August 30, 2018
Cardiol Therapeutics Appoints Mr. Chris Waddick as Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Anne Tomalin as Director of Regulatory Affairs, and Ms. Dolly Kao as Intellectual Property Counsel
Oakville, Ontario, August 30, 2018 - Cardiol Therapeutics Inc. (“Cardiol” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Chris Waddick, MBA, CPA, as Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Anne Tomalin, BA, BSc, RAC, as Director of Regulatory Affairs, and Ms. Dolly Kao, BSc, JD, as Intellectual Patent Counsel.
Mr. Chris Waddick, MBA, CPA, has thirty years of experience in financial and executive roles in the biotechnology and energy industries, with substantial knowledge of public company management and corporate governance, and in designing, building, and managing financial processes, procedures, and infrastructure. Mr. Waddick most recently served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for a private Ontario energy company where he was retained by the shareholders to refinance the company and establish a new strategic direction, as well as the appropriate financial infrastructure. During his tenure, he implemented two corporate restructurings, drove substantial earnings growth, and significantly reduced both cost of capital and debt levels. Mr. Waddick spent more than twelve years at Vasogen Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the research and commercial development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of heart failure and other inflammatory conditions. While serving as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, the company grew from start-up to an organization employing over 250 employees that established the necessary systems and infrastructure to advance an anti-inflammatory therapy through to the completion of an international multi-center pivotal trial involving 2,500 patients. Vasogen went public on the TSX and the NASDAQ, raising over $200 million to support corporate development and reached a market capitalization of over US$ 1 billion. Prior to Vasogen, he held progressively senior financial positions at Magna International Inc. and Union Gas Limited. Mr. Waddick is a CPA and earned a business degree from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Master of Business Administration from York University.
Ms. Anne Tomalin is the founder and currently Executive Director at TPIreg, a division of Innomar Strategies Inc. She has a strong background in business, government, regulations, and reimbursement policies and has practiced exclusively in regulatory affairs since 1971. In September 1996, Ms. Tomalin founded CanReg Inc. which became Canada’s largest Regulatory Affairs consulting firm with more than 100 staff, assisting clients with Health Canada, FDA, and EMA matters, before being acquired by OptumInsight in December 2009. Prior to this, she was employed by Searle Canada for 20 years as Business Unit Director. Ms. Tomalin has participated in the Regulatory Initiatives Advisory Committee for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association Canada (PMAC). She has also served on the executive of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Group (PSG) and the Canadian Association of Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs (CAPRA). Ms. Tomalin currently sits on the Advisory Board for CAPRA in Canada and has also chaired the Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ontario Committees for the PMAC, now Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC). She is engaged in teaching several regulatory courses to industry, has been an instructor at Humber College, and currently serves on their Advisory Panel. She has published numerous papers on regulatory affairs and issues. Ms. Tomalin is a graduate of York University with a BA in English and BSc in Chemistry and holds certifications from the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society in US, European, and Canadian Regulatory Affairs.
Ms. Dolly Kao is an intellectual property lawyer, a registered patent agent, and a registered trademark agent with over 20 years of experience gained at several leading IP firms in Toronto, Canada. She graduated with distinction from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Sciences in 1991. After earning a Juris Doctor degree from University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 1994, she was called to the bar of Ontario in 1996. In 1998, she became a registered Canadian and United States Patent and Trademark agent and has been practising exclusively in intellectual property (IP) for clients primarily in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries. Ms. Kao is well versed with Canada’s Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations, which provide an avenue for innovative drug companies to gain time-limited freedom from generic competition by listing patents on the Patent Register maintained by the Minister of Health. She has been managing large IP portfolios and is an expert in all areas of patents and trademarks, including providing a wide range of searches and opinions, drafting and filing applications and prosecuting them through to allowance, blocking grant of third-party patent and trademark applications, and participating in post-grant proceedings. Ms. Kao currently serves as Co-chair of the Newsletter Committee of the Chemical Patent Practice Committee of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA). She has lectured on patent law at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Law, served on the Bank of Speakers on behalf of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, as well as on Canada’s Patent Agent Examination Board, and spoken on the Patent Law Treaty on behalf of the Canadian Institute.
“We are extremely fortunate to continue to attract such highly distinguished and accomplished individuals to our team; they bring a wealth of experience and expertise in their respective fields to Cardiol,” stated David Elsley, President & CEO of Cardiol. “We look forward to benefiting from their guidance and stewardship as we advance our development of innovative approaches to the treatment of heart failure and commercial introduction of pharmaceutical cannabinoid products to the rapidly growing market for medicinal cannabinoids.”
About Cardiol Therapeutics
Cardiol Therapeutics, www.cardiolrx.com, is a nanotherapeutics company focused on the research and commercial development of proprietary drug formulations for the treatment of heart failure. The Company is collaborating with researchers and opinion leaders at international centers of excellence to leverage multidisciplinary expertise in drug delivery, drug formulation, nanotherapeutics, cardiac physiology, and heart failure. These research collaborations provide Cardiol with the optimal platform on which to pursue the commercial development of important anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic therapies for heart failure. Heart failure is a chronic condition affecting over six million adults in Canada and the United States and it remains a leading cause of death and hospitalization, with associated healthcare costs exceeding $30 billion annually. Approximately half of all heart failure patients have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), for which there have been no new therapies developed in over 20 years. Cardiol is developing CTX01, a proprietary nanoformulation of pharmaceutical cannabidiol for the treatment of HFpEF. Cannabidiol has been shown to attenuate cardiac dysfunction in experimental models of diabetic cardiomyopathy and to decrease oxidative stress, fibrosis, and inflammation in other models relevant to HFpEF. CTX01 is designed to optimize and maintain blood levels of cannabidiol and target the drug to areas of inflammation in the heart. Cardiol is also developing CTX02, a proprietary nanoformulation of methotrexate, and CTX03, a proprietary nanoformulation of encapsulated Cyclosporine A (CsA), both for the treatment of heart failure. Additionally, in collaboration with the Company’s exclusive manufacturing partner Dalton Pharma Services, Cardiol is developing unique manufacturing expertise in the production of pharmaceutically-produced cannabinoids. With the de-scheduling of cannabinoids from the Canadian Controlled Drug Substance Act to occur on October 17, 2018, Cardiol believes there is a significant opportunity to utilize this manufacturing expertise to produce pharmaceutical cannabinoids for commercial introduction to the growing market for medicinal cannabinoids.
