Vortex Team
Our team includes top scientists and medical doctors who have discovered, developed, and patented novel compounds and drugs and who have helped to shape cutting edge biotechnology research and application.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Kraft, M. D.
Before founding Vortex Biotechnology, Dr. Kraft was Director of two National Cancer Institute Cancer (NCI) Centers, the University of Arizona, and the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) from 2004 to 2019. During his career as an award winning scientist and physician, he has driven the development of novel anticancer compounds both in the clinic and the laboratory.
As Cancer Center Director, Dr. Kraft was responsible for recruiting and developing scientists, originating drug discovery, generating novel agents in the laboratory, and phase 1-3 trials in the clinic. He is both the founder of Vortex Biotechnology and the laboratory developer of the company’s lead compound VBT-34.
Dr. Kraft has written over 160 scientific articles focused on the control of cancer growth and signaling across the cancer spectrum. He has been awarded a Yamagiwa-Yoshida UICC International Grant and a Visiting Professorship at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prior to being a Cancer Center Director, he was Chief of the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center from 1996-2004. In 2010, at MUSC he was named a Distinguished University Professor.
Dr. Kraft received his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania and laboratory and clinical training at the National Cancer Institute.
Scientific Advisors
Xuedong Liu, Ph.D.
Xuedong Liu is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Colorado- Boulder and has been on faculty since 2000. Professor Liu’s research interests include biochemistry and systems biology of cell signaling in normal and cancer cells. Professor Liu is co-founder of OnKure, Inc and founder of Vesicle Therapeutics, Inc. His lab discovered and patented a profile-specific histone deacetylase inhibitor, which has entered phase II clinical trials. He received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994 with Professor Janet Mertz at McArdle
Laboratory for Cancer Research. He was an NIH and DOD postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research with Professor Harvey F. Lodish at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Liu is
the recipient of the Inventor of the Year Award in 2013 from the University of Colorado.
Michael Bristow, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Bristow is a Professor of Medicine and the former Head of Cardiology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Dr. Bristow was one of the founders of Myogen, Inc. and served as Myogen’s Chief Science and
Medical Officer from October 1996 to February 2006 until the acquisition of Myogen by Gilead Sciences, Inc. in November 2006. Dr. Bristow founded ARCA Biopharma in 2004 which is currently listed on the NASDAQ. He is
member of the Board of Directors and since July 2009 has also served as the Company’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Bristow has extensive experience as a medical researcher and drug developer with a
focus on cardiovascular disease and heart failure and as a founder and manager of a public pharmaceutical company. Dr. Bristow holds a M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and did his internal medicine and
cardiology fellowship training at Stanford University, where he is a board member of their Cardiovascular Institute. He has authored or coauthored over 450 publications.
Paul Bunn, M.D.
Dr. Bunn is Distinguished Professor and the James Dudley endowed Professor of Lung Cancer research at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and School of Medicine. Dr. Bunn is a past President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2002-2003) and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (1994-1997). Dr. Bunn and his laboratory have studied the role of growth factor signaling in lung cancer since he moved to the University of Colorado in 1984. Over this period, Dr. Bunn has been involved in clinical trials of novel therapies and biomarkers for lung cancer including serving as PI on the Lung Cancer Mutation grants and trials of LCMC 1 through 3. He is a highly decorated oncologist having received multiple awards including the ASCO Karnofsky Award (2016), Distinguished University Professor (2013), Addario Foundation Award (2008), and AAAS Fellow (2006). Dr. Bunn was the Principal Investigator on the Univ. of Colorado Cancer Center grant from 1986-2004 and the Lung Cancer SPORE from 1992-2019. Dr. Bunn serves on the external Scientific Advisory Boards for several Cancer Centers and SPOREs and program project grants. Dr. Bunn is on the scientific advisory board of multiple start-up companies.
Daniel LaBarbera Ph.D.
Dr. LaBarbera is the founding Director of the Center for Drug Discovery(CDD) at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and the School of Pharmacy. This state-of-the-art facility, features robotic automation and instrumentation from PerkinElmer and other leading vendors and maintains a diverse in house 125,000 compound library. In addition, he has built a multidisciplinary research program focused on cancer drug discovery including: (1) high-throughput and high-content screening (HTS/HCS); (2) in vitro and in vivo lead compound mechanism of action determination and pharmacology; (3) computer aided drug design and medicinal chemistry. Dr. LaBarbera received his graduate training at Arizona State University focused on drug design, medicinal chemistry, and mechanism of action studies of novel antitumor agents and their respective molecular target(s). He completed his post-doctoral training at the University of Utah where he conducted multidisciplinary cancer research at the School of Pharmacy, Huntsman Cancer Institute. He has been continually funded by the NIH, the DoD CDMRP, the State of Colorado, and multiple foundation grants.
James Zwiebel M.D.
Dr. James Zwiebel is the former Chief of the Investigational Drug Branch at the National Cancer Institute. He and his staff worked with investigators and industry to bring promising new cancer therapies into the clinic. Currently, he has been working as a Biotech and Pharma consultant for over 4 years. He received his MD degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he also completed his residency training in internal medicine. Following a clinical fellowship in hematology and oncology at the George Washington University Medical Center and research fellowships at both the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, he continued his laboratory work on cancer gene therapy as a member of the faculty at Lombardi Cancer Center of the Georgetown
University Medical Center, where he also practiced hematology and oncology.