Sheila Mikhail

Sheila, the founder and managing member of LIFE SCIENCES LAW, has nearly twenty years of experience in corporate and securities law and management consulting. She represents pharmaceutical, biotechnology and life sciences entities, ranging from start-ups to publicly-traded companies such as Bayer and Aventis, as well as venture capital funds and investment banks. She has participated in numerous public offerings and facilitated venture capital investments, mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, asset purchases, technology transfer and private placements of securities. To date she has completed more than 1,500 agreements in areas of licensing, development, evaluation, research, clinical trial, technology transfer and intellectual property.

During the past several years, Sheila served as the CEO of Asklêpios BioPharmaceutical, Inc., a gene therapy company, for which she raised $8 million of mostly non-dilutive financing. She led the company to the successful commencement of its human clinical trials and negotiated collaboration agreements with Bayer Healthcare and GSK.

Prior to establishing LSL, Sheila practiced law with Ropes & Gray in Boston and Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. She was also Law Clerk to the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey, 6th Circuit, US Court of Appeals. Before practicing law, Sheila worked for Arthur Andersen in Chicago, specializing in mergers and acquisitions and cross-border transactions, and with A.T. Kearney and the Acumen Group, where she advised emerging companies on the commercialization of new technologies.

Sheila frequently speaks at venues such as Duke University's "Invention to Application" and UNC's "Launching the Company." She has presented at annual BIO meetings and was an Executive-in-Residence in N.C. State's TEC program. She has spoken at professional conferences such as the Management Biotech Conference at Northwestern University and the Industry Collaboration Symposium at Ohio State University's Medical Center.

Sheila received an accounting degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with highest honors; a finance M.B.A. from the University of Chicago with honors; and a J.D. from Northwestern University with honors. She is admitted to the bars of Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina.