Leadership

Mr. Frakes joined Aethlon Medical in January 2008. He has 27 years of CFO level financial responsibility for publicly traded companies, as well as, specific knowledge and experience in equity (IPO, follow-on public offerings and private placements) and debt transactions, acquisitions, public reporting and Sarbanes-Oxley section 404 internal control requirements.

Mr. Frakes received an MBA from the University of Southern California, and completed his BA with Honors at Stanford University.

Prior to joining Aethlon, Dr. LaRosa served as the Vice President of Clinical Development of Entasis Therapeutics, a spin-out of AstraZeneca focused on pathogen-targeted small molecules to treat serious multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections. In this role, he acted as medical lead and was responsible for the clinical development of multiple programs, two of which were in Phase III clinical trials. Prior to joining Entasis, Dr. LaRosa was an Attending Physician and Antimicrobial Stewardship Director in the Division of Infectious Disease at Beverly Hospital, a member of Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH) in Massachusetts. Prior to BILH, he was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brown Medical School and Attending Physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Rhode Island Hospital. He was also the Director and a Co-founder of the Ocean State Clinical Coordinating Center (OSCCC), an academic CRO that partnered with industry sponsors on clinical trials in Infectious Disease and Sepsis. Prior to that, Dr. LaRosa was a Staff Physician in the Department of Infectious Disease at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and a Principle Investigator on numerous sepsis clinical trials. He also served as a Clinical Research Physician for Eli Lilly and Company where he led the Phase III clinical trial of recombinant human activated Protein C (Xigris); the only agent ever FDA approved for sepsis. Dr. LaRosa received his M.D. from Boston University School of Medicine (Alpha Omega Alpha). He completed an Internal Medicine residency and was Chief Resident at the Cleveland Clinic. This was followed by a clinical and research fellowship in Infectious Disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He holds active Board Certifications in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease.

John is an operations and technical leader with 25 years in biotech and life sciences, developing and manufacturing medical devices, building scalable team structures, and managing product lines and high-profile projects with oversight of implementations for process improvements and cost savings.  John started his career at Biosite, Inc. (later became Alere, Inc.) and spent 20 years with the company in various roles in product development, technical product transfers, and operations.  Prior to joining Aethlon Medical, John was at Nexus Dx as Director of Technical Operations, then promoted to Vice President of Operations and responsible for the development and transfer of new products into manufacturing with responsibility for design transfer, operational readiness, manufacturability, and process and equipment development.  John has an extensive chemistry background and has worked on a multitude of diverse assay development, particle chemistry, antibody conjugations, solid phase, biotinylation and others.  John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from the University of San Diego.