Scientific Advisor & Founder
Chief Executive Officer, BioAxone BioSciences Inc.
Adjunct Professor, McGill University
Past CEO of Emerillion Inc.
Past recipient of Christopher Reeve Medal
Dr. Lisa McKerracher is Founder and CEO of BioAxone BioSciences Inc, a biotechnology company based in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University. Dr. McKerracher spent 15 years as a university professor with an active academic research program, and received multiple awards, including the Christopher Reeve Medal, before leaving a tenured faculty position for leadership roles in biotechnology companies.
Dr. McKerracher’s current company, BioAxone BioSciences is focused on treating unmet needs in neurotrauma. Under Dr. McKerracher’s leadership BioAxone received over $20M in licensing revenue, and $6 M in NIH/SBIR funding. BioAxone’s lead drug, developed with SBIR funding, is an orally available kinase inhibitor designed to reduce progression of familial cavernous angioma. Cavernous angioma is a genetic disease where clusters of leaky endothelial cell lesions form in the brain. The company also has development programs for treatment of acute spinal cord injury, and has investigated PTEN as a target to treat spinal cord injury, with funding from SBIR.
Dr. McKerracher has deep experience in translational spinal cord injury research. Under Dr. McKerracher’s leadership, the intellectual property for BA-210 (Cethrin), originally developed in her academic laboratory, was licensed to a university spin-out company where Dr. McKerracher led drug manufacturing scale up and a Phase 1a/2 clinical trial with 48 patients. In partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Dr. McKerracher oversaw Phase 2/3 clinical trials in acute spinal cord injury as a member of the Joint Steering Committee. Seventy patients were enrolled in the SPRING trial to treat acute SCI.
Dr. McKerracher cares deeply about translational research. She was Scientific Officer for the commercialization panel for the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) from 2011-2018. Currently, Dr. McKerracher is Advisor to the Travis Roy Foundation, a member of the Leaders Council for the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute at McGill University serves on the NIH SBIR grant panel for the Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. She is a past member of the Consortium Advisory Panel for the Christopher Reeve Foundation, and past founding member of the Boston BioPharma Executive Council. She has had past roles in strategic planning for The Institute of Neuroscience, Mental Health, and Addiction of CIHR, and The Rick Hansen Foundation. Dr. McKerracher has published more than 60 research articles in leading journals and has edited a book on spinal cord injury. She has over 30 issued patents as Inventor.
Dr. McKerracher holds a BSc from McGill University and PhD from York University, and received post-doctoral training at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology (Massachusetts) and McGill University.