Plastic Meets Biology

03 Team

Elora is led by an experienced team with deep scientific and business expertise.

Paul Swartzendruber founded Elora Therapeutics to address one of the most overlooked threats to human health–microplastic accumulation in the body. With a background spanning early-stage product development and business, international policy, and now biotechnology commercialization, Paul brings a multidisciplinary lens to therapeutic innovation.
Prior to launching Elora, Paul served as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State, overseeing chemical and biological weapons policy. Earlier in his career, he held roles in marketing and product strategy at VRBO, led marketing at a tech startup acquired by a major media platform, and co-founded and led marketing for a consumer hardware company. This uncommon blend of technical curiosity, operational rigor, and public health focus laid the groundwork for Elora’s mission to develop first-in-class enzyme therapeutics for systemic microplastic degradation.
Paul holds degrees from The University of Texas at Austin, University of Maryland, and Harvard University.

Dr. Hal Alper serves as Elora Therapeutics’ scientific collaborator and principal investigator for enzyme validation studies under a Technical Validation Agreement with The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Hal Alper is the Kenneth A. Kobe Professor in Chemical Engineering and Executive Director of the Center for Biomedical Research Support at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 and currently serves as the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Cellular and Metabolic Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on applying and extending the approaches of metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, and protein engineering to develop sustainable solutions for waste valorization and renewable bioproduction of chemicals, fuels, and nutraceuticals/pharmaceuticals. In recent work, his team has demonstrated the evolution of an enzyme suitable for rapid depolymerization of PET plastic waste.
He has published over 150 papers and 8 book chapters. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Bruce Auerbach serves as a strategic advisor to Elora Therapeutics, offering guidance on therapeutic development and early-stage clinical planning. With over two decades of experience in pharmaceutical R&D—including as co-founder and president of AlphaCore Pharma—Bruce brings deep expertise in translational science, SBIR funding, and successful biotech exits.
As co-founder and president of AlphaCore Pharma, he utilized SBIRs, angel investments, and CRADA’s with the NIH to develop a biologic for the treatment of acute coronary syndromes. Following a successful Phase 1 clinical trial, AlphaCore was acquired by MedImmune, a subsidiary of AstraZeneca. Prior to starting AlphaCore, he was an Associate Research Fellow at Pfizer specializing in drug discovery and early clinical development, with a concentration in dyslipidemia and metabolic diseases.
Bruce graduated with a MS in Pathology and Comparative Medicine from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University.