San Antonio cancer therapeutics company taps familiar expertise

JULY 8, 2016
As published in the San Antonio Business Journal
By W. Scott Bailey
 
San Antonio’s bioAffinity Technologies Inc. has hired a senior executive with strong ties to the city’s bioscience industry to help lead its new subsidiary — OncoSelect Therapeutics LLC.
 
William Bauta will join bioAffinity in September as senior vice president for research, development and therapeutics. But one of his main missions will be to direct OncoSelect in its development and commercialization of targeted drugs for the treatment of multiple cancers.
 
Bauta brings a quarter-century of experience in the discovery, development and commercialization of pharmaceuticals for a wide array of life-threatening diseases, according to bioAffinity President and CEO Maria Zannes. She said his hire will complement a strong scientific team led by Dr. Vivienne Rebel.
 
Bauta is currently the manager for medicinal and process chemistry at Southwest Research Institute where he’s helped develop that organization’s pharmaceuticals services and bioengineering business. Previously, he was associate director of science at Genzyme Corp. and held a similar position at Ilex Products Inc., where he was responsible for the discovery and development of multiple therapeutics. He was also responsible for securing federal regulatory approval for those drugs.
 
Zannes said she expects bioAffinity will have its initial product, the CyPath® Lung cancer diagnostic, on the market by next year.
The creation of OncoSelect and the hiring of Bauta will give the Alamo City biotech company more depth.
 
“BioAffinity Technologies is a stronger company with the added focus on cancer treatment that complements its diagnostic tools,” Zannes said.