Dr. Martin Handfield of Gainesville is a serial entrepreneur, having served in a variety of private and public startup companies in the life science industry. He started his career as a postdoctoral associate in the College of Dentistry at the University of Florida, working through the ranks to tenured associate professor during his 14 years at UF. To date, he successfully participated in raising more than $15M (in academia) and over $150M (in the industry) in R&D funding.
During his 24+ years career in the industry, Dr Handfield led the scientific, pre-clinical and clinical development of multiple classes of therapeutics in the anti-infectives, vaccines and live bacterial therapeutics sectors, several of which were first-in-man or new biological entities at the FDA/EMEA. He also developed strategies and lead the planning, development, and execution of short- and long-term strategic business development plans designed to grow corporations and funding objectives. Martin led teams of scientists across multidisciplinary areas to determine deliverables for scientific, corporate and regulatory needs, and contributed to the execution of several complex key co-development/research agreements with industry and academia. By establishing partnership with multiple CDMOs and CROs, he participated in the clinical development of several therapeutics (pre-IND, Phase-1 and -2) and developed and managed complex corporate IP portfolio. Most recently, Martin served as the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at Oragenics (NYSE:OGEN) and is currently the founder, manager and/or CSO of three local startups. He also serves as an Advisory Board Member for the Florida International University Biomolecular Sciences Institute, and he is part of the Dental & Medical Professional Advisory Council for ProBiora Health, a Florida Corporation.
Martin earned his BS in biochemistry, MS and PhD in microbiology and immunology from Laval University in Canada, at the Colleges of Engineering and Medicine, respectively. He did his postdoc at UF in the labs of Drs. Progulske-Fox and Hillman (co-Founder of Oragenics, Ret.).