Cuthbert Simpkins

Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins, Jr. (born August 20, 1947, in Chicago) is a trauma surgeon, intensivist, scientist, inventor, and biographer. He earned his undergraduate degree in Chemistry (with honors) from Amherst College in 1969 — where he was known as "Tuffy" — and graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1974. He completed surgical training in 1980 at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City and Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and did research fellowships at Boston University School of Medicine and the Naval Medical Research Institute. He is board certified in general surgery with critical-care certification and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

Simpkins has more than thirty years of experience as a surgeon. He served at D.C. General Hospital (1987–1991) and the State University of New York School of Medicine in Buffalo, founded the Violence Intervention Program (VIP) in 1993 while at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center / University of Maryland, and directed the Trauma Program at LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, LA, where he received a "Best Faculty Teacher Award" (2007) and a "Patient's Choice Award." In January 2022 he was appointed to the Sosland-Missouri Endowed Chair in Trauma Services at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC) School of Medicine, where he currently conducts his research. He achieved the rank of Commander in the U.S. Navy and received two commendations for research excellence.

Beyond medicine, Simpkins is the author of *Coltrane: A Biography* (1975), an early book on jazz saxophonist John Coltrane that drew first-hand interviews with Coltrane's associates and was praised by *The New York Times*. His story — from the segregated American South to eminent scientist — has been profiled by the University of Alabama's College of Community Health Sciences.

Simpkins is the inventor of a patented phospholipid nanoparticle technology for treating shock due to sepsis or hemorrhage, holding 10 U.S. patents and roughly 35 international patents. He founded Vivacelle Bio in 2013 to commercialize this science (products VBI-S and VBI-1), and serves as its President, Chief Innovation Officer, and a board member; Harven DeShield, PhD, JD, is CEO. Aggregators (Crunchbase, PitchBook) also list him as an angel investor, though his investing activity is closely tied to his role as a scientist-founder rather than an independent venture practice.

• Invests and operates at the seed / early stage of life-sciences ventures, most visibly as founder-inventor of Vivacelle Bio.
• Domain expertise centers on trauma, sepsis, hypovolemia, and resuscitation science — phospholipid nanoparticle therapeutics that restore blood volume and rebalance nitric oxide distribution.
• Motivated by large-scale clinical impact over quick returns: septic shock and hypovolemia claim roughly 11 million lives annually worldwide, the market gap he targets.
• In his own words on the technology: *"It may save millions of lives. It may also change the way we think about the treatment of disease."*
• Values products with real-world deployability — e.g., VBI-S needs no refrigeration, has a 1–2 year room-temperature shelf life (vs. blood's 42 days), and requires no blood-type matching.