Dr. Doranz is President and Chief Scientific Officer of Integral Molecular. His scientific expertise focuses on viruses and membrane proteins, and he has published in numerous journals including Cell, Science, and Nature. Dr. Doranz earned his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral fellow, graduating in less than four years and publishing more than twenty manuscripts. His contributions include the discovery of CCR5 as the coreceptor for HIV.
Prior to co-founding Integral Molecular, Dr. Doranz directed the biotechnology program at the Port of Technology business incubator in Philadelphia, supporting the launch of newly created biotechnology and healthcare companies. He previously worked at the Center for Technology Transfer at the University of Pennsylvania in technology licensing and in startup development.
Dr. Doranz earned his B.A. at Cornell University, and his MBA at the Wharton School of Business, majoring in health care and entrepreneurship, co-founding the Penn Biotech Group, and winning the Wharton Business Plan Competition.
Dr. Rucker is Director of Research & Development at Integral Molecular, and oversees several projects within the company. Among his research interests, he leads studies concerning biochemical and biophysical analyses of Lipoparticles and their interactions with soluble ligands. Dr. Rucker earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. As a post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania, he was involved in leading the discovery of CCR5 as an HIV coreceptor and in understanding its mechanism of action using GPCR mutations and chimeras. Dr. Rucker first conceived of the idea to use retroviral pseudotypes as biochemical tools, and was the first to use them in biosensor analyses. Dr. Rucker was previously an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Villanova University, where his lab studied retroviral biochemistry and the integration of retrovirus-based technology into biophysical sensors.
Dr. Willis is Director of Production at Integral Molecular and leads the Lipoparticle production team. She has studied membrane-enveloped viruses extensively over the past decade and is an authority in all aspects of Lipoparticle technology. Dr. Willis has worked with Biacore instrumentation for over 12 years and is an expert in the use of Lipoparticles with biosensors. She has developed multiple methods of Lipoparticle attachment to sensor chip surfaces for use in binding analyses. In addition, Dr. Willis has taught training courses on biosensor technology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Willis earned her B.A. cum laude from Gettysburg College and earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before co-founding Integral Molecular, she worked as a Research Specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, where she purified, crystallized, and characterized the Herpes Simplex virus envelope glycoprotein gD, the culmination of a 20 year initiative.
MANAGEMENT
Benjamin Doranz, Ph.D., MBA
President & CSO
Joseph Rucker, Ph.D.
Director of Research & Development
Sharon Willis, Ph.D.
Director of Production
Cheryl Paes, MS
Director of Sales and Marketing Operations
