| Advisory opinion regarding post-employment restrictions that would apply to Dr. James A. Cardelli, a former professor with the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. |
|
Dr. James Cardelli was as a professor in the Microbiology and Immunology Department of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport (Center) from 1985 until December 31, 2015. In addition to teaching classes, he was also responsible for running a research laboratory. Separate and apart from his role as professor, Dr. Cardelli also served as the Director of the Center's Innovative North Louisiana Experimental Therapeutics (INLET) program from 2012 through 2015, for which he received no additional compensation. INLET consists of a multi-institutional program focused on discovering and marketing natural products and repurposed drugs that are used to treat one human disease and repositioning them to treat other diseases in humans. The research conducted as part of INLET includes independent research, federally-supported research, and company-sponsored research programs. As Director of INLET and the principal investigator, Dr. Cardelli wrote the first sponsored research agreement (SRA) funded by K94 Discoveries, Inc., a biotechnology company, that ended in early 2015.
As President of Segue Therapeutics, LLC, a biotechnology company organized with the Secretary of State's Office on January 6, 2016, Dr. Cardelli is currently involved in acquiring first round seed money to develop and commercialize existing drugs for new medical purposes. Some of this money will be sent to the Center/INLET in the form of SRAs to perform research to further develop repurposed drugs for treatment of human diseases. However, Dr. Cardelli will not be conducting the research that will be funded by the SRAs. Additionally, Segue Therapeutics, LLC, intends to license technologies that Dr. Cardelli developed while employed with the Center. Legal counsel will negotiate the SRAs with the Center and the licensing contracts with the Center's Office of Sponsored Programs and Technology Transfer (OSPTT). Finally, Dr. Cardelli will serve as an uncompensated advisor for K94 Discoveries, which is funding research, via an SRA activated in October of 2015, that is being performed by INLET to further develop one of its proprietary products.
|
|
|
La. R.S. 42:1121B(1) prohibits a former public employee, for a period of two years following the termination of his public employment, from assisting another person, for compensation, in a transaction, or in an appearance in connection with a transaction in which he participated at any time during his public employment and involving his former governmental entity, or for a period of two years following termination of his public employment, from rendering any service which he had rendered to the agency during the term of his public employment on a contractual basis, regardless of the parties to the contract, to, for, or on behalf of his former agency.
|
|
|
Adopt the proposed advisory opinion.
|
|
| Assigned Attorney: |
Haley Williams |
|
|