About Us

Organization

Vitalea Science is a leading contract research organization that provides ultra-sensitive detection strategies for drugs and drug candidates at microdose levels. Situated in Davis, California, the company was formed in 2003 by chemists and physicists from the University of California.

Leadership Team

President and Chief Executive Officer: Stephen R. Dueker, PhD.
Chief Operating Officer: Le Thuy Vuong, M.B.A., Ph.D.
Director, Bioanalysis Lab: Pete Lohstroh, Ph.D.
Director, AMS Lab: Jason Giacomo, Ph.D.
IT Administrator: Steve Edberg

Scientific Advisory Board

John Vogel, Ph.D.
Bruce Hammock, Ph.D.
James Harris, Ph.D.
Luis Ruzo, Ph.D.
Robert Ings, Ph.D.
Edmund Capparelli, Pharm. D.

Business Services

Human Resources: Nancy Allardyce, SPHR
Allardyce Resources, LLC, Tel. 916.765.6948
Finance and Accounting: Andrew Newman, C.P.A.
Newman Associates, Davis, CA 95618

Biographies

Stephen R. Dueker, Ph.D.

Dr. Dueker is an internationally recognized authority on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry for human metabolism studies. He was a faculty member at the University of California at Davis (UCD) for 8 years prior to co-founding Vitalea Science in 2004. He has 40 peer reviewed publications, book chapters and review articles and is a frequently invited speaker at domestic and international conferences. He conducted the first human microdose studies as a Faculty Research Professor at UCD in collaboration with Dr. John Vogel, now Vitalea's Scientific Advisor. He has assembled an impressive scientific and management team that is well-positioned for growth into international markets through franchising of Vitalea's unique technology and expertise.

Le Thuy Vuong, M.B.A., Ph.D.

Dr. Vuong participated in the Executive Education program of the UCLA Anderson School of Management and received her Master in Business Administration from California Lutheran University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Nutrition Sciences and Epidemiology from the University of California at Davis (UCD). Her field of research focused in the roles of micronutrients in childhood development. She completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Western Human Nutrition Research Center at UCD, and the Cancer Research Center of the University of Hawaii. Subsequently, Dr. Vuong consulted in the field of Food and Nutrition research, and pioneered the use of AMS to study bio-conversion of beta-carotene to retinol in infants. In 2003, Dr. Vuong co-founded Vitalea Science, Inc.. She oversees day-to-day business operations, and is instrumental in Vitalea's expansion, the procuring of the BioMicadas^TM, and the application of AMS in pediatric clinical research and development. In 2007, she received an SBIR award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for applying AMS to study drug disposition in pediatrics.

Pete Lohstroh, Ph.D.

Dr. Pete Lohstroh is a Senior Scientist at Vitalea Science. In this capacity he oversees the operations of the Bioanalytical Group. Dr. Lohstroh's long-standing research interests include nanoparticle drug delivery of active biological API, biomarker development, and multi-platform bioanalytical assay development. In addition to his industry experience, Dr. Lohstroh conducted original research and managed laboratories for over 19 years in the areas of nanopharmacology, reproductive biology and toxicology, biochemistry, and molecular virology at UC Davis. Dr. Lohstroh is member of The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.

Jason Giacomo, Ph.D.

Dr. Giacomo is an experimental physicist from the University of California, Davis. He has worked with many state of the art instruments in his career as a physicist including the Spin Spectroscopy Facility on Undulator Beamline 7.0 and the Photo Emission Electron Microscopy Facility on Bend Magnet Beamline 7.3.1 at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab a cyclotron particle accelerator. He has designed and constructed various high value scientific equipment and electronics to meet ever more demanding scientific goals. Dr. Giacomo has trained under the guidance of the Paul Scherrer Institute/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Ion Beam Physics Group in the theory and operation of AMS. He continues to collaborate with the Ion Beam Physics Group in Switzerland and with scientists at the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Tom Anderson, Ph.D.

Dr. Anderson joined the board of Vitalea in 2008, and was the company's first outside director. Dr. Anderson is the former CEO of Pediatric Bioscience, a Davis-based company with a focus in autism. In 1982, he co-founded Berkeley Antibody Company, Inc. (BAbCO) and served as its President and Chairman until its sale to Covance in 1998. After serving as a vice president of Covance for two years, Dr. Anderson pursued several consulting engagements with various biotechnology companies. Immediately prior to his role at Pediatric Bioscience, Dr. Anderson was CEO of Lipomics Technologies, a successful Davis/Sacramento area biotechnology firm that was recently acquired by Tethys. Bioscience. While leading Lipomics, Dr. Anderson successfully executed an angel round of funding followed by a venture capital round, directed the build-out and occupation of the company's first facility, staffed up the management team and initiated contracts with 11 of the world's top 12 pharmaceutical companies. He is a seasoned manager of new and growing biotechnology companies with a proven track record.

