Healthcare >> CEO Interviews >> January 25, 2010
Rene Schena is CEO, Chairman and Director of Arrayit Corporation, which was created from the Biotech Division of TeleChem International Inc., a company Ms. Schena co-founded in 1993. Arrayit has emerged as a world leader in microarray technology under Ms. Schena's management. The company received awards in 2002 and 2003 from Inc. Magazine as a top-500 fastest-growing privately held company, and in 2005 it was recognized by the Silicon Valley Business Journal as the 11th largest woman-owned business in Silicon Valley. Ms. Schena holds a degree in language studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has 25 years' experience in international business, including translation, contract documentation and commodities trading. She worked in commodities trading with a subsidiary of ConAgra (1985-1988) and as a Chemical Import and Distribution Specialist, Department Manager and later President of NuSource Chemical Corporation (1988-1993). Ms. Schena co-founded TeleChem International, Inc., continued the import and export chemical distribution specialty, expanded into government-bid business and expanded again into the biotech sector in 1996.
Dr. Mark Schena, Ph.D., President, Chief Science Officer and Director of Arrayit Corporation, graduated with a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1990 from the University of California at San Francisco. In 1995, as a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University, he published the first paper on microarrays in the premier scientific journal, Science, introducing microarrays to the world as a new scientific technology. Acknowledged by his peers for the importance of these accomplishments, Dr. Schena was proclaimed the Father of Microarray Technology by The Scientist, a broadly read scientific journal, in 2003. Dr. Schena has authored five foundational books on the subject of microarrays including the bestselling text Microarray Analysis (J. Wiley and Sons), and he has published more than 30 important papers in scientific journals. Dr. Schena holds the key microarray diagnostics patent that provides for 100,000 patients to be screened for a health condition in a single, simple laboratory test. In 2001 this discovery was featured in the NOVA television documentary "Cracking the Code of Life," in which Dr. Schena introduced microarrays as a diagnostic tool for the first time. In addition to valuable intellectual property, Dr. Schena has developed products, platforms and services for Arrayit that produce multimillion-dollar sales. Profile
TWST: I would like to begin by asking you to outline the history of Arrayit and give an overview of your business.
Ms. Schena: Arrayit Corp (ARYC). is a newly public company as of March 2009. We find
