#272 - Being an Entrepreneur in the Medical Field with Harry Leider

Harry L. Leider, MD, MBA has over 25 years of experience serving as a senior healthcare executive and board member for a variety of innovative healthcare companies. Dr. Leider's passion is leveraging his business, leadership, and clinical skills to create medical therapies, services, and intellectual property that improve the health of people struggling with chronic illnesses and conditions related to aging. In addition to his current leadership role as a CEO at Organicell in the biotherapeutic space, he has broad experience in telemedicine, digital health, retail healthcare, population health, and laboratory medicine.

Dr. Leider joined Organicell as CEO in May of 2023 and recruited a brand-new leadership team that is establishing the company as the leading biotech enterprise in the regenerative medicine field. Based at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Organicell is pioneering the use of exosomes for a variety of conditions related to aging or inflammation. Exosomes are extremely small "nanoparticles" that are naturally secreted from many living cells and release hundreds of bioactive substances "or cargo" into the body. These exosomes have potent beneficial anti-inflammatory and pro-growth (i.e., tissue healing) effects.

Prior to joining Organicell, Dr. Leider was the Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Gelesis, a biotherapeutic company that pioneered a novel therapy (Plenity®) for weight management. While at Gelesis, he also helped lead the effort that resulted in this therapy gaining FDA clearance and he was part of the small leadership team that took the company public on the NYSE in early 2022.

Prior to his executive role at Gelesis, Dr. Leider served as Chief Medical Officer and Group Vice President at Walgreens Boots Alliance the international Fortune 50 retail pharmacy giant. In this role he provided executive leadership for the Company's unique healthcare platform to impact the six million customers who visit a Walgreens and Duane Reade store each day, as well as the two million customers who interact with Walgreens digitally each day.

Earlier, Dr. Leider served as Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Ameritox, a national specialty laboratory providing medication monitoring services to physicians treating chronic pain and serious mental illness and as the Chief Medical Officer of Care Improvement Plus, a national Medicare Advantage plan that served seniors with common chronic illnesses. In addition to being a board member of Organicell, he has served on the Board of Directors of Alivio Therapeutics, Mobile Health and TytoCare.

Dr. Leider speaks frequently to national audiences on innovation in healthcare, regenerative medicine, and aging and had the distinct honor of speaking at the White House on aging. He also is a core faculty member of the American Association of Physician Leadership where he served as a past-President and Board Chairman. Dr. Leider has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In addition, he has authored over 25 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and holds five patents in laboratory medicine.