Poly-Med Welcomes Industry Leader to team

This month we welcome David Gravett to Poly-Med as Vice President of Strategy. He brings over 20 years of experience working with small to mid-sized companies in the medical device, combination product and drug delivery fields. An inventor on 18 issued US patents and over 130 US patent applications, he’s developed numerous drug and combination devices that utilize a range of biomaterials and pharmaceuticals.

Before joining Poly-Med, David was Vice President, Research and Development at Carbylan Therapeutics located in the Bay area in California. Carbylan was focused on developing a novel injectable hyaluronic acid based product for the treatment of pain associated with osteoarthritis. During this time David led the development of the product, the preclinical safety studies and the development of the clinical manufacturing process, taking the product from concept through to the completion of a Phase III clinical study. David first partnered with Poly-Med in 1998 when he was developing drug-device combination products at Angiotech Pharmaceuticals as the Vice President, Formulations and Polymer Chemistry.

A native of South Africa, David completed his undergraduate degree and MSc at the University of Natal in South Africa. He received his PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Toronto under Prof. Guillet. His thesis involved the investigation of controlling the selectivity of photochemical reactions with the use of polymers that were capable of transferring light energy to a spatially defined cavity. It was during this time that he was introduced to the field of biomaterials and drug delivery. David then completed a NSERC industrial Post-doc at Pasteur-Merieux-Connaught (Toronto, Canada) where he investigated the targeted delivery of DNA vaccines via liposomes as well as the use of PLGA microspheres as delivery vehicles for vaccines.

Poly-Med is pleased to welcome someone of David’s caliber join to the ranks here at Poly-Med.