​We are committed to serving patients with respiratory distress and making a positive impact in their lives!
​“KAER Biotherapeutics’ mission is to affect a life-saving transformation of acute respiratory ailments.” – Donovan Yeates, PhD, CEO and Founder of KAER.
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Throughout its journey, KAER has attracted exceptional leaders and scientists from various pharmaceuticals to serve as KAER’s Directors, scientific advisors, clinical advisors and regulatory advisors.
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Meet our team below...
Donovan Yeates, Ph.D.
CEO & Founder
Walter Flicker, M.Bio, MedEng.
Director
Johnathan Phillips, Ph.D.
Director
Donovan Yeates, PhD, Founder and CEO of KAER Biotherapeutics Corporation: Dr. Yeates innate inquisition and drive led him to study physics, radiation physics, and medical biophysics. These specializations led to multiple scientific discoveries and the development of new products for nuclear instrumentations, mucus rheology, respiratory physiology devices as well as aerosol generation and delivery systems. Dr. Yeates rose through academic ranks to become a tenured professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and a Senior Career Scientist within the Veterans Administration. As a faculty in the Department of Medicine, he created the Section of Environmental and Occupation Medicine in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Yeates was the founder and CEO of BioTechPlex, an incubator company, which included the generation and delivery technology devices for patients and small and large animals. Dr. Yeates pursued these devices to fulfill unmet respiratory clinical needs that included the delivery of high concentrations of respiratory aerosols generated from viscous and complex molecular API’s. KAER Biotherapeutics produced AeroPulsR, SUPRAER, and SUPRAER-Clinic. These products are targeted at the treatment of pediatric and adult patients in critical care units as well as animal healthcare. Dr. Yeates, is an emeritus professor with over 90 publications and 27 patents. He is a past president of the Chicago Thoracic Society and served on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Biotechnology Organization (IBIO). He has a Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto.
Walter Flicker, M.BioMedEng., Mr. Flicker has broad experience in the development and commercialization of CPAP and bi-level respiratory assist devices for sleep apnea involving product development, regulatory approval and marketing strategies. Mr. Flicker was the initial CFO of ResMed Inc (1989 – 1995) and was responsible for helping take the company from its founding to its public listing on Nasdaq. As CFO Mr. Flicker was responsible for capital raising, financial reporting and financial control and treasury functions. After the Company’s Nasdaq listing, Mr. Flicker held positions as Vice President Corporate Development, Vice President, US Operations and Vice President, Assistant to the Chairman of ResMed. Since leaving ResMed in 2003, Mr Flicker has held Vice President roles at Respiratory Technology Corp, which introduced the non-invasive Dx-Ph system for gastric reflux monitoring, and at Sommetrics Inc which is completing its phase 3 trial of a novel sleep apnea treatment device. He is also a Director of ResQdevices Ltd, and an advisor to Hoffman Laboratories LLC and Sonomedical Ltd.
Dr. Anthony J. Hickey, PhD, DSc.: Dr. Hickey is Professor Emeritus of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering of the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Great Britain, the Royal Society of Biology, the Royal Society of Medicine and the National Academy of Inventors. He received the David W Grant Award in Physical Pharmacy of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists; Thomas T Mercer Joint Prize for Excellence in Inhaled Medicines and Pharmaceutical Aerosols of the American Association for Aerosol Research and the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine, the Ralph Shangraw Memorial Award for Excipient and Excipient Technology of the International Pharmaceutical Excipient Consortium Foundation. He is the founder (and formerly President and CEO) of Cirrus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; founder (formerly CSO) of Oriel Therapeutics, Inc.; CEO of Astartein, LLC., member, Board of Directors of Inspiring Holdings Pty Ltd, and KAER Biotherapeutics; Chair, USP Joint Sub-Committee on Nanotechnology, member, USP Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms Expert Committee (DFEC) and the Aerosols Sub-Committee of the DFEC.
