All About Us

Wendy provides leadership and oversight to the global activities and timelines related to precision medicine for sponsoring clinical trials and research and development projects.

Background

Wendy obtained her PhD in Immunology at the University of Western Ontario and completed a Post-doctoral fellowship in Personalized Medicine focused on optimizing treatment strategies for oncology and inflammatory bowel disease patients. She has 10+ years of experience working with clinicians, scientists, and pharmaceutical organizations across multiple functions to implement the use of individually tailored therapies in the clinic and to support the identification of biomarkers during clinical drug development.

Achievements

Within the rapidly advancing precision medicine landscape, Wendy has a thorough knowledge of translational technologies and has established key collaborations and partnerships to ensure the successful delivery of custom solutions based on client needs.

Ethos

Life is a journey of discovery…ask questions often, keep an open mind and always be learning.

Summary

Nick’s role covers a wide range of responsibilities in the lab, including accessioning, grossing, processing, and embedding gastrointestinal tissue, in addition to specimen sectioning, slide preparation, and subsequent application of hematoxylin & eosin (H&E), immunohistochemistry (IHC), immunofluorescence (IF), in-situ hybridization (ISH), and special staining protocols. 

Currently, Nick is also tasked with establishing AcelaBio as a certified service provider for Visium Spatial Gene Expression testing, a powerful next-generation sequencing (NGS) method for mapping entire transcriptomes within the context of the tissue’s morphological features on a single slide. When away from the bench, you may find him writing/editing SOPs or reviewing slides and scanned images for quality assurance.

Background

Nick graduated from Revelle College at the University of California, San Diego with a Bachelor of Science in General Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, along with a minor in French literature. Soon after, he worked in a peripheral diabetic neuropathy research lab (UCSD) for several years before making the leap to the clinical side of pathology (UCSD Health). For over a decade, he continued to broaden his repertoire of high-complexity testing for disease diagnosis/prognosis on a wide variety of human tissue types in the hospital setting. His detail-oriented, consistent benchwork earned him the role as the lead histotechnologist of his lab, which specialized in producing high-quality IF, ISH, and muscle enzyme histochemical stains for pathologist interpretation.

Ethos

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” -MLK Jr.

Summary

Sam supports the team with general histology tasks including, but not limited to, grossing, tissue processing, paraffin embedding, microtomy, staining with hematoxylin & eosin (H&E), immunohistochemistry (IHC), special stains, and digital whole-slide imaging.

Background

Sam earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Saint Vincent College and has over seven years of histology experience, including six years in Dermatology (Dermpath Diagnostics, Rabkin Dermatology, Dermatologist Medical Group of North County) and two years combined of research laboratory experience at Reveal Biosciences and the San Diego VA hospital.

Major achievements

Sam’s lead role in the startup of a dermatology laboratory. 

Ethos

“What’s meant to be, will always find a way.” -Trisha Yearwood

Summary

Iryna Borzilova is responsible for leading AcelaBio’s business growth and marketing strategy within the clinical and precision medicine research space, along with establishing and managing strategic partner relations. She drives the organization’s brand recognition and new market value proposition.

Background

Iryna has over 7 years of business development experience in progressive roles. Before joining AcelaBio, she worked as a Business Development Lead with Diversigen Inc., a CLIA/CAP certified microbiome profiling company with a strong track record of supporting microbiome-related clinical trials, large pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology companies. Prior to this, Iryna contributed to business development efforts at a Nestle Health Sciences-owned nutraceutical brand.

In addition, Iryna serves on the board of a Canadian charity organization, Maple Hope Foundation, established to help Ukrainians in need. 

Iryna received a Bachelor of Health Sciences with a Minor in Business Administration Degree from the University of Ottawa.

Major Achievements

As a Board Member of Maple Hope Foundation, Iryna contributed to collectively raising over $600,000 for humanitarian, medical, and military aid in Ukraine and for the Ukrainian Displaced Person Assistance Program in British Columbia, Canada.

Ethos

“You will never plough a field if you only turn it over in your mind.”

Summary

Dr. Xianyong (Sean) Gui, MD, FCAP, FASCP is the primary pathology contact to represent AcelaBio’s pathology perspective. He is responsible for providing scientific and medical leadership for the development, validation, and operationalization of anatomic and molecular pathology services in the AcelaBio laboratory, including selection and design of assays to identify biomarkers for a drug or therapeutic indication. Sean also plays an important role in the review of clinical cases, including but not limited to disease activity scoring and diagnosis. He works closely with the Medical Laboratory Director to guide the laboratory operations at AcelaBio in accordance with organizational and industry best practices that meet regulatory requirements and guidelines.

