Biography

Dr. Bernard served as our Medical Director from 1999 until 2010 and currently serves as Chair of our Medical Advisory Board. He has served on our board of directors since 2010. Dr. Bernard is the Executive Vice President for Research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and also the Melinda Owen Bass Professor of Medicine and former Chief of the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt. In addition, he is Executive Vice President for Research, Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Sciences and Chairman of Vanderbilt’s Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, which is responsible for approving the Vanderbilt Medical Center Formulary of approved drugs and therapeutics. Dr. Bernard has been conducting national and international trials of pharmaceuticals since 1980 and he has been steering committee chair of the National Institutes of Health, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Clinical Trials Network since its inception in 1994 through its conclusion in 2014. This network is the only federally supported ongoing system for the conduct of research in the hospital Intensive Care Unit, or ICU. He holds a B.S. from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and an M.D. from Louisiana State University.

 Dr. Bernard maintains an active practice as an Intensivist in the Medical ICU at Vanderbilt and is therefore in a position to observe, first hand, the pharmaceutical management issues surrounding the care of a wide variety of the most severely ill patients and identify their unmet medical needs. The board believes Dr. Bernard’s medical background is extremely valuable as the Company seeks to continue expanding its pipeline with promising products that offer advancement to patient care and are well-positioned competitively.