Jonathan E. Phillips, MSc, PhD: Dr. Phillips is a Scientific Director at Amgen and is responsible for Inflammation Therapeutic Area Research and Development for respiratory diseases. He has built pre-clinical inhaled drug discovery platforms at Schering-Plough/Merck, Roche, and Amgen. His notable work includes the discovery of six drugs selected for clinical development and he has held critical leadership positions in multiple business development transactions. He is an expert in pulmonary mechanics/inhaled drug delivery and is currently the global discovery research lead for AMG 104, an inhaled dry powder anti-TSLP Fab in phase 2 clinical trials for the treatment of asthma.
Gur Jai Pal Singh, Ph.D.
Regulatory Advisor
Sai Siva Kare, Ph.D.
Sr. Medical Product Mechanical Engineer
Collin Scott, Ph.D.
Director (Medical)
Gary Byram, Ph.D.
Market Value Advisor
Stephen Shrewsbury, M.D.
Business & Scientific Advisor
Craig Wegner, Ph.D.
Scientific Advisor
Collin Scott, M.B., CH.B. Medical Advisor: Dr. Scott has worked in the pharmaceutical industry in big pharma, biotech start-ups and consultancy, spanning the US, EU, Japan, Australasia and the Republic of South Africa. His accomplishments have been in the development and regulation of drugs, biologics, and devices in respiratory diseases, allergy and dermatology. He has specialized in drug delivery, including the development of inhalers. He has been involved with the filing of 13 INDS and 17 NDA’s and overseen the preclinical pharmacology and toxicology as well as IND enabling programs for 5 IND’s. This included working with animal models and centers for preclinical pharmacology and toxicology. Dr. Scott has been actively involved in the development of a variety of therapeutic modalities for delivery by oral inhalation as well as via ventilator ports. These include new chemical entities e.g., antibiotics, corticosteroids, bronchodilators, anti-inflammatories, anticholinergics, leukotriene antagonists, biofilm disruptors and anti-virulence factors as well as the topical delivery to the lung of biologics including alpha 1-antitrypsin and matrix metalloproteinases. These have been evaluated in a variety of disease entities including asthma, COPD, emphysema, hereditary emphysema, cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis and pneumonia. Dr. Scott has been involved with in-licensing, out-licensing and merger and acquisition activities. He received his M.B., and CH.B. from the University of Glasgow.
Gary Byram, PhD: Gary B. Byram, PhD: Marketing and Value Proposition Advisor for KAER. Previously he was a Partner in Oliver Wyman’s Health and Life Sciences Practice and with Accenture’s Communications and High-Tech Practice as well as a senior Marketing and Product Development executive in the High-Tech industry. Dr. Byram has been working in healthcare for over 25 years. Currently, he is a strategy consultant across the Healthcare Landscape but primarily focuses on working with healthcare startups. He received his PhD in Behavioral Sciences from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Stephen B. Shrewsbury (MD): Dr. Shrewsbury qualified MB ChB in Medicine from The University of Liverpool, UK. He spent his first 13 years in UK clinical practice in primary care and pulmonary medicine, before joining Allen & Hanburys in 1993 and accepting honorary clinical positions at both the Department of Child Health at Southampton University and then the Department of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the National Heart and Lung Institute in London. In 2000, he moved to the US to lead Glaxo’s inhaled fluticasone and Upper Respiratory Inflammatory Disorders programs. He then led Chiron’s Inhaled Antibiotic Core Team from 2002 and participated in the International Pharmaceutical Aerosol Consortium’s Board of Science before joining MAP Pharmaceuticals to run 4 inhaled drug programs. Steve was subsequently CMO to Adamas Pharmaceuticals, and then AVI BioPharma (now Sarepta Therapeutics), before moving in 2013 to Aquinox Pharmaceuticals in Vancouver, BC, who he also helped take public. Steve returned from Canada in March 2017 as CMO to Impel Pharmaceuticals. He led drug-device combination product programs delivering drugs to the novel, upper nasal space, in migraine, acute agitation and Parkinson’s disease. Since 2011, through his Shrewd Consulting business, Steve has consulted for multiple US- and non-US-based companies developing inhaled or intranasally administered products, and other non-oral biologics programs and advised Venture Capitalists especially on inhaled drug projects.
