDx, Dr. Klingler was the Vice President of Information Sciences for Synergenics, LLC, a biotechnology incubator. In this role, he set up and directed an informatics resource, through which he provided computational services and strategic guidance and participated in building and integrating novel technologies for five early stage companies. As a founder of Prospect Genomics, he led the development of a large-scale computational effort to explore protein-chemical interactions, and then oversaw the integration of business and scientific strategies when the company was acquired by Structural Genomics. Prior to holding that position, he was one of the first computational biologists at Incyte, where he helped to launch the genomics product business and to build an innovative research group. Dr. Klingler has also worked as an independent consultant on business and scientific strategy, planning and execution for start-up genomic companies, and as a systems engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. He has authored scientific papers and publications in peer-reviewed journals, including Genome Research, Biochemistry and Protein Science, been an inventor on more than 10 patents, and given numerous invited talks on genomic technologies. Dr. Klingler received his Ph.D. in medical information sciences with a concentration in bioinformatics/biochemistry, and a bachelor of science in mathematical and computational sciences and biological sciences from Stanford University.
Matthew Meyer is the Vice President of Corporate Development and Legal Affairs. Mr. Meyer has over 15 years of business development, marketing and commercial legal experience in the domestic and international life sciences industry. Prior to joining XDx, Mr. Meyer was Vice President, Business Development and General Counsel at Cerimon Pharmaceuticals where he led the in-license and partnering of prescription products to treat pain and inflammation. Prior to that, Mr. Meyer held senior management positions at Draeger Medical Systems, the U.S. subsidiary of the German-based global medical device company, most recently serving as Vice President and General Counsel. Prior to Draeger, Mr. Meyer held positions of increasing responsibility at Novartis Pharma AG in Basel, Switzerland, including serving as Head of Global Marketing Channel Innovations, a role in which he helped foster greater marketing and sales effectiveness through the use of innovative technology-based initiatives. Previously, Mr. Meyer was the Vice President, Global Business Development and Legal Affairs at Allscripts’ Physician’s Interactive division, which was a leader in online marketing programs to physicians, and spent five years as a commercial and transactional attorney at Pfizer Inc, working in New York, Connecticut and the United Kingdom. Mr. Meyer graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from Villanova University School of Law.
Dr. Mitch Nelles is the Vice President of R&D and Technical Operations for XDx. He has more than 20 years of management and research and development experience in a variety of in vitro diagnostic (IVD) technology and business areas. Dr. Nelles joined XDx from bioMerieux Inc. where he was Vice President of North America Research and Development and responsible for product development and project management for the bacteriology, molecular diagnostics, immunodiagnostics and hemostasis business franchises. Prior to his work at bioMerieux, Dr. Nelles served as the Vice President of R&D at TriPath Oncology (TriPath Imaging) where he led the efforts to develop molecular based products for the diagnosis and prognosis of breast and cervical cancer. Earlier in his career, Dr. Nelles held a variety of technical and managerial positions of increasing responsibility, including Vice President, Transfusion Medicine and Immunodiagnostic Assay R&D at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics (Johnson and Johnson) where he led the worldwide research and development activities in support of the blood screening, blood typing, immunodiagnostic and RhoGAM business franchises. Dr. Nelles received his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College in biological sciences, his Ph.D. in immunology/biomedical sciences from the University of Texas, Health Sciences Center at Dallas (UTHSCD)/Southwestern Medical School, and completed postdoctoral training in immune regulation at Brandeis University.
Rebecca Soler is the Vice President of Human Resources for XDx. Previously, Ms. Soler served as head of human resources for three high growth organizations, including two enterprise software companies (Model N, Inc. and Veloz Global Solutions), and SEIU-UHW, the healthcare workers’ union of California. Before focusing solely on human resources, Ms. Soler was a management consultant at KPMG (now BearingPoint) and Management Analysis Center (later Gemini Consulting), serving primarily technology clients. Ms. Soler consulted in the areas of finance process improvement, marketing and strategic planning. She was also a founding member of two startup companies, serving as head of planning and business development for one and as Vice President of Common Services for the other. Ms. Soler graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a bachelor’s degree in Government, and she earned her master in business administration degree from Harvard Business School.
Michael G. Vicari is the Vice President of Sales for XDx. He brings 27 years of industry experience in sales, sales/clinical training, managed care, payer relations, and sales management. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Monogram Biosciences. He has held senior sales management positions at several biotechnology companies, including Genentech, Neurex, Medimmune, and Corixa. Mike received his bachelor’s degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco.