Leadership

Lothstein

Leonard Lothstein, Ph.D.
President & CEO

Leonard Lothstein, Ph.D., has been President and CEO of Paradox since its founding in late 2010. He also maintains tenured faculty appointments at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in the Departments of Pathology (College of Medicine) and Pharmaceutical Sciences (College of Pharmacy), is currently a member of the UTHSC Medicinal Chemistry Core Advisory Board and was the founder and former Director of the UT Center for Anticancer Drug Research and Director of the Experimental Therapeutics at The UT Center for Cancer Research.

Dr. Lothstein has 35 years of bench research experience in the areas of anticancer drug development, anthracycline pharmacology and anticancer drug resistance, which has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, The Susan G. Komen Foundation, The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association Foundation, and the Milheim Foundation for Cancer Research.

Dr. Lothstein has served as a consultant on multiple National Institutes of Health review panels and study sections.

Dr. Lothstein earned a B.A. in Biology from Bowdoin College and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University. He completed post-graduate training as a National Cancer Institute-funded fellow at both The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and The Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Studies at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NY.

John M. Rimoldi, Ph.D.
Vice-President

John Rimoldi, Ph.D. is Vice-President of Paradox, bringing considerable drug synthesis experience to the mission of the company. He is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Research Professor of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at The University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy and has published over 60 papers and holds multiple patents in the areas of synthetic medicinal chemistry, drug design and development, bioorganic chemistry, and environmental toxicology.

Dr. Rimoldi currently serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry Letters, and is on the Editorial Board of Perspectives in Medicinal Chemistry and The Open Medicinal Chemistry Journal.   He is a manuscript reviewer for over 25 journals, has been an active NIH SBIR/STTR grant reviewer since 1998, and serves as a scientific reviewer for the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program.  He has received research funding from The National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Department of Agriculture, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, American Heart Association, and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.  He is Chair of the Section of Chemistry in The American Assoc. of Colleges of Pharmacy, Chair of the Ole Miss Section of the American Chemical Society, and Past-President of the MALTO Medicinal Chemistry organization.

Dr. Rimoldi earned a B.S. in Chemistry from The University of Pittsburgh, and Ph.D. in chemistry from Virginia Tech, followed by post-doctoral training at the Peters Center for the Study of Parkinson’s Disease at Virginia Tech.

Israel

Mervyn Israel, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer

Mervyn Israel, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, has been a leader in anthracycline drug design and development for over 50 years with extensive experience in both bench research and drug commercialization. He was Co-Founder and former Board Chairman of Anthra Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Dr. Israel was also the discoverer and developer of Valstar ® , an FDA-approved agent for the treatment of bladder cancer and has extensive experience in FDA regulatory issues and clinical trial conduct. He holds four US and international patents for novel anthracycline agents.

Dr. Israel’s academic experience includes 30 years as Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy, member of the UT Center for Anticancer Drug Research and member of the UT Center for Cancer Research, with a long track record of NIH funding resulting in over 350 publications in drug development Prior to this, Dr. Israel was a faculty member of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School, holding the position of Associate Chief for Drug Development, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He has been a member of numerous grant review and advisory panels for NIH.

Soberman

Judith Soberman, M.H.A., M.D., FACC, FHRS
Chief Medical Officer

Judith Soberman, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, is a Professor of Cardiovascular Disease at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and the Memphis Veterans Administration Medical Center with 35 years of clinical and research experience in cardiac arrhythmia, heart failure and device implantation. She has also been lead cardiologist on multiple pharmacological clinical trials.

Dr. Soberman is a Certified Cardiac Device Specialist and a Fellow in both the Heart Rhythm Society and the American College of Cardiology and a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine (Cardiovascular Disease). She has been a funded researcher in preventative cardiology studies including NIDDK-sponsored trials of diabetes management and the Women’s Health Initiative. She has been awarded independent funding for her work in antitumor drug cardiotoxicity/cardioprotection.

Dr. Soberman earned a Sc.B. in Molecular Biology from Brown University and M.D. from The University of Pittsburgh. She completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY), fellowship training in Cardiovascular Pharmacology at the Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Research (NY) and fellowship training in Cardiovascular Disease and Pacemaker/Arrhythmia at the Montefiore Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Soberman also holds a Master’s degree in Hospital Administration from the University of Memphis, where she holds an adjunct faculty appointment in Biomedical Engineering.

Sweatman

Trevor Sweatman, Ph.D.
Director of Clinical Pharmacology

Trevor Sweatman, Ph.D., Director of Clinical Pharmacology for Paradox, is a Professor of Pharmacology at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center with over 30 years of experience in qualitative and quantitative drug analysis of clinical samples, pharmacokinetics and cancer drug development. Dr. Sweatman has a extensive track record of publication and NIH funding in the development, mechanistic analyses and preclinical and clinical testing of novel anthracycline compounds, including Valstar®, an FDA-approved agent for the treatment of bladder cancer.

He is a member of the UT Center for Cancer Research, and has formerly been an Associate Editor of Clinical Cancer Research, Representative to The United States Pharmacopeia Convention, and Consultant in Pharmacology, Huntington Medical Research Institute (Pasadena, CA).

Dr. Sweatman earned a B.Sc (honors) in Applied Biology from Hatfield Polytechnic (UK) and Ph.D. with the Clinical Pharmacology group from Southampton University Medical School (UK), followed by post-doctoral training in Pharmacology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.