Sharon C. Presnell

Dr. Presnell was appointed to the Viveve Board of Directors in October of 2020. She has over 25 years of experience in the leadership of R&D and the commercial translation of technology. Dr. Presnell currently serves as the president of the Amnion Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the ethical preservation and utilization of birth tissue-derived cells in regenerative medicine and drug development. Prior to joining Amnion in 2019, Dr. Presnell’s career path took her from a faculty position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she developed multiple outlicensed and industry-supported technologies, to Director of R&D at Becton Dickinson where her team contributed to product development for the Life Sciences business units. In 2007, she transitioned from the Fortune 500 environment to the biotech industry where she led early-stage R&D for regenerative medicine products such as the Neo Kidney Augment™, a clinical stage cell-based therapeutic for chronic kidney disease, and several marketed 3D-Bioprinted Tissue Model products for use in drug development, one of which (ExVive™ Liver) was the subject of numerous awarded patents and peer-reviewed publications, including recognition as Paper of the Year by the Society of Toxicology in 2016. In 2015 she launched Samsara Sciences, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Organovo, Inc., and led a small team in the rapid development and marketing of cell-based products to support liver research, an effort which reached profitability in less than 2 years. In 2018, the Samsara assets were sold by the parent company to LifeNet Health where they continue to provide unique solutions to pharma customers. Dr. Presnell provides life sciences consulting services broadly to start-up companies, Fortune-500 companies, not-for-profit organizations, and investment firms throughout the US and EU through her firm, CytoStrategy™. She serves as the Chair-elect of the North Carolina State University College of Life Sciences Board and is also an active board member of the Coulter Translational Partnership Fund at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She is an avid mentor for women in science and dedicates significant time and resources to teaching and providing hands-on training to students of all ages.

Dr. Presnell received a B.S. in Biology, Microbiology, and Genetics from North Carolina State University and a Ph.D. in Experimental and Molecular Pathology from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.