Epic Sciences Announces Appointment of Dr. Murali Prahalad as President and CEO

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Epic Sciences, Inc. ("Epic"), a private biotech company that develops breakthrough cancer diagnostics, announced the appointment of Murali K. Prahalad, Ph.D. as president and CEO.  Dr. Prahalad was formerly vice president of Corporate Strategy at Life Technologies, where he helped shape the organic and inorganic investment priorities across Life Technologies' research tools, clinical diagnostic and applied market portfolios.

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"Dr. Prahalad has extensive experience in creating and leading global strategies for life science research tools and diagnostics as well as building innovative teams and forging productive partnerships," said Kim Kamdar, Ph.D., partner at Domain Associates. "We welcome Dr. Prahalad at this significant time in Epic's growth as the company begins global development and commercialization of important new diagnostic tests for detecting cancer and personalizing and monitoring cancer treatments."

Epic develops new diagnostic tests that isolate and characterize circulating tumor cells (CTCs) to assess the aggressiveness of a patient's cancer and provide physicians tools to personalize and monitor treatments. CTCs are cells that escape from solid tumors and enter the bloodstream. A blood test that can accurately count CTCs in a patient's blood and profile biomarkers within those CTCs is easy to conduct frequently and can give essential, real-time information that enables the tailoring of treatments to a patient's specific cancer type.

"The team at Epic has quickly proven and developed a complete technology platform that can detect, quantify and molecularly characterize rare, circulating tumor cells. They have also developed significant partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, leading academic labs and research institutions to advance Epic's technology for companion diagnostics and new cancer detection tests," said Dr. Prahalad, president and CEO of Epic Sciences. "I look forward to working with the team and our partners to build a robust pipeline of new diagnostic tests that improve cancer detection and treatment for patients globally."

Dr. Prahalad was with Life Technologies since 2005, where he held multiple positions of increasing responsibility.  His experience at Life Technologies ranged from mergers and acquisitions to in-licensing and general management, where he led large businesses that spanned genomics to cell biology.  As a general manager, he had to grow revenue and profit by building stronger teams, driving innovation and managing operations for both consumable and instrument portfolios.

Portfolios of note and relevance to Epic included Molecular Probes®, transfection (Lipofectamine®), custom primers and research antibodies in addition to Life Technologies imaging instrumentation (FLoID®, TALI®, Countess®) and flow cytometry platforms (Attune®). Prior to Life Technologies, he was vice president of Business Development at Sequenom, Inc. In addition, Dr. Prahalad has held roles as a consultant at The Advisory Board Company and as an analyst at Gemini Consulting in Tokyo. He is also proficient and literate in several languages including Japanese, French and Kannada. Dr. Prahalad received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular pharmacology and an M.S. in medical sciences from Harvard University, and he received his a B.S. with honors in cellular and molecular biology and economics from the University of Michigan. 

About Epic Sciences

Epic Sciences, Inc. is a privately held company that is developing new diagnostics to improve and personalize the treatment and management of cancer. Epic was founded on a powerful platform to identify and characterize rare cells, including circulating tumor cells (CTCs). Epic has partnered with leading pharmaceutical companies, major cancer centers, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to advance this technology to improve clinical oncology and cancer therapeutic development. For more information, please visit http://www.epicsciences.com.

SOURCE Epic Sciences