Newport Beach-based lifestyle healthcare company Alphaeon Corp. has tapped Chris Cox, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as an adviser to its board of directors.
Cox currently serves as a partner at the Costa Mesa office of Boston-based law firm Bingham McCutchen LLP, and as president of Bingham Consulting LLC.
Alphaeon is headed by Chief Executive Robert Grant, a one-time executive with Irvine-based Allergan Inc. and Bausch & Lomb Inc. Alphaeon was founded last year as part of Strathspey Crown Holdings LLC, a private equity firm in Newport Beach, where Grant serves as chairman.
Alphaeon has about 100 employees and has signed a deal to move from Newport Beach to Lakeshore Towers in Irvine in coming weeks.
The company has a nine-member board of directors, including Chairman Bill Link, who oversees the Orange County operations of healthcare-focused venture capital firm Versant Ventures.
The board of directors also include, several with Orange County ties:
• Hans Keirstead, who founded California Stem Cell Inc. in Irvine and recently sold it to NeoStem Inc. for $124 million. He founded the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at University of California, Irvine, where he serves as a professor.
• Valerie Taupin, founder and chief executive of Teoxane Laboratories in Geneva. She previously founded and led Leaderm, whose Juvederm product was later acquired by Allergan.
• Vikram Malik, a managing partner of Strastphey Crown, who has worked as vice chairman of investment banking and as global head of medical technology at Deutsche Bank.
