Stephen G. Hall

Stephen G. Hall (born October 2, 1955) is an American medical scientist who lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Birth and education

Stephen G. Hall was born in 1955 in Danbury, Connecticut in the United States. He completed his BS in Chemistry from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, AZ. He then completed his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences with an Area of Specialization in Molecular Genetics from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Academic Career

After completing his PhD, he was a Research Associate in Virology in the Department of Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, California and a Senior Fellow in Immunology at The Medical Biology Institute (MBI) in La Jolla, CA (MBI later merged with Avanir Pharmaceuticals).

He developed a vaccine and gene therapy technology at TSRI that was further developed at Pentamer Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which was a biotechnology company that he founded in 1996 with funding from Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (the corporate venture capital subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson) and the GeneChem Technologies Venture Fund (Canada).

Since then he has started 2 additional biotechnology companies. Currently, he is the President of AlphaGenix and Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of the University of South Dakota and in the Veterinary Science Department at South Dakota State University. He is also the President of The Genesis of Innovation for South Dakota, which is a non-profit 501(c) corporation that acts as an advocate for entrepreneurs and businesses who are pursuing innovative research and development.

Research

Hall is an expert in immunology and virology and has developed prophylactic and therapeutic approaches to disease. He investigated the structure and function of viruses and developed structure-function relationships based on virus structure, genotype, and phenotype. In addition, he investigated molecular mechanisms of viral pathogenesis and made the determination of potential targets for antiviral drugs. His work with the virus-like particle and the Nodavirus family (Nodaviridae) resulted in novel prototype vaccines for a number of diseases including human respiratory syncytial virus, Hepatitis B Virus, Hepatitis C Virus, West Nile Virus, Plague and Anthrax. He is the sole inventor on the patent that formed the basis for using the Nodaviruses as vaccine and gene delivery vectors [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6171591 U.S. Patent 6,171,591.] These vaccines are in various stages of preclinical development.