Chicago, IL and Cincinnati, OH, February 14, 2024 — Sus Clinicals, Inc.® announced today that Dr. Lawrence Schook has been elected to the Company’s Board of Directors.
“I’m delighted that my friend and co-founder has joined the Board,” said Jeffrey D. Weedman, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chair, Board of Directors. “I recall vividly when I met Larry, and he told me of the work he and his University of Illinois team were doing to accelerate cancer research with a novel preclinical porcine model. We both saw the potential not only to create a company together, but to help cancer researchers save lives.”
Sus Clinicals accelerates qualification of life-saving cancer therapeutics through proprietary pig-based pre-clinical testing services. Known as the Oncopig Cancer Model® (OCM), this highly predictive approach can more quickly identify drugs, diagnostics and devices that have the highest potential for success in human clinical trials. The Model allows Sus Clinicals’ clients to focus their resources and advance the most promising leads more quickly to in-market success.
Sus Clinicals is the exclusive global licensee of intellectual property from the University of Illinois (UI) related to the OCM. The OCM allows for the induction of relevant tumors on demand in the genetically-modified Oncopigs, providing researchers with a predictive model of potential results in humans. The patent-pending protocols help cancer researchers accelerate development and qualification of various medicines, devices, immunotherapies and diagnostics across a range of cancers.
“I’m honored to be joining the Board” said Dr. Schook. “Our whole team has made such tremendous progress since we stood up the Company in 2020. With FDA clearance last year and growing experience with our Oncopig® platform, I’m excited to continue our efforts to scale this capability broadly.”
Dr. Schook, who is also the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), led the team which developed the technology. “We’ve successfully bred hundreds of animals and induced dozens of tumors over the past few years,” said Dr. Schook. “Now we are taking our preclinical platform to cancer researchers who are in need of a large animal model that’s predictive of human response.”
In addition to Weedman, remaining on the Board are Geoffrey T. Marshall, Chief Financial Officer, and Stephen J. Baggott, Chief Operating Officer. Marshall and Baggott lead the Company’s commercial operations, and are based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Most of the Company’s scientific and technical team is based at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) Incubator Laboratory Facility, where the bulk of the Company’s research is conducted.
“Larry has been key in developing the vision and leading the scientific focus of Sus Clinicals, and now is the time to formalize his position as director” said Weedman. “Having him join the Board reinforces the critical role he plays in our future growth and development. As a world-renowned leader in the use of pigs as a biomedical model and the developer of our platform, Larry is without a doubt the ‘heart and soul’ of this Company.”
Dr. Schook received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Albion College and a master’s degree and a PhD from Wayne State University School of Medicine. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Clinical Immunology in Switzerland and the University of Michigan.
Prior to his career at the University of Illinois, he held faculty and administrative positions at the University of Minnesota. He was associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Veterinary Medicine and co-chaired the Provost’s Research Design Team for the Academic Health Center. In addition, he was the founding director of the Food Animal Biotechnology Center and the Advanced Genomic Analysis Center.
While at the University of Illinois, Dr. Schook served as a professor of animal sciences, bioengineering, pathobiology, nutritional sciences, and pathology and surgery. In addition, Dr. Schook served as director of biomedical sciences, and was vice president for research at the University of Illinois. In this role he was responsible for over $1 billion in research across all University of Illinois campuses. He oversaw all technology commercialization and startup activities supporting the University’s economic development mission. Under his leadership, the University of Illinois was ranked #11 on the “Top 100 Worldwide Universities Granted U.S. Utility Patents” list.
In his role as a leader in the porcine research space, Dr. Schook led the global team which sequenced the pig genome in 2012. This work led to important foundational knowledge which supported the creation of the Oncopig Cancer Model.
Dr. Schook currently serves on the Albion College Board of Trustees, where he is a member of the executive committee and co-chairs the People and Talent Committee.
