Taryn Cranford is VP Precision Medicine at SAGA Diagnostics.
Taryn comes to SAGA with more than 13 years of experience in the oncology research and clinical testing space, originating as a cellular and molecular scientist studying the immune response in hormone positive and triple negative breast cancer. After a postdoctoral fellowship in breast cancer genetics, she transitioned to industry working to optimize anatomical pathology and histology workflows to increase diagnostic efficiencies for Leica Biosystems. Realizing she could leverage this technical experience in sales, she achieved great success selling entire workflow solutions to clinical pathology labs with the aim to decrease diagnostic timelines.
Approached by Caris Life Sciences when they were creating a precision medicine team, Taryn pioneered a pathology focused sales approach that brought together clinicians from across the cancer care continuum. Her work aligned oncology, tissue acquisition, and pathology on clinical molecular testing workflows to decrease the overall time to patient treatment. Her elaborate understanding of complex systems and ability to drive collaboration drove industry changes in comprehensive molecular profiling. As the VP of Strategic Accounts at Caris, Taryn used her scientific and clinical expertise to drive systemic changes at top academic and community provider sites across the country.
Taryn serves as the VP of Precision Medicine at SAGA Diagnostics focusing to harmonize the commercial sales initiatives and SAGA’s clinical lab operations. This leverages her technical knowledge and precision medicine understanding with her strategic sales experience allowing for key customer expansion.
Christina Garcia is VP Compliance at SAGA Diagnostics.
With over 18 years of experience in the life sciences industry, Christina has led compliance and privacy programs for medical device and laboratory companies, ensuring alignment with applicable laws, regulations, and industry guidance. Christina holds certifications in healthcare compliance, privacy, and ethics, and has a strong track record in program implementation, risk mitigation, auditing, and investigation. Her focus is on enhancing operational efficiency and maintaining regulatory alignment while fostering a culture of integrity and accountability that supports ethical innovation and patient trust throughout the healthcare ecosystem.
Brian Dow is Chief Financial Officer at SAGA Diagnostics.
Brian joined SAGA Diagnostics in February 2024 as Chief Financial Officer and oversees the Company’s financial operations and serves as a member of the Executive Leadership Team. Brian is a senior financial executive with over 30 years of experience leading financial operations for both U.S. and international organizations. He joined SAGA Diagnostics from ProSomnus Sleep Technologies, a multi-national medical device company, where he held the role of Chief Financial Officer.
Earlier in his career Brian has held executive financial roles at Agendia N.V., Pulse Biosciences, Pacific Biosciences, and Northstar Neuroscience. Prior to this Brian had 14 years of increasing responsibilities in financial management of publicly traded companies and in public accounting as a manager with Ernst and Young. He is recognized as a licensed Certified Public Accountant by the Washington State Board of Accountancy and holds a Bachelor of Science in Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Karen Howarth is VP, Clinical Development at SAGA Diagnostics.
Prior to joining, she worked in clinical genomics leadership roles at Inivata, from the early start-up phase through the growth and later acquisition by NeoGenomics. Karen was a key member of the R&D team responsible for the development and commercialisation of oncology diagnostics and residual disease/recurrence technologies.
Karen’s research background includes 10 years as Research Associate at Cambridge University, overseeing the development of tools for the analysis of genomic mutations and rearrangements in cancer and has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications. Karen has developed an extensive KOL and oncology network and has led successful clinical development programmes across all major solid tumors globally. She thrives on seeing ground-breaking technology being translated into oncology diagnostics that can make a difference to patients’ lives.
Karen has a BA Hons, Natural Sciences from University of Cambridge and a PhD, Biochemistry from University of Oxford.
Peter Collins is a seasoned executive with over 30 years successful experience in senior executive roles in the diagnostics and pharma sectors. Peter has been instrumental in several industry leading high value acquisitions most notably QIAGEN/DxS and NeoGenomics/Inivata.
Prior to joining SAGA, Peter held senior leadership roles at major players in the liquid biopsy field including CBO at Yourgene, VP Biopharma Business Development at Guardant Health, and CBO at Inivata. Peter was also VP, Head of Diagnostics at GSK for five years.
Throughout his career, Peter has demonstrated a proven track record of building and leading high-performance teams and managing complex organizational growth.
