Anavasi Diagnostics Announces New Additions to Leadership Team

WOODINVILLE, Wash., Jan. 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Anavasi Diagnostics ('Anavasi'), a medical technology company focused on the development of novel molecular diagnostic testing, recently announced the addition of a Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Commercial Officer to its management roster. 

Scott Hales, Chief Financial Officer of Anavasi Diagnostics, has 30 years of financial, operational and strategic advisory experience across multiple service and manufacturing industries.  He has spent the last decade as a CFO, serving both entrepreneurial founders as well as publicly-traded and private equity investor owners. Most of Mr. Hales' 42 career transactions were at Citi Capital Strategies (then a division of Citigroup®), where he completed mergers and acquisitions, recapitalization and capital raising deals valued at $1 billion in the aggregate.  His most recent work in the life sciences sector has been to ensure that multiple venture clients have had the strategies, capital, systems, information, and reporting to successfully commercialize their intellectual property.

Guy Ellis, Chief Operating Officer of Anavasi Diagnostics, brings extensive healthcare and high-tech industry experience – particularly in companies that excelled in growing and transforming technology, global health, laboratories, professional services, and intellectual property. His work in a healthcare non-profit (Global Health Labs), an investment firm targeting new inventions (Intellectual Ventures Management), and a major IT powerhouse (Cisco) have all prepared him to help lead Anavasi toward the successful launch of the AscencioDx™ molecular detector and related test kits.  In his role, Ellis will oversee all Operations outside of Commercial and Financial functions.

James McMenamy, Chief Commercial Officer of Anavasi Diagnostics, brings 30 years of experience in global human and veterinary point of care (POC) clinical diagnostic product development, marketing and sales. Mr. McMenamy has moved among multi-billion-dollar corporations (Becton-Dickinson, Quidel, Samsung Medical Diagnostics) and early launch companies with high-growth potential, playing a key role in two In Vitro Diagnostics companies that sold for over $400 million combined.  McMenamy will oversee both the marketing and sales functions.

Mr. Hales, Mr. Ellis and Mr. McMenamy join a seasoned Executive Team, led by Nelson Patterson, Anavasi President and CEO. During his career, Mr. Patterson has moved between international conglomerates (Procter & Gamble, Baxter International) to early-launch, high-growth startups (SonoSite, Aerogen, HealthySole). While at Baxter, Mr. Patterson oversaw the purchase and integration of a $300 million firm, with a $235 million purchase price and investment of over $65 million in milestone payouts. His background also includes extensive new product design and development, production, fundraising, sales and marketing.

Anavasi Diagnostic's executive team boasts impressive experience in the healthcare, private equity and venture capital spaces, with a combined roster of more than eight successful exits at nearly $1 billion in total value.  Anavasi just completed a $6.0 million Seed Round (convertible note), a $2.6 million Founder's Round and is preparing for a Q1 2022 Series A announcement.

"Q4 2021 has been remarkably productive for the Company, highlighting the need to bolster our execution capacity with senior talent that can really hit the ground running," said Nelson Patterson, President & CEO of Anavasi Diagnostics. "Bringing these three individuals on board is timely, as they are joining a team with a strong problem-solving, 'over-delivering' culture and mindset. The particular financial, operational and commercial capabilities of Scott, Guy and Jim respectively, suit the mission of Anavasi well as we work to address the unmet needs in today's diagnostic testing environment. They round out a team collectively possessing the essential resources to accelerate our production cycle and become one of the primary suppliers to the rapidly adapting global testing market in 2022."

Under the leadership of the executive team, Anavasi is preparing for filing of an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its AscencioDx™ platform. In November 2021, the company was awarded $14.9 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative to accelerate the launch and broad market availability of the AscencioDx™ molecular diagnostic platform for the detection of RNA indicative of the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 virus.

About Anavasi Diagnostics
Anavasi Diagnostics is a rapidly growing medical technology company focused on saving lives by developing novel molecular diagnostic testing using a proprietary reverse transcriptase methodology (patent-pending).  As a spin-out of the University of Washington, Anavasi's technology platform was developed by renowned researchers in UW's bioengineering department.  The Company's quest to successfully commercialize this technology is led by top medical device and clinical diagnostics executives, manufacturing experts and a former Microsoft software veteran.  The team's combined experience has been responsible for the introduction of more than forty medical/diagnostic products and hundreds of peer-reviewed research publications.  More information can be obtained at https://anavasidx.com.

SOURCE Anavasi Diagnostics