Dr. Anderson received his BA in Zoology from the University of Florida, his PhD in Physiology-Anatomy from UC Berkeley, and subsequently was a post-doctoral fellow at UC San Francisco. He has served on numerous boards.

Robert Bethem

Bob was a founding member of Alta Analytical Laboratory located near Vitalea Science in the California foothills. He was instrumental in driving the company from analytical startup to an established and valued market leader for LC-MS/MS bioanalytical services and a separate division that provides trace environmental analyses using high resolution GC/MS. His business philosophy of excellence in personalized service and flexible solutions for the most difficult analytical problems has garnered Alta an outstanding reputation across the pharmaceutical industry. It was this earned reputation that prompted the acquisition of Alta's bioanalytical services division by the international corporation Intertek in 2006. Bob is now the Chairman of the Board the retained portion of the company, Vista Analytical. He is a co-author of the book Trace Quantitative Analysis by Mass Spectrometry, published in 2009.

John Vogel, Ph.D.

Dr. Vogel was, until 2005, a Senior Scientist at the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL). He is distinguished as the founder and most recognizable proponent of biological Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. Dr. Vogel has published hundreds of scientific papers in the field of AMS including its key foundation papers that described the technical aspects of biological AMS. As a speaker, he is in high demand and is regularly invited to address key international meetings on topics ranging from AMS machinery to biomedical topics that have been advanced from the unique capabilities of AMS. Dr. Vogel holds several key patents in AMS technology, including applications in biomedical research.

Bruce Hammock, Ph.D.

Dr. Hammock is a distinguished Professor of Entomology & Cancer Research Center and Director of NIEHS-UCD Superfund Basic Research Program at University of California, Davis. Dr. Hammock's research efforts have had an exemplary impact on many different areas of biology, agriculture and medicine. He has received numerous academic awards including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Award in 1995 for his research contributions to U.S. agriculture and the Burroughs Welcome Toxicology Scholar Award from the Society of Toxicology in 1987. He was elected in 1999 to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors for scientists in the United States. He was an original adopter of AMS technology and has published many of the fundamental papers on applied AMS.

James Harris, Ph.D.

Dr. Harris is a Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Bioavailability Systems (BAS) and the sole inventor of all BAS patents. From 1991 to 1996, Dr. Harris worked for the FDA, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, ultimately becoming a key member in clinical pharmacology research. During that time he published papers on the elucidation of the metabolism of Taxol^TM by CYP 3A and the isolation of the principal Taxol^TM metabolite. Dr. Harris earned an MS and a PhD in Toxicology from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1989 and 1991 respectively, and a BS in Chemistry from Vanderbilt University in 1987.

Luis Ruzo, Ph.D.

Dr. Ruzo is founder and managing director of PTRL West. PTRL West is a full service contract research laboratory located in Hercules, California on the San Francisco Bay. The company was founded in 1987. Its sister company in Germany, PTRL Europe, has been in operation since 1992. PTRL West conducts studies needed to satisfy regulatory requirements in the areas of environmental fate, metabolism, and analysis of agrochemicals, industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Dr. Ruzo provides insight and market penetration into the enviromental/agrochemical testing area for which Vitalea's technology is well suited.

Robert Ings, Ph.D.

Dr. Ings brings an impressive resume covering 30 plus years in Europe and U.S. Pharmaceutical companies and, until recently, served as Vice President of DMPK at Roche Palo Alto. He presently is founder and President of RMI-Pharmacokinetics, a pharmaceutical consultancy firm grounded by his many years of experience in bringing effective drugs to market. Together, RMI and Vitalea will address two urgent industry needs for improving clinical drug evaluations: making key decisions earlier and more effectively as well as drug metabolite identification as early as the first-in-human trials.

Edmund Capparelli, Pharm. D.

Dr. Capparelli, Director, Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit (PPRU) & International Maternal, Pediatric and Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network Pharmacology Laboratory; Clinical Professor, Pediatrics Division of Pharmacology and Drug Discovery School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics and Skagg's School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences University of California, San Diego, will assist Vitalea in the development of tools for pediatric clinical pharmacology using Accelerator- technology, and particularly in applications in clinical trials of treatments of HIV/AIDS and related infections in pediatrics.