Meet the Team

Research Associate

Ashley Grahn is a research associate for Tango Biosciences, Inc. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Biochemistry.

Research Associate

Grace Allen is a research associate for Tango Biosciences. She graduated magna cum laude from the Honors College at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Biochemistry. Her independent research explores the use of phytocannabinoids as antitumorigenic agents, and she has obtained a Professional Certificate in Cannabis Science and Medicine from the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine.

President, Co-Founder

Brian Kay is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Illinois at Chicago and Co-founder and President of Tango Biosciences, Inc. His academic research group utilizes phage-displayed libraries of combinatorial peptides, antibody fragments, and engineered proteins to probe the surfaces of proteins and identify contact sites for binding. He has authored 139 scientific reports, co-edited three books, and been issued 15 patents; he has an H-index of 56. He brings significant experience in phage-display, library construction, screening combinatorial peptide libraries, generating recombinant affinity reagents with high affinity and selectivity, technical trouble-shooting, and research leadership to Tango. He earned his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago and Yale University, respectively.

Co-Founder

Joshua LaBaer, MD/Ph.D is the Executive Director of the Biodesign Institute and the Director of The Virginia G. Piper Biodesign Center for Personalized Diagnostics (CPD) at Arizona State University. Dr. LaBaer was board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology, which he practiced for 15 years. He served 5 years on the Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Cancer Institute and is a world-renowned proteomics and cancer biomarker researcher. He is President of US-HUPO and co-Chair of Early Detection Research Network and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Dr. LaBaer invented the Nucleic Acid Programmable Protein Array (NAPPA) platform that serves as the foundation of the ABAS system. He has extensive research experience in high-throughput functional proteomics, genomics, cellular assays, automation, database/software development, plasmid/virus production as well as gene expression-based mechanistic and modeling studies. He earned his B.S. and M.D./Ph.D. degrees at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco, respectively.

Director

Michael Scholle has served as Chief Operating Officer since January 2019 and is also a co-founder of SAMDI Tech.  He previously held positions as Vice President of Operations and Technology and Director at the company from 2011-2018. He brings more than 20 years of experience in building biotech companies, commercializing technology platforms, high throughput drug discovery, MALDI TOF mass spectrometry, biochemistry, molecular biology, and antibody discovery.

Prior to SAMDI Tech, Scholle held various scientific positions at Integrated Genomics Inc, Argonne National Laboratory, and Amunix Inc. At Amunix, he was a founding scientist and played a key role in the development of XTEN, a half-life enhancing technology.  XTEN technology was taken public by Versartis with an IPO in 2013. Scholle has served on the Board of Directors at Amunix and now Tango Biosciences.  He has authored over 20 peer-reviewed articles published in scientific and business journals.  Scholle has a master’s degree in biology from Northern Illinois University and an MBA from Roosevelt University-Chicago.