Advanced Animal Diagnostics - Mr. Preston Linn

e: preston@advancedanimaldiagnostics.com

v: 1.919.403.0475

Preston Linn is VP of Alliances for Advanced Animal Diagnostics (AAD). This early-stage life sciences company is adapting novel proprietary diagnostics developed for human diseases to reduce problems impacting commercial production animals. Preston is an expert at creating and managing alliances, promotes collaborations as a efficient means to leverage resources, and believes that strong alliances lead to successful projects.

Mr. Linn worked at Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) from 1985 through 1Q 2007. He had a successful technology development and business development career. Since 1999, Mr. Linn managed BD Technologies’ Life Sciences Incubator and acted as Alliance Manager for 15 start-up companies. Fourteen of these companies remain in operation, possess nearly $1B of market capitalization in total, and created over 500 local jobs. A partial list of BD Incubator companies includes: Synecor, TriPath Imaging, Synergy Vaccines, Xsira, Cirrus Pharmaceuticals, Tranzyme Pharma, Metabolon, Aldagen, AAD, Humacyte, LaamSciences, Argos Therapeutics, Alnis Biosciences, Affinergy, and Serenex.

Prior to working at BD, Mr. Linn worked at RTI International as a Synthetic Organic Chemist. He worked with natural products, developed anti-malarial drugs, and studied drugs of abuse. He moved to Union Carbide Ag Products and developed exploratory herbicides and plant growth regulators. In 1985, Mr. Linn moved to BD where he synthesized enzyme inhibitors for diagnostics assays and developed a fluorescent, real-time, homogeneous molecular amplification test (Strand Displacement Amplification (SDA). BD commercialized the SDA assay as a $130 MM/yr diagnostic test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea (BD ProbeTecTM-ET).

Mr. Linn is an author on 21 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals and has 15 issued US Patents as well as numerous foreign patents. Mr. Linn graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1970 with a BS in Chemistry. He retired (1991) from the NC Air National Guard as a LTC after a 22 year career in the Reserves, flying C-130 Aircraft. He served on the Board of Directors of the NC State University Physical and Mathematics Sciences Foundation (PAMS Foundation). He also serves as a member of the Industry Liaison Committee of the UNC-NCSU Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME). He has been a member of several professional organization; e. g. ASMS, ASM, IAP, and LES. He is active locally with the CED and various university technology transfer groups.

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