The brain is the final frontier. Join us on our voyage to the cutting edge.

Florica
Therapeutics

Delivery of drugs to the Brain

Our Team

Dr. Christine Ichim: Founder and CEO

Mr. Terrance Hogue: Employee #1, VP Medical Relations

Mr. Sebastian Wong: VP Corporate Development

Dr. Christine Ichim

Founder & CEO

Dr. Ichim dedicated her life to making a difference to human health through biomedical research.

At the age of 14 she built a laboratory in her basement, and was invited to work in an academic
laboratory doing molecular biology research at the age of 15. She presented that work at a scientific symposium and co-authored a book on the role of the immune system in cancer, that later turned into a manuscript. Dr. Ichim has been doing tissue culture for almost 30 years, has over 10 years experience genetically engineering stem cells with retroviral and lentivirus vectors, and has been studying the molecular biology of stem cells for 20 years. She has a PhD from the University of Toronto in the Department of Medical Biophysics and completed postdocs at the prestigious Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in Berkeley, CA.

Christine Ichim is also the first woman to have rollerbladed across canada for cancer research.

Mr. Terry Hogue

VP Medical Relations

Mr. Terrance Hogue is Employee #1 at Florica Therapeutics. Mr. Hogue has been working at Florica Therapeutics in the capacity of clinical liaison, executive and even transitioning skills from the ambulance to acquire laboratory skills to work as a bench scientist. Mr. Hogue has been helping run the laboratory since 2020 and has been taught relevant techniques on growing human hypothalamus cells. The photos of hypothalamus cells in the preliminary data as well as the RNA analysis presented in this paper was performed by Mr. Hogue under the supervision of Dr. Ichim.

Mr. Hogue has a broad range of clinical experience as a retired Paramedic Captain with the
San Francisco Fire Department that is invaluable in his position as VP Medical relations. Mr. Hogue possesses clinical knowledge of a broad range of diseases. This clinical knowledge, combined with his requisite knowledge of basic biology allows him to seamlessly discuss our laboratory findings in technical details to clinicians. Having spent a lifetime interacting with medical professionals. he is able to relate to medical doctors with an ease that few academicians possess.

Mr. SEbastian Wong

vp corporate Dev

Mr. Sebastian Wong is Vice President Of Business Development and Investor #1 at Florica Therapeutics. At Florica Therapeutics Mr. Wong participates in drafting strategic directions, develops and manages relationships with stakeholders and key opinion leaders and maps out the corporate ecosystem/competitive landscape.

Mr. Wong has over 35 years experience managing people, projects, budgets and timelines in the medical space. As a retired Paramedic Captain with the San Francisco Fire Department he has a unique combination of experience— he has planned and execute projects in the clinical field for over three decades and is an expert on working within the medical system to translate ideas to practical applications with medical personnel.

Mr. Wong has successfully spearheaded a number of cross disciplinary multi-level initiatives in the Bay Area, expertly navigating the challenges of interfacing with highly hierarchical organizations. Mr. Wong’s lifetime of experience navigating and effecting change in highly bureaucratic organizations positions him well to understand the complex business to business sales environment of large pharmaceutical companies.

OUR TECHNOLOGY

The greatest limiting factor to treatment of neurological disease is the inability of drugs to cross the blood brain barrier.

The inability of drugs to cross the blood brain barrier makes treatment of neurological disease extremely difficult and as a result such drugs frequently fail in clinical trials. The ability to deliver drugs to the brain would enable treatment of countless neurological diseases.

We have created in a dish a novel brain cell component that can be used to encapsulate drugs, specifically biologics and gene therapy products. Our invention makes these products amenable for delivery across the blood brain barrier. Our beachhead indication is gene therapy drugs for rare pediatric neurologic disease, specifically Tay-Sachs Disease.