Gail Naughton, PhD
Chairman and CEO, Histogen, Inc.
Gail K. Naughton, Ph.D., founded Histogen, Inc., a regenerative medicine company, in 2007, and currently serves as CEO and Chairman of the Board. In addition, Dr. Naughton served as Dean of the College of Business Administration at San Diego State University from 2002 through 2011. Prior to that, she spent more than 15 years at Advanced Tissue Sciences, where she was the company’s co-founder and co-inventor of its core technology. During her tenure there, Dr. Naughton held a variety of key management positions, including president, chief operating officer, chief scientific officer and principal scientist. While serving as an officer and director of the Company, Dr. Naughton oversaw the design and development of the world’s first up-scaled manufacturing facility for tissue engineered products, established corporate development and marketing partnerships with companies including Smith & Nephew, Ltd., Medtronic and Inamed Corporation, was pivotal in raising over $350M from the public market and corporate partnerships, and brought four human cell-based products from concept through FDA approval and market launch. Dr. Naughton holds over 100 U.S. and foreign patents and has been extensively published in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In 2000, Dr. Naughton received the 27th Annual National Inventor of the Year award by the Intellectual Property Owners Association in honor of her pioneering work in the field of tissue engineering.
Dr. Naughton serves as a director for several not-for-profit foundations and also sits on the scientific and industry advisory boards of leading universities including the Georgia Institute of Technology, the SDSU College of Business Administration Board, the advisory board of the Lavin Entrepreneurial Management Center, and Perminova. She is also a member of the San Diego State University Corporate Governance Institute and sits on two public boards, C.R. Bard, Inc. and Cytori Therapeutics Inc.
She has received numerous awards for her leadership in both science and business including the 1998 ARCS Association, National Scientist of the Year, 2001 Women of the New Millenium Award, presented by Feminine Fortunes Magazine, Volume 2, 2001, Lindbergh-Carrel Prize for outstanding contributions to the development of perfusion and bioreactor technologies for organ preservation and growth presented by Charles and Anne Lindbergh Foundation and Alexis Carrel Foundation and the 2006 “Woman of the Year” award by San Diego Magazine.
Dr. Naughton earned her Ph.D. in Basic Medical Sciences and her M.S. in histology from the New York University Medical Center. She earned an executive MBA in 2001 from the Anderson School at the University of California, Los Angeles.