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  REFLECTIONS: THE HUMAN SIDE OF OPTOMETRY

MAKING OUR MARK

HOW MY SISTER AND I HAVE LIVED THE AMERICAN DREAM

GROWING UP in Iran, I shadowed my father on sales calls for the family pharmaceutical company. When I was a teenager, I asked him if I could work full time for the company and he said no, instead urging me to go to the United States and earn a college degree. Heeding his advice, I immigrated to the United States in 1977. Then, in 1979, my life and the lives of my family were altered by the Iranian Revolution.

DETERMINED TO SUCCEED

I could not go home and the only way to stay in America was to remain a student. My sister, Katy, nine years younger, was trapped in Iran with our parents. “Suddenly, my world collapsed around me,” she says. It took my family four years to leave; finally making it to the United States in 1983.

During this time, I attended school at the University of San Francisco and got excited about chemistry. On Friday nights when my friends went to bars and the discothèque, I went to the lab and worked all night with my research professor. Then I went on to graduate school at the University of California at Davis (UC-Davis), determined to succeed.

Ron Najafi, Ph.D., and his sister, Kathryn Najafi-Tagol, M.D., love working together. Visit https://execvid.wistia.com/medias/4j5rx2f19f to view video

Katy arrived in San Francisco at age 15. Early on, she found her high school curriculum “not challenging enough” and started taking college classes instead. “As an immigrant you really appreciate things that most people here take for granted,” she says. “It gives you the courage and stamina to make something of yourself.”

CAREER PATHS

Katy followed in my footsteps, earning a degree in chemistry from UC-Davis. After volunteering at San Francisco General Hospital, a career in medicine beckoned. During medical school at the University of California at Los Angeles, Katy became enthralled with ophthalmology and conducted research at the Jules Stein Eye Institute. “Helping patients by restoring their eyesight was extremely rewarding,” she says. (Katy became a cataract and glaucoma surgeon.)

As she completed medical school and her medical training, I was a scientist for companies such as Rhone Poulenc Rorer (now Sanofi-Aventis) and Applied Biosystems. But I was always working on an invention. For instance, I developed a funnel for sucking dangerous fumes in laboratories that worked so well I started my first successful company, California Pacific Labs, Inc.

Soon, I learned about hypochlorous acid, a naturally occurring substance produced by white blood cells as a first defense against microbial invaders. Although scientists knew it could kill bacteria and promote wound healing, at that time it was both unstable and hard to make without impurities. I figured out how to make it pure, which we now call Neutrox. I expected it to become a valuable new wound cleanser, with many other applications.

I founded NovaBay Pharmaceuticals in 2002 to develop and commercialize Neutrox and created projects in wound healing, in-dwelling urinary catheters and conjunctivitis. In 2007, I took NovaBay public, and it is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: NBY).

A CHANGE IN FOCUS

When I discussed Neutrox with Katy, she said she foresaw the management of eyelid conditions, such as blepharitis. “This is the big opportunity, and we’d be fools not to move in this direction,” she said.

Katy was so passionate about Neutrox for the eyelid, that even after she founded the Eye Institute of Marin in 2004 and became a glaucoma specialist, she worked with NovaBay scientists on Neutrox for ophthalmic use and became vice president of medical affairs for the company’s ophthalmic and urologic studies.

Katy and I both feel deep gratitude for the chance to live and work in America. “What really makes you drive to do your best are the opportunities that you have in the U.S. that you don’t have anywhere else in the world,” she says. OM

RON NAJAFI, PH.D.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.