Who We Are
Robert M. Levy, MD, FACR is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the subspecialty Board of Rheumatology. He actively practiced rheumatology for 30 years and is the founder of the Olympia Arthritis and Rehabilitation Clinic, a multidisciplinary rheumatic disease care clinic in Olympia, Washington. He also founded the South Puget Sound Clinical Research Center, which was actively engaged in clinical trials work, generally running about 20 studies at a time and had an on-site overnight stay unit for doing PK/PD and first-time-in-man studies. He has been the principle investigator on more than 130 trials, mostly early phase studies, and, as director of the clinical trials program, has overseen about 100 additional studies. Dr. Levy has consulted for industry for more than 15 years, mostly in matters related to early phase clinical development During his career, Dr. Levy has authored numerous clinical and scientific papers, has written
more than 100 clinical protocols and been instrumental in the administration of trials involving everything from Phase Ia biotechnology drugs to Phase III prescription medical foods. After leaving clinical practice Dr. Levy set up and ran the clinical development division of a small start-up biotechnology company and later did the same as Director of Clinical Development for a prescription medical foods company.
Bruce P. Burnett, PhD holds a double PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from Yale University. He has worked with therapeutic molecules for more than 15 years and has done much of the original protein chemistry, enzymology and immunochemistry on many molecular species involved in inflammation, bone metabolism, DNA recombination and HIV replication. Dr. Burnett is an acknowledged expert on flavonoid biochemistry and fatty acid metabolism, has developed several products that modify inflammation and arachidonic acid metabolism and is co-owner of several patents in this field. Dr. Burnett has worked as Chief Scientist for several companies and has been the Director of Scientific Development and Regulatory Affairs with responsibility patent development for a prescription medical foods company.
Ms Teresa Barrett, CMA is one of the original founders of Okapi Consultants, LLC. After college, she went on to become the office manager of the Olympia Arthritis Clinic's multidisciplinary program before setting up and running the entire clinical trials division of the clinic. She has acted as primary coordinator on 70 trials, approximately 70% of which were Phase I or IIa, including all of the clinic's PK/PD work, and oversaw the work of 3 coordinators. After leaving the private practice setting she acted as the Manager of Clinical Investigation for a start-up biotechnology company then went on to manage the Clinical Investigation department of a prescription medical foods company. In clinical trials work, Ms Barrett has literally "done it all", from site discovery, document preparation, regulatory compliance and monitoring to day to day site management. She has managed everything from
single site PK studies to 26 site trials involving hundreds of study subjects. Ms Barrett is also involved in much of the literature research that precedes new product development and is responsible for preparing and administering all pilot trials.