Dr. Oz gets into biotech

Last we heard from the biotech company PanTheryx, it was a poster child for the trend of using graphic design to make the drug development process seem speedy. Now the Colorado company has made a board appointment likely to turn heads.

As STAT’s Kate Sheridan reports, Dr. Mehmet Oz of televisual fame is joining PanTheryx’s board. On the one hand, Oz’s status as a surgeon at Columbia University makes him a reasonable choice for a company developing therapeutics. On the other hand, his “disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine,” as 10 physicians put it in a 2015 letter to the dean of medicine at Columbia, makes him a curious pick.

In any case, PanTheryx said it in a statement that it expects Oz to advise it on “expanding its impact” while bringing his “decades of medical, nutrition, wellness, and communications expertise to the PanTheryx board.”

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