Board Members & Committees

Currently Chairman of Chilean Metals Inc, formerly International PBX Ventures, where he was CEO from 2012 to 2016. Mr. Lynch has had a varied and successful career focused on start-up and turn around opportunities in Energy, Technology, Bio-Technology, Mining, Media, and Industrials.

A Graduate of St. Francis Xavier University BBA with a joint-honors in Economics, Mr. Lynch started his career in commercial real estate in Calgary in 1981, eventually moving to Toronto in 1986 in the same field, and left a successful practice to launch his first start-up company Pallet. Pallet would grow from idea to a run rate of over $200 Million in sales over the course of four years as it grew into North America’s largest manufacturer of wooden pallets.

Ms. Deborah Brown is Managing Partner of Accelera Canada Ltd., a specialty consultancy firm that assists emerging biopharma ventures with the development and implementation of their Canadian market strategy. She has extensive North American leadership experience, having held progressively senior roles at EMD Serono (a division of Merck KGaA, Merck Serono) from 2000 to 2014, including Executive Vice President of Neuroimmunology for the company’s U.S. operations, and President and General Manager of the company’s Canadian operations. During her 15 years at EMD Serono Canada, Ms. Brown led the organization through a period of unprecedented growth from a small $10 million affiliate to a mid-sized pharma business with a diversified portfolio generating $150 million in revenue. She led the successful and most critical product launch in Serono’s company history in the United States, resulting in a blockbuster product.

In 2009, Ms. Brown was inducted into the Canadian Healthcare Marketing Hall of Fame and in 2012, she chaired the National Pharmaceutical Organization (now Innovative Medicines Canada) and served on its Board of Directors from 2007 to 2014. Currently, she sits on the Boards of Life Sciences Ontario, Oncolytics Biotech Inc., the Strategic Executive Advisory Council for Canadian Cancer Trials Group, and her local SPCA. Ms. Brown holds an MBA from University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business, a B.Sc. (Hons). from the University of Guelph and completed the Merck Executive MBA Program at the University of Hong Kong, INSEAD, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the Harvard University Advanced Negotiation Skills program.

Board certified in Cardiovascular Disease and Advanced Heart Failure/Transplant Cardiology, Dr. Guillermo Torre-Amione is former chief of the Heart Failure Division and former medical director of Cardiac Transplantation at the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center. He also is a senior member at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, full professor of medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, New York, and, more recently, became President of TecSalud, an academic medical center and medical school of the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico.

Dr. Torre-Amione spearheads the Gene and Judy Campbell Laboratory for Cardiac Transplant Research, where his primary areas of research include heart failure, cardiac transplant, and the role of the immune response in modulating the progression of heart failure. Dr. Torre-Amione initiated a series of clinical studies that led to an FDA-approved phase II clinical trial of neurostimulation in heart failure, a novel approach to the treatment of patients with advanced heart failure. Other significant clinical investigations include a study with cardiac transplant patients designed to impact the cardiac hypertrophy that naturally follows transplantation, a protocol for autologous stem cell transfer in patients with advanced refractory heart failure, and a novel study involving plasma exchange in advanced heart failure patients.

After receiving his medical degree from the ITESM in Monterrey, Mexico, Dr. Torre-Amione moved to Chicago, where he conducted graduate studies in immunology that led to a doctorate degree in immunology from the University of Chicago. He then moved to Houston to complete his internship, residency, and cardiology fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine, where he received his first academic appointment as a clinical instructor in 1995. Dr. Torre-Amione has published more than 170 manuscripts in peer-review journals and currently divides his time between his clinical and academic activities in Houston at The Methodist Hospital and in Monterrey, Mexico, at ITESM.

Mr. Pekos is a veteran of the pharmaceutical services industry who founded Dalton Pharma Services (Dalton) in 1986, and over a period of 30 years directed its growth based on strong client relationships. In a world-class 42,000 square foot facility with more than 110 employees in the heart of one of North America’s largest biomedical clusters, Dalton provides pharma and biotech clients with an array of integrated services. This includes premium contract chemistry research, a full range of analytical support, medicinal chemistry, formulation, cGMP manufacture of solid dosage forms, and cGMP aseptic fill in vials and syringes.

Mr Pekos continues to serve Dalton as President & CEO, guiding the evolution of the company to serve best the changing needs of its clients, which are in all of the major global economies and include the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. The range of services extends from discovery research up to commercial production. In addition to innovative drug molecules, the company’s expertise extends to custom peptides and conjugation of active pharmaceutical ingredients and fluorophores with polymers and antibodies.

In 1983, Mr Pekos obtained a Chemistry/Biochemistry Double Specialist Degree with a Minor in Biology from the University of Toronto. In 1986 he completed a Masters Degree in synthetic chemistry at York University, and with his Professor Doug Butler founded Dalton with a very modest amount of capital. The company used incubator facilities at York University, and initially manufactured and sold specialty chemical compounds.

Mr. Pekos also founded Ashbury Biologicals, Inc., a phyto-pharmaceutical company, Jupiter Consumer Products, a company that targeted the development of adult-focused confections and several other technology-based companies focused on advanced materials and pharmaceutical development tools.

Mr. Pekos has served on the Scientific Advisory Board for Lab Business, one of the biotechnology publications of Jesmar Communications, and on the Business Advisory Board for Critical Outcome Technologies, Inc., a publicly owned Canadian drug discovery company and is a member of the editorial board of Biotechnology Focus, a leading Bio-business magazine in Canada.

Mr Pekos is currently on the board and was founding Chairman of ventureLAB a Regional Innovation Center located at IBM’s York Region campus. VentureLAB guides government program delivery to support the innovation ecosystem for biotechnology and related industries in southern Ontario.

Mr Pekos is an active Angel Investor and has invested in several start-ups focused on novel cancer therapeutics, Orphan diseases, and vaccine technologies.

As a York University and University of Toronto Alumni and Donor, Mr Pekos actively supports scholarship funds at both York University and the University of Toronto.