Background

Dr. Gui is a licensed physician and an anatomic/clinical pathologist certified by American Board of Pathology, with additional subspecialty credential in gastrointestinal (GI)-hepatobiliary-pancreatic pathology. He completed his pathology residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago and GI/liver pathology fellowship at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He has been practicing in academic medical centers and serving on faculty at the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) and University of Washington (Seattle, USA) for more than 14 years. He remains to hold academic appointment as Clinical Professor of Pathology at both of these two institutions and continues to be a consultant pathologist performing diagnostic service and teaching pathology trainees. He was the inaugural Director of GI/Liver Pathology Service at the University of Calgary / Calgary Laboratory Services and served in that position for 6 years. Dr. Gui has extensive clinical and research experiences in both non-neoplastic and neoplastic GI/liver diseases, and he is particularly interested in the pathobiology and clinical-pathological correlation in the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Prior to his pathology career, Dr. Gui also had postgraduate clinical training in gastroenterology as well as post-doctoral research experience in basic digestive science.       

Major achievements

Dr. Gui has published more than 80 research articles. He received the “Basic Science Research Award (for clinical faculty)” from the Cumming School of Medicine in University of Calgary in 2013. He was instrumental to the development of PiCaSSO Histologic Remission Index (PHRI), a novel and simplified histologic score for assessing mucosal healing in ulcerative colitis, that was proposed in 2022 by an international group of gastroenterologists and GI pathologists in which Dr. Gui was the pathology lead.  

Ethos

“Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.”  – Alan Turin

Summary

Vicky provides support in the histology laboratory, specifically tasks related to specimen handling, accessioning, processing, scanning archiving and routine preparation of microscopic slides as well as support in maintaining laboratory instrumentation and ensure cleanliness. Additional to laboratory tasks, Vicky assists with office related administrative responsibilities including but not limited to, upkeep of documentation, ordering consumables/supplies and shipping documents and samples.

Background

Vicky has worked in a laboratory setting for just over four years, with one year at Millennium Health and three years at Precision Diagnostics. Her time at Millennium was spent focusing on accessioning and she continued her expertise with that at Precision Diagnostics. After six months, Vicky was promoted as a Specimen Verification Specialist and shortly after to Accessioning Lead. Although Vicky has had some experience in revenue cycle, her focus and expertise is in accessioning.

Ethos

“For my hustlers, here’s some motivation: he who has begun is half done.” – Nas

Summary

Dawn engages in all phases of the histology workflow including, but not limited to. grossing, tissue processing, paraffin embedding, microtomy, staining with hematoxylin & eosin (H&E), immunohistochemistry (IHC), special stains, and digital whole-slide imaging.

Background

Dawn has over 18 years of histology experience, most recently as a histotechnician at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX in the Neuropathology Laboratory where she specialized in enzyme histochemistry, frozen sectioning of muscle and nerve tissues, and IHC.

Major achievements

Dawn is an ASCP-certified Histotechnician.

Ethos

“The most difficult thing is to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart

Summary

Jen engages in all technical aspects of the histopathology workflow from start to finish, including grossing, tissue processing, paraffin embedding, microtomy, routine hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and Immunohistochemistry (IHC)/special staining, and digital whole-slide imaging.

Background

Jen earned her Bachelor of Arts in biology from UNC Charlotte, then completed her post-baccalaureate training in histology at Carolinas College of Health Sciences in Charlotte, NC. As an ASCP-certified Histotechnologist, she has worked in routine and specialized histology at UCSD and Biotheranostics.

Major achievements

Jen is an ASCP-certified Histotechnologist and played a major role in the implementation of AcelaBio’s laboratory information system.

Ethos

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”

 – Robert Brault

Summary

Pamela is responsible for maintaining and managing the laboratory and staff in a CLIA/CAP accredited environment. She also supports validation of various histological procedures for implementation in the laboratory and will communicate and provide high quality data for our clientele in histopathology. In addition, Pamela will assess new technologies to drive innovation in the histology field.

Background

Pamela has a thorough knowledge of the translational research environment developing and validating various immunohistochemistry companion diagnostic assays for novel targets for patient stratification in Phase I dose expansion. In addition, she spent six years in a CLIA/CAP accredited histopathology laboratory at the University of Colorado Hospital.

Major achievements

Pamela is currently maintaining an ASCP certification as a Histotechnologist (HTL), and a Qualification in Immunohistochemistry (QIHC).

Ethos

“If you only shine light on your flaws, all your perfects will dim.”  Colleen Hoover