About the author Constance McKee

Constance McKee is co-founder, President & CEO of Manzanita Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Manzanita is developing a “targeted” glucocorticoid for treatment of chronic pain. Constance is a named co-inventor on Manzanita’s three issued patents.

She was founder, President & CEO of the precursor to Manzanita, Asilomar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Constance served as co-Principal Investigator under the founding DARPA grant to Asilomar (1999-2001). Asilomar filed for bankruptcy in 2006. Constance led the group of private investors who purchased the intellectual property assets of Asilomar in 2007 to form Manzanita.

She has written grant proposals for most of the programs cited here.

Constance earned her BA from Stanford with honors. Following completion of her MBA at Yale University, she was awarded a Fellowship from the Robert Bosch Foundation that supported internships in corporate finance in Frankfurt, Germany.

From 1987-1995, Constance lived in Cambridge, UK, where she launched Cambridge Quantum Fund I in 1990. CQF was the first seed capital fund that focused on commercializing technologies emerging from Cambridge University. CQF was funded with £1 million (US$1.5 million) contributed by Cambridge University, four Cambridge colleges, and the investment firms 3i and Hambros Technology Fund.

Constance returned to the US in 1995. She is a co-founder and Board member of BioE2E, an all-volunteer organization that presents programs to support bioentrepreneurs. BioE2E has presented over 60 programs, including “Alternative Funding Fairs” to connect start-ups with non-equity sources of capital. From 2007-2008 she served as Co-Executive Director of Americans for Cures Foundation (2007-2008), where she wrote the white paper, “Making Stem Cell Research a National Priority.”

With Dr Jay Levy at UCSF, Constance is currently involved in co-founding California Antiviral Foundation. About 5% of HIV-infected individuals never develop AIDS because of a naturally-occurring phenomenon known as innate immunity. California Antiviral Foundation is a nonprofit organization that will elucidate the molecular basis for this protective effect. The goals of the Foundation are to (1) find the protein(s) responsible for innate immunity, and (2) drive the commercialization of diagnostic and drug products to the point where other organizations can develop the Foundation’s prototype products and bring them to patients.