Doug is a seasoned scientific leader with extensive experience in rare diseases, translational medicine and analytical development. Doug’s experience includes graduate work performing natural history characterization of larger animal models of lysosomal diseases and developing a more complete understanding of subpopulations of stem cells in the bone marrow compartment that might be amenable to stem cell and ex vivo gene therapy applications.

Most recently, Doug led the Analytical Sciences team at Affinia Therapeutics, a startup AAV gene therapy company working to develop next-generation AAV capsids with specific targeting, safety and manufacturing characteristics to address some of the common challenges with AAV-mediated gene therapy. Previously, Doug worked as a diagnostic development scientist at Novartis and EMD Serono in the Companion Diagnostics groups. At Sarepta Therapeutics, Doug led the Translational Development laboratory, where his group was responsible for developing methods to measure dystrophin protein production and other biomarkers in patients from Sarepta’s PMO and gene therapy clinical trials.

Doug holds a Ph.D. in Veterinary Pathobiology from the University of Missouri and has published multiple articles in the field of neurodegenerative disease animal models and biomarkers.