Richard B. Lanman

Richard Burnham Lanman is an American biotechnology entrepreneur, physician scientist, and naturalist.

His contributions relate to improving diagnosis and utilization of less invasive medical procedures, most