Executive Committee

Edward Abrahams, Ph.D.

President

Edward Abrahams, Ph.D., is president of the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC). Representing scientists, patients, providers and payers, PMC promotes the understanding and adoption of personalized medicine concepts, services and products for the benefit of patients and the health system. It has grown from its original 18 founding members in 2004 to over 200 today.

Previously Dr. Abrahams was Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Association, where he spearheaded the successful effort that led to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s investment of $200 million to commercialize biotechnology in the state. Earlier he had been Assistant Vice President for Federal Relations at the University of Pennsylvania and held a senior administrative position at Brown University.

Dr. Abrahams worked for seven years for the U.S. Congress, including as a legislative assistant to Senator Lloyd Bentsen, an economist for the Joint Economic Committee under the chairmanship of Representative Lee Hamilton, and as a AAAS Congressional Fellow for the House Committee on the Interior.

The author of numerous essays, Dr. Abrahams serves as senior editor of Personalized Medicine and has also taught history and public policy at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania.

D. Stafford O'Kelly

Chair

D. Stafford O'Kelly is President, Abbott Molecular.  He was appointed to his current role in April 2007.

Mr. O'Kelly joined Abbott in 1984 and has served in various management positions. These include Vice President, LatinAmerica/Canada Operations; Division Vice President Finance, Abbott International, Division;  Vice President and Controller, Ross Products Division (now Abbott Nutrition); and Vice President  Finance, TAP Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Mr. O'Kelly serves on the boards of Youth Conservation Corps, Inc., and the Clara Abbott Foundation.

He has a bachelor's degree in engineering and MBA from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

David King

Treasurer

David P. King is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Laboratory Corporation of America® Holdings (LabCorp).  LabCorp, one of the world’s largest clinical laboratories, has annual revenues of $4.7 billion (2009) and more than 28,000 employees nationwide.

Prior to becoming Chief Executive Officer on January 1, 2007, Mr. King served as LabCorp’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer since 2005.  Previously, he served as head of the Company’s US LABS / Esoterix Division, one of the nation’s leading specialty testing and cancer diagnostic laboratories, as well as Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning and Corporate Development. He is a member of the Company’s Management Committee.

Mr. King initially joined LabCorp as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer in 2001 after working for many years with the Company as an outside counsel. Prior to joining the Company, he was a partner with Hogan & Hartson L.L.P. in Baltimore, Maryland from 1992 to 2001.

Mr. King is also on the board of The Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) which seeks to advance the understanding and adoption of personalized medicine concepts and products for the benefit of patients.

Mr. King, holds an AB degree, cum laude, from Princeton University and a JD degree, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Jeffrey Cossman, M.D.

Secretary

Jeffrey Cossman, M.D. is Founder and President of United States Diagnostics Standards, Inc. (USDS), an independent certification body for laboratory and pathology diagnostics. USDS is dedicated to improving the regulatory and commercialization pathways for laboratory diagnostics by verifying the analytical and clinical performance of laboratory diagnostics.

Dr. Cossman is a pathologist and served as Chairman of the Department of Pathology at Georgetown University and as the Oscar B. Hunter Professor of Pathology at Georgetown. 

He founded one of the nation’s first Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories while at the National Cancer Institute, where he developed and implemented lymphoma molecular diagnostic tests now in use worldwide. He has also been Vice President and Medical Director of Gene Logic and Chief Science Officer of the Critical Path Institute. Dr. Cossman is a co-founder of Halcyon Diagnostics, Inc., Avalon Pharmaceuticals (now Clinical Data, Inc.), and the Association for Molecular Pathology. 

Dr. Cossman has authored 150 scientific publications including the book, Molecular Genetics in Cancer Diagnosis and has several patents in molecular diagnostics. He received his M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School, is board-certified in pathology and trained in pathology at the University of Michigan, Stanford University and NIH.

J. Brian Munroe

Past President & Chair

Brian Munroe is the founder and the immediate Past-President of the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC).   He currently serves as the Chairman of the PMC Public Policy Committee and on the Executive Committee of the PMC Board of Directors.

Brian is a twenty year veteran of health care public policy, advocacy, and communications.  His areas of expertise are in FDA legislation and regulations, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, federal and state tax policy, and the development of government policies to advance personalized medicine.

Brian has created  successful, stand alone Government Affairs Departments from scratch at: SmithKline Beecham,  Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and Endo Pharmaceuticals.  He is currently the Vice President in charge of Washington office, the Public Policy group, State Government Relations and, the Political Action Committee at Endo.  He also serves on Endo’s Executive Operations Committee.

Brian’s breadth in health care policy stretches across pharma /biotech, home health care, diagnostics, medical devices, clinical laboratories, and health care payors.  His geographical responsibilities have included the fifty states, the Federal government and Congress, and for a short time the European Union and member countries.

Brian began his career in Washington, D.C. working for United States Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA).

Brian currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife Vicky and their four children.

Wayne A. Rosenkrans, Jr., Ph.D.

Past Chair

Wayne is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Biomedical Innovation at MIT working on health care strategy and policy issues related to science and medicine, a member of the Ethics and Systems Medicine Program at Georgetown University and Chairman of the board of directors of the Personalized Medicine Coalition.  He is also VP Strategic Consulting at Fuld & Company focusing on strategic simulations in health care, Chief Scientific Advisor at Expertech focusing on strategic futuring for Air Force Medical Systems, and Chief Applications Officer for SciTech Strategies focusing on scientific competency and capacity development for academia and industry.  He is a former Director of External Relations for Personalized Healthcare and Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) as part of External Medical Relations at AstraZeneca where he had responsibility for long-range external relations strategy and policy development.  Prior to that role, he was involved in long-term strategy development for the AstraZeneca Discovery, Development, and US Commercial divisions, and created and ran strategic intelligence units at both AstraZeneca and SmithKIine Beecham Pharmaceuticals.  He is a former President of SCIP (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) and has received the SCIP Fellows Award and Lifetime Achievement Award in Intelligence from Frost and Sullivan.  Wayne is active on strategy and advisory boards of several organizations including the IOM, IBM Life Sciences, and Hewlett-Packard Life Sciences.  He has presented at numerous forums on aspects of personalized health care, evidence-based medicine, new development paradigms, and strategy development.  He holds a B.S. in Biology from MIT, a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from Boston University, and received post-doctoral training in Cancer and Radiation Biology at the University of Rochester.  Wayne lives in Malvern, Pa., is married with two college-age children, and enjoys teaching martial arts (Tang Soo Do), restoring antique/classic Fords, and aviation history.