Craig Wegner, PhD: Dr. Wegner is a veteran of partnerships. He retired in 2018 after 37 years as a respiratory and inflammation/immunology R&D and translational medicine scientist at 5 different large pharmaceutical companies. Over the last 25 years of his career, he was involved (often as the lead) in the scientific evaluation team and licensing deal negotiation team for multiple partnerships while at Abbott, then Pfizer and finally AstraZeneca (AZ). At AZ he created AZ’s “Open Innovation” platform which led to several in-license and out-license successes.
Ron Wolff, PhD, RK Wolff – Safety Consulting Inc.: Dr. Wolff is an experienced independent consultant. He was an Executive Director of Preclinical Safety Assessment for Novartis, Senior Fellow at Nektar Therapeutics, as well as time spent at Eli Lilly and Lovelace Biomedical. Dr. Wolff has experience in toxicology in a wide range of areas, including oncology, endocrine, respiratory, infectious disease, and biologics with special expertise in inhalation toxicology with applications to pharmaceuticals and environmental and occupational health. He has been involved in the development of several inhaled drugs and has published more than 150 articles on topics including inhalation toxicology, pharmaceutical aerosols, leachables and extractables, and oncology. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology, a former member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Aerosols in Medicine, and is a Past-President of the American Association for Aerosol Research.
Gur Jai Pal Singh, PhD: Dr. Singh is the Chief Scientific Advisor at the BBSG Pharm Associates since June 2023. Before that he served as a Senior VP and headed a Pharma Company’s Respiratory Centre of Excellence - providing end-to-end hands-on leadership for state-of-the-art development of inhalation drug products. Under his leadership, several orally inhaled products have been successfully developed for the US, EU, and other geographies. Before coming to leadership roles in the private industry, Dr. Singh had a 15-years career at the US FDA with the designation of Senior Expert for Orally Inhaled and Nasal Drug Products (OINDP) - making key contributions to the Agency development of guidelines for OINDP. He has participated by invitation in several expert panels debating regulatory and product development issues related to respiratory drug products, and given invited lectures at lead international forums including, but not limited to, Respiratory Drug Delivery Conferences in the US and EU, International Society for Aerosols in Medicine, Pulmonary Drug Delivery Conference, Product Quality Research Institute (FDA-Academia-Industry), and IPAC-RS conferences.
Sai Siva Kare, PhD: Dr. Kare is a Sr. Medical Product Mechanical Engineer at KAER and has been instrumental in the transformation of two prototypes, SUPRAER, and AeroPulsR, into two clinical products designed to generate and deliver high concentrations of therapeutic agents, including pulmonary surfactant in critical patents with respiratory insufficiency critical patents. He reconfigured AeroPulsR with novel technologies and functionalities unavailable in any other aerosol generation and delivery device. He also simplified laboratory model of SUPRAER for patient and clinician use. Dr. Kare continues to ensure its GMP and regulatory controls of these products. Dr. Kare was involved in the invention of multiple novel aspects and submissions of patent applications. He completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His PhD research involved developing MEMS-based microfluidic devices for chemically stimulating photoreceptor degenerate retinae to generate artificial vision. These technologies enabled implantable drug delivery. In addition to his PhD, Dr. Kare served in several leadership positions in the university, notably as the President of UIC Graduate Student Council, where he represented 60 graduate departments within the University of Illinois System policies and decision making. He joined KAER Biotherapeutics after graduating in 2022 and continues to substantially develop KAER’s SUPRAER and AeroPulsR line of products.