56. Turning cancer on itself, Sam Mazin, Founder and CTO, Thorsten Melcher, CBO, RefleXion

Samuel Mazin, Ph.D. Founder and Chief Technology Officer Member, Board of Directors Sam Mazin, Ph.D., co-founded RefleXion Medical in 2009, where he is the inventor of the company’s core technology. While a postdoctoral researcher in Radiology at Stanford University, Dr. Mazin was selected by the Kauffman Foundation as one of 13 postdocs in the nation to commercialize promising innovations. His prior research at Stanford was focused on the design of a novel X-ray computed tomography (CT) system, resulting in several journal papers and a patent, as well as the Joel Drillings Award from the American Heart Association (AHA). His work on a PET-based algorithm received the prestigious Cum Laude award from the SPIE international medical imaging society. He has been invited to speak about biology-guided radiotherapy by cancer centers worldwide. Dr. Mazin received a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and he holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Thorsten Melcher, Ph.D. Chief Business Officer Thorsten Melcher, Ph.D., joined RefleXion in July 2019 as chief business officer with over 25 years of experience in biotechnology and pharmaceutical business development. Most recently, Dr. Melcher served as CBO for Xyphos Biosciences, a startup developing next-generation CAR-T products. Previously, he served as senior director of new ventures at J&J, where he championed business development projects focusing on therapeutics in oncology and neuroscience. Dr. Melcher was also vice president at Varian Medical, where he developed a strategy to integrate radiotherapy with diagnostics and therapeutics to improve combination cancer treatment. His other past tenures include co-founding three biotech companies. Dr. Melcher received a Master of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Hannover and he holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Heidelberg University. He completed postdoctoral research in Molecular Biology at the University of California, San Francisco, and was previously on RefleXion’s scientific advisory board.