David Ayares

Dr. David Ayares founded Revivicor, Inc. in 2003, and is currently President and Chief Scientific Officer. Revivicor is a regenerative medicine company, based in Blacksburg Virginia, and in conjunction with its parent company, United Therapeutics, is focused on providing a safe, human-compatible, alternative tissue source for human therapeutic use towards overcoming the World-wide organ shortage crisis. The company is developing a diverse pipeline of genetically engineered (GE) pigs for use in xenotransplantation applications, including the first FDA approved pig, GalSafeTM. In January (2022), Revivicor provided the GE pig used by the University of Maryland surgeons for the first-ever heart transplant into a patient, David Bennett, and for the LVAD+ Thymokidney transplant at NYU in April 2024. Prior to the formation of Revivicor, Dr. Ayares was Vice President of Research and Chief Operating Officer for PPL Therapeutics Inc., a Scotland-based company best known for cloning Dolly the sheep. He led the team that cloned the first cows with humanized milk and cloned the World’s first pigs. Prior to joining PPL, Dr. Ayares worked for 7 years in the pharmaceutical industry at Abbott Laboratories and Baxter Healthcare, developing transgenic mouse models for pharmaceutical testing, as well as encapsulation technologies for islet cell delivery for treatment of diabetes. He did his undergraduate studies at Purdue University, PhD at University of Illinois Medical Center, and postdoctoral research at M.I.T.