Our Team

Yow-Pin Lim, MD, PhD is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ProThera Biologics. He is an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown University. Yow-Pin graduated from the Medical School at the Free University in Berlin, Germany. His dissertation research focused on the purification and characterization of the annexin family of calcium binding proteins in rat liver and hepatocellular carcinoma. This work earned him the doctoral degree (MD/PhD equivalent in the U.S.) magna cum laude. He came to the United States in 1990 for post-doctoral training in the Division of Medical Oncology at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University under the supervision of Dr. Douglas Hixson. His training included the use of a variety of methods for protein study and immunochemistry, including purification and characterization of novel biomolecules in serum and liver. During his tenure at Rhode Island Hospital he generated unique monoclonal antibodies against plasma proteins and initiated research on a plasma serine protease inhibitor in inflammation and cancer. In 2001 he co-founded ProThera Biologics which is dedicated to the development of Inter-alpha Inhibitor Proteins (IAIP) as a prognostic biomarker and novel therapeutic for treating acute, severe inflammatory diseases.

During the past 15 years, he has made major contributions to the understanding of the role of IAIP in human physiology and in human disease. Through a series of collaborative studies, he has demonstrated the potential of IAIP for treating acute systemic inflammation/shock syndrome triggered by agents such as anthrax, dengue hemorrhagic fever and influenza and developed proprietary manufacturing processes for IAIP. Recently he has focused on the potential of the beneficial effects of IAIP in treating acute lung diseases such as severe pneumonia, hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, ischemic stroke and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC).