1 week Ago By Jeff Elkins
Summary: OKLAHOMA CITY — After growing Wheeler Bio to an $80 million company, Jesse McCool is taking on a new endeavor. “It was actually a very easy decision, because I’m a CEO, I’m a scientist and founder. I got the company from zero to one, and that’s the first big lift,” McCool said.
With CEO Patrick Lucy leading the company into its next phase, McCool now shifts his focus to The Blood Institute, where he will serve as the chief operating officer. Several years ago, he helped the institute capture a $1.25 million federal funding allocation from the U.
S. Government to help build a clean room that adheres to Good Manufacturing Practices, an industry standard. “I was able to work with CEO John Armitage and Charles Mooney, who heads up the (research and development) here, and we got an appropriations deal done with Senator (Jim) Inhofe back before his passing.
So I was able to basically start working and setting the stage here a long time ago,” McCool said. That money is coming in, and McCool intends to see it through. The room will boost the institute’s ability to support the full ecosystem that’s developing in Oklahoma, like at the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center, the home of a phase one trial center for conducting clinical development.
McCool would tell you it’s the R&D that inspires and excites him as a scientist. McCool said Stephenson has the patients, and the institute has the blood bank, which provides services to the center already. All that’s missing is the clean room to support CAR T-cell therapy at Stephenson across the street from the institute.
“That is what this clean room solves,” McCool said. The institute can also research what’s called growth factors. “There is a process called apheresis which separates the red from the white blood cells, and there’s a ton of data in the mix.
These growth factors can be formed into bio-engineered products,” McCool said. “We may be working with folks in the cell gene therapy space very soon.” A main function at OBI is making blood and therapeutic substances derived from it, and right now, McCool said, there’s a national crisis.
He hopes the Oklahoma Standard can help them change that. “You’re not only donating blood for people in the hospital today, but you’re also just, you got to think kind of long term, because it might be you in the hospital someday needing that,” McCool said. “So we have to create this life cycle of giving blood.
That’s a really mission-critical thing for OBI. That’s part of my responsibility here is increasing the donor collections and the volume we collect.” McCool recently received blood bank training from current COO Kim van Antwerpen, who is retiring after more than two decades at the institute.
“I’ve got some big shoes to fill with Kim’s 23 years at the blood bank, but it’s an amazing team here, a really well-oiled machine and super mature organization, and I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do for the next phase of growth through R&D.”.