Peter has a BSc (Hons), Biological Sciences from Plymouth University.
Karolina Holm is Sr. Director, Laboratory and Quality Assurance at SAGA Diagnostics.
Karolina joined SAGA in the early start-up phase in 2018. She had a leading role in setting up SAGA’s first site in Lund, Sweden for which she today is the site head.
Karolina leads the quality team and was responsible for creating a QMS compliant with ISO 17025, ISO 13485 and for CE-marking a medical device in Europe under IVDD. The site in Lund has successfully gone through several audits under Karolina’s leadership. Prior to joining SAGA, Karolina worked at Lund University for 20 years.
Karolina has a PhD in Experimental Oncology from Lund University and more than six years of experience working in a clinical diagnostics laboratory primarily focused on NGS analysis of lung carcinoma and malignant melanoma, as well as screening for hereditary mutations in breast cancer.
Roopom Banerjee is Executive Chairman at SAGA Diagnostics.
Roopom has 25 years of experience in corporate strategy, investment banking, private equity, company formation and operating leadership. He is currently the Managing Partner of WhiteLeaf Advisors, Strategic Advisor to Bain Capital, and Operating Partner at CRG Investments. Previously, he was President and CEO of Raindance Technologies, which pioneered the first clinical tests based on digital PCR, as well as a Director of Investment Banking at Leerink Swann, and a consultant at McKinsey.
Roopom holds degrees from MIT and Harvard.
Chris Abbosh is Chief Medical Officer at SAGA Diagnostics.
Chris trained as a physician and completed an Academic Clinical Fellowship in medical oncology. Subsequently he embarked on a lung oncology PhD Fellowship mentored by Professor Swanton at University College London. During his Fellowship he led Nature manuscripts related to the use of circulating tumor DNA as a molecular residual disease biomarker in early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer, work conducted on the pivotal lung TRACERx study. This important work was translated into two interventional phase three studies with AstraZeneca (the MERMAID studies). Chris subsequently took up a position with AstraZeneca as a Senior Director in Translational Medicine where he worked on various clinical biomarker concepts across the late phase part of the organization.
Chris has a iBSc Immunology and Cell Pathology from University College London, BM Medicine from University of Southampton and PhD, Oncology and Cancer Biology from University College London.
Brenton Foretich is VP Operations at SAGA Diagnostics.
Prior to joining, he worked in senior clinical operations, regulatory affairs and quality roles at Guardant Health, Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and Response Genetics. He also worked as a Clinical Operations and Quality Assurance consultant specialising in oncology clinical trials.
Brenton has expertise in companion diagnostics (CDx) for IVD manufacturing and CLIA labs.
Brenton has a BS, Chemical Engineering, Business Administration from University of Southern California.
Patrick Eimerman is VP Business Development and Partnering at SAGA Diagnostics.
Patrick has proven and deep experience in genomics, liquid biopsy, and molecular diagnostics product development, commercialization, and partnering from his roles at Exact Sciences, Guardant Health, Illumina, and Roche Diagnostics. Prior to joining SAGA, Patrick helped create and lead the BioPharma partnership team at Exact Sciences, which focused on their Oncotype DX, OncoExtra, MRD, and MCED franchises. Patrick was also a key member of the Guardant Health BioPharma partnerships and Guardant Reveal product teams, leading early MRD partnership efforts and defining the market and stakeholder requirements for the first blood-only MRD test.
Patrick has a BS in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Samuel Woodhouse is SVP, Research and Development at SAGA Diagnostics.
Prior to joining, he worked in product development leadership roles in innovative molecular diagnostics companies including Inivata, XGenomes and TTP. He has developed numerous novel technologies from concept to launch, encompassing 15 patent families in the field of cancer diagnostics.
Sam’s research has focused on cutting-edge high-sensitivity genomic technologies and involves unique molecular indexing technologies, novel sequencing platforms, and error-suppressing amplicon sequencing approaches. His application of these technologies has led him to scale and streamline them for a diversity of diagnostic applications, including HIV drug resistance, comprehensive genomic profiling in NSCLC, and multi-tumour MRD.
Sam has a BA Hons, Biological Sciences from University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Genomics from University of Cambridge.