Jorge Leon, PhD
Diagnostics
Jorge Leon is an internationally recognized expert and pioneer in the field of development and commercialization of clinical molecular diagnostics.
Dr. Leon has a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from NYU and completed his post doctoral studies at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany and Columbia University in NYC. Dr. Leon’s post doctoral and subsequent academic work at Columbia University in NYC focused on the early development of monoclonal antibody based tumor marker assays, circulating tumor cell detection and radio-immuno imaging devices, today in the market.
Dr. Leon transitioned into industry in 1990 and played an integral role in the founding and growth of the molecular diagnostics laboratories at Quest Diagnostics Incorporated. As director of molecular diagnostics, senior director of Biotechnology development and Vice president of Applied Genomics Dr. Leon spent twelve years helping build the menu and driving the molecular diagnostics strategy at Quest which is today the largest molecular diagnostics service laboratory in the world with over 1.2 billion in revenues.
In 2003, Dr. Leon founded Leomics Associates, Inc. a consulting firm that is engaged in an aggressive agenda to help catalyze the development of molecular diagnostics and personalized medicine (pharmacogenomics) in the US and globally. Leomics Associates specializes in identifying breakthrough opportunities and applying Dr. Leon’s proven ability to predict the trends and directions of the clinical esoteric diagnostics business. Dr. Leon and his experienced team specialize in helping start-up businesses, academic centers and established companies successfully build and commercialize innovative business strategies, product pipelines, test menus and technology platforms around molecular diagnostics and personalized medicine.
Leomics is very focused in two of the mega trends of diagnostics: Personalized Medicine (biomarkers for pharma and diagnostics) and Point of Care Diagnostics. Leomics has been very effective on helping customers build winning strategies, choosing the right product applications or technologies, and finding and structuring valuable merger and acquisitions deals.
Among Leomics Associates’ customers are some of the top specialized academic centers like Mayo Clinic, National Jewish Medical Center and City of Hope Medical Center. Besides helping novel successful genomics ventures like Solexa, Sequenom, Monogram Biosciences, Althea Diagnostics, Ikonisys, Orion Genomics, Risk Analysis Laboratories, Ativa Medical and Foundation Medicine among others, Leomics also works helping key large health care players like Medco, Abbott, Stratagene, Perkin Elmer, ABI, Boston Scientific, Inverness Medical, Ortho Diagnostics, Virtualscopics and many more, to identify, develop and commercialize the right diagnostic innovative product
In the last three years Dr. Leon has played a key role as a senior external consultant helping develop and implement the biomarker business strategies of the five leading personalized medicine efforts in the industry today: Medco Health Solutions, Debiopharm, Novartis, GE Health Care and Foundation Medicine (a spin off from Harvard’s Dana Farber Cancer Center and MIT’s Broad’s Institute).