New Advisory Board to Help Advance ExThera Medical’s Therapeutics Tech

ExThera Medical has formed an advisory board consisting of experts in business, government affairs/public policy, finance, and emerging technology. Its members range from a former Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce chief of staff and Chickasaw Nation Secretary of State, to the former Australian prime minister and 27th U.S. National Security advisor. 

The Business Advisory Board will work closely with ExThera’s executive team to advance the company’s metastatic oncology ONCOBind Procedure from development to commercialization.
 
“We are pleased to bring together a diversified group of accomplished professionals to support a new oncology therapy option for late-stage cancer patients,” ExThera Medical CEO Erin Borger said. “It’s an honor to have leading experts support us in our endeavors with their experience and insights.”
 
Business Advisory Board appointees are: Admiral Bobby R. Inman (ret.); Bill G. Lance; Sherri J. Lance; the Honorable Scott Morrison; Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien (ret.); Wm. Stuart Price; and Ambassador Joseph W. Westphal, Ph.D. (ret.).
 
Bobby R. Inman
Inman was appointed as a tenured professor holding the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy in August 2001 and has been an adjunct professor since 1987 at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He served as Dean in 2005 and again from January 2009 to March 2010. Inman served in the U.S. Navy from November 1951 to July 1982, retiring with the permanent rank of admiral. On active duty he served as director of the National Security Agency and as deputy director of Central Intelligence. After retiring fron the Navy, he became chairman and CEO of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) in Austin, Texas, and chairman/presidentCEO of Westmark Systems Inc. He also was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1987 through 1990. Since 1990, Inman has been investing in startup technology companies and is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
 
Bill G. Lance Jr.
Lance was Secretary of State for the Chickasaw Nation, representing numerous civic, business, and governance capacities and before that, served as the Secretary of Commerce for more than 13 years. He is currently a board member for several businesses owned by the Chickasaw Nation, including Sovereign Native Holdco LLC (SNH) and related subsidiaries; and Chickasaw Nation Industries Inc. (CNI). Lance serves as a Chickasaw Nation delegate on the Executive Committee of the American Gaming Association (AGA), National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA), Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association (OIGA), and the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes (ITC). He serves on BancFirst’s Board of Directors, the Chickasaw Foundation, and the OU Medicine Board of Directors. Lance also is a non-executive director for Aristocrat Leisure. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees for the University of Oklahoma Foundation, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce Advisory Council, and a regent for the University of Arts and Sciences of Oklahoma through June 2020. Lance also was administrator of the Chickasaw Nation Health System, where he supervised the historic construction of a 370,000-square-foot Chickasaw Nation Medical Center in Ada, Okla.
 
Sherri J. Lance
Lance currently serve as president and managing partner at Gaming Capital Group, helping shape the company’s strategic direction while overseeing daily operations across multiple functions, including marketing, customer relations, legal, compliance, IT, and human resources. Under her leadership, Gaming Capital Group has become a trusted source of capital for the gaming industry, providing more than $900 million in financing for casino and hotel projects since 2006. Her other positions within the Chickasaw Nation Division included Commerce chief of staff, providing oversight for various departments and contributing to the success of revenue-generating ventures owned and operated by the Chickasaw Nation. Deeply committed to community service, Lance is a board member for numerous organizations: the United Way of Central Oklahoma, the INTEGRIS Health System, and the Oklahoma Association on Problem Gambling and Gaming, among others. 
 
Hon. Scott Morrison
Morrison was Prime Minister of Australia from 2018 to 2022, leading his country through the global COVID 19 pandemic by achieving the third lowest SARS-CoV-2 fatality rate in the OECD while Australia’s economy outperformed all G7 and almost all OECD economies. As Prime Minister, he created and founded the AUKUS trilateral defense agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and was a founding member of the Quad leaders dialogue with India, Japan, and the United States. Morrison completed numerous other diplomatic, trade and defense agreements, including the first ever bilateral defense forces reciprocal access agreement with Japan. Domestically, he stewarded the Australian economy to its lowest unemployment rate in almost 50 years, balancing the federal budget before the pandemic hit and returning it to a structural surplus, while ensuring Australia remained one of only nine countries in the world to maintain a AAA credit rating from all major international credit rating agencies. His prior jobs include acting Cabinet Minister for five years, including three years as federal treasurer (2015-2018) as well as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, where he designed and implemented Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy. Additionally Morrison served on the National Security Committee for eight years and in the House of Representatives of Australia’s Commonwealth Parliament from 2007 to 2024. He is now a non-executive vice chairman of U.S. advisory firm American Global Strategies and is a member of several strategic advisory boards in the private sector: the International Democracy Union, the Center for a New American Security, and the Hudson Institute China Center.
 
Robert C. O’Brien
O’Brien served as the 27th United States National Security Advisor, the President’s principal advisor on all aspects of American foreign policy and national security affairs. He brought a renewed focus to defense and industrial base issues, orchestrated the historic Abraham Accords in the Middle East, brokered economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, and achieved increased cooperation with America’s allies across the Indo-Pacific. Previously, O’Brien was the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA) and held the personal rank of ambassador, coordinating the government’s diplomatic engagements on overseas hostage-related matters. Additionally, O’Brien served as the U.S. Alternate Representative to the 60th session of the U.N. General Assembly and a member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee. He was the founding co-chairman of the State Department’s Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan, serving under Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Rodham Clinton. O’Brienwas a senior legal officer at the U.N. Security Council in Geneva, Switzerland, and a Major in the U.S. Army Reserve JAG Corps. As a lawyer in the private sector, O’Brien co-founded and remains partner emeritus at Larson LLP, a national litigation boutique law firm with commercial litigation expertise handling class action, entertainment, intellectual property, environmental, business torts, and complex contractual matters in state and federal courts. O’Brien previously worked as the California managing partner of a national American law 200 firm for nearly a decade and, earlier in his career, was an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.
 
Wm. Stuart Price
Price is chairman of Price Family Properties, an organization  that owns half of downtown Tulsa, Okla.’s central business district as part of a commercial real estate portfolio. The firm also manages 2.2 million square feet of commercial space. His prior professional experience includes a long tenure in the oil and gas industry and Price’s service endeavors include an appointment by former Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, where he volunteered nine years to help improve the state’s 25 universities. Price also served on the Rogers State College Foundation and was chair of the Tulsa Park and Recreation Board. In 2007, Price helped create Tulsa Achieves, a gap funding program that provides tuition and financial assistance benefitting more than 20,000 Tulsa-area students that eventually became a nationally recognized model of student success replicated throughout the United States.
 
Joseph W. Westphal, Ph.D.
Westphal was a Global Senior Fellow at the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Leadership and Change Management at Wharton, a Fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration, and Non-Resident Fellow at the International Studies Center of the Catholic University of Chile. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from March 2014 to January 2017, Under Secretary of the U.S. Army and its chief management officer from 2009 to 2014, acting Secretary of the Army in 2001, and lead on Force Management and the Army’s business operations as Assistant Secretary of the Army from 1998 to 2000. In government, Westphal worked in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate for more than 12 years. He was a staff member on the House Budget Committee and his last appointment was as Special Assistant to Senator Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). He has held positions in the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, working in the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, and U.S. Department of State.
 
ExThera Medical Corporation develops and commercializes extracorporeal blood filtration devices, including the Seraph 100 MicroBind Affinity Blood Filter for removing pathogens from blood. Seraph can be used in hospitals, clinics, on battlefields and in other austere environments to address nosocomial and community-acquired infections as well as those caused by battlefield wounds, pandemics, and biological warfare agents. ExThera Medical’s extracorporeal products have demonstrated life-saving capabilities in a wide range of critically ill patients suffering from sepsis, COVID-19, and many other severe bloodstream infections. With a growing body of outcome and health economic evidence from independent clinical studies, success in the DARPA Dialysis-Like Therapeutics program, and from successful clinical use in the United States, the European Union, and the Middle East, the company is well positioned to serve healthcare professionals and patients alike. The Seraph 100 attained CE Mark and is commercially available in the EU, and has U.S. Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for treating COVID-19.
 
As a patient’s blood flows through the Seraph 100 filter, it passes through a bed of small beads with receptors that mimic the receptors on human cells that pathogens target when they invade the body. Many harmful substances are quickly captured and adsorbed onto the surface of the beads and are thereby subtracted from the bloodstream. Seraph adds nothing to the bloodstream. It targets the pathogens that cause the infection, while it also binds and removes harmful substances generated by the pathogen and by the body’s response to the infection. Seraph’s proprietary adsorption media (the beads) constitute a flexible platform that uses immobilized (chemically bonded) heparin for its well-established blood compatibility and its unique ability to bind circulating tumor cells, bacteria, viruses, fungi, and important sepsis mediators reported to contribute to organ failure during sepsis.