Viruses and Vitals Series | Innovations in Skin Health and Regenerative Medicine
We are excited to continue our Viruses and Vitals Series, an ongoing webinar series led by Dr. David Seftel that is now expanding to feature guest founders, experts, and innovators exploring a broader range of timely health and wellness topics.
In this session, Dr. Seftel is joined by Rafal Pielak, PhD, Founder & CEO of Soteri Skin, and Peter Licari, CEO of Animate Biosciences, to explore emerging science behind skin health, regenerative biology, and the role of innovative therapeutics in restoring and protecting tissue health.
Join us for the next webinar in our Viruses and Vitals Series, featuring Dr. David Seftel in conversation with leaders advancing new approaches to skin and regenerative health.
Skin pH and the Acid Mantle as Master Regulators of Skin Health
While most recent advances in dermatology have focused on immune pathways and inflammation, growing evidence suggests that skin surface pH functions as an upstream control point in overall skin health. Skin acidity influences barrier integrity, moisture retention, antimicrobial defense, enzymatic activity, and microbiome balance. When this delicate pH equilibrium is disrupted, it can contribute to some of the most prevalent and costly chronic skin conditions.
Soteri Skin is building a scalable dermatology platform centered on restoring the acid mantle and optimizing skin surface pH to address large, underserved markets, including atopic dermatitis, occupational hand eczema, age-associated pruritus, and scalp dermatitis. By targeting pH as a foundational biological regulator, Soteri Skin has developed a differentiated, patent-protected technology platform designed to restore epidermal homeostasis and complement existing immunomodulatory therapies.
Regenerative Peptide Therapeutics and New Frontiers in Skin Repair
Beyond maintaining skin barrier health and pH balance, the future of dermatologic innovation may also lie in regenerative therapeutics that help restore damaged tissue. Animate Biosciences is building a new class of regenerative peptide therapeutics to prevent pathological tissue remodeling in chronic disease. Using its proprietary AnimateIQ™ platform, the company designs multifunctional peptides based on regenerative biology datasets. In multiple animal models, Animate’s peptides have demonstrated strong efficacy across lung, heart, liver, and skin injury, highlighting the broader promise of regenerative approaches in tissue repair and recovery.
Date: Thursday, April 2
Time: 5:30 - 6:30 pm PT
Location: Virtual
Webinar Zoom instructions will be emailed prior to the event start time. The email will contain an additional Zoom registration step that must be completed in advance of the event start time to receive the meeting access link.
**Registration closes on Wednesday, April 1st at 12noon PT
Tickets:
HCSF Member: Free Registration Code Required For Member Pricing: Click Here To Access
General Public: $30
**All tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable
Click Here To Register
About the Speakers:
David Seftel, MD
David Seftel, M.D., M.B.A. is CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Enable Biosciences, a multi-award winning early, and accurate disease diagnosis company based in South San Francisco, CA. Since inception in 2015, Enable has been awarded 10 grants from agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund and won the HBS New Venture Competition for the region in 2016. Enable’s researchers have also been supported by the Gates Foundation at Stanford.
Dr. Seftel also serves as an Immunology research panel reviewer for the National Institutes of Health. He is currently the Principal Investigator for two additional research projects sponsored by the NIH/National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease aligned with the development of ultrasensitive and highly specific diagnostic tests for a variety of difficult-to-detect diseases like Lyme disease and pediatric allergies. A Harvard Business School graduate, he did his clinical training at Harvard’s Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital, Penn State and Loyola University of Chicago and served as a Co-Investigator in the landmark Stanford-JDRF-Enable Biosciences Type 1 Diabetes Assay Performance study.
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Rafal Pielak, PhD, Founder & CEO, Soteri Skin
Dr. Rafal Pielak earned his PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Harvard Medical School. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied mechanisms of the immune system.
Before launching Soteri Skin, Dr. Pielak was a founding member of the L’Oréal Technology Incubator in San Francisco and also spent time working in biotech.
He founded Soteri Skin after his wife struggled with eczema and was unable to find an effective solution. This experience led him to investigate the role of skin pH in eczema, ultimately inspiring the development of formulations designed to restore and maintain the skin’s natural acidity.
Peter Licari, CEO, Animate Biosciences
Peter Licari has over 30 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical and food technology industries, developing and bringing new products to market. He is currently CEO of Animate Biosciences, a company focused on developing peptides to prevent pathological tissue remodeling. Previously, he served as CTO at Eat Just, Inc. where he was responsible for R&D, Operations, Quality and Regulatory Affairs. Prior to that, Peter was CTO at TerraVia, a food technology company, and a Senior Vice President at Kosan Biosciences, a biopharmaceutical company focused on small molecules for oncology. He also held development positions at BASF Bioresearch Corporation, where he worked on the development of Humira, and at Merck & Co., where he worked on Vaqta. Peter obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Caltech and an M.B.A. from Pepperdine.