Sung Soo Park, MD, PhD
Founder & Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Park is a pioneer in liver and kidney disease remedy technology development and med-tech industry. He has devoted his entire 35-year career to developing life-saving therapies for liver failure and End Stage Renal Disease.
In 1999, Dr. Park founded HepaHope, Inc., a US entity, several years after completing his post-doctoral in medicine at Seoul National University. Dr. Park adopted his scientific breakthrough of keeping animal liver slices functionally viable into the bio-artificial liver device. Through Dr. Park’s leadership as CEO and CTO, HepaHope received FDA approval for Phase I/IIa clinical trials. Dr. Park pioneered the company through a complex clinical pathway for Xenogenic biological combination devices, which was followed by all competitors.
As HepaHope’s CEO, Dr. Park led the company through 2 public listing exits - the first in South Korea’s KOSDAQ via reverse merger and the second in Germany’s Frankfurt Stock Exchange via IPO. During his tenure, HepaHope’s valuation has risen above $1.7BN USD with over $62MN USD raised in funding. Dr. Park continues to serve in this role, and is currently establishing an engineering and product manufacturing division overseas.
In 2013, Dr. Park founded Awesome Medical Company, LLC. (“AMC”) as a R&D and bio- and med-tech intellectual property (“IP”) portfolio company. He currently serves as Chief Scientific Officer, leading all research and patent development efforts. The company’s IP asset book is valued at over $100MN USD.
Dr. Park utilized his expertise in FDA regulations for Class III medical device development, extracorporeal fluid dynamics, and hollow fiber membrane filter technologies to develop AMC’s game changing 2-Hour Dialysis System. Dr. Park has led his research and engineering team through conceptual engineering, prototyping, preclinical studies, product development, and pilot manufacturing. 2-Hour Dialysis will soon enter clinical phase and file for FDA submissions for clinical trials. Its implementation offers dialysis clinics a revolutionary value proposition model.
Throughout his career in the US med-tech industry, Dr. Park has held research positions within the University of California system. Dr. Park has served as a visiting scientist in the Department of Transplantation at California Pacific Medical Center, UCSF. He also served as Director of Bio-Artificial Liver Program in Division of Digestive Diseases at David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA. He has been invited to speak at academic conferences like International Liver Congress and American Society of Artificial Internal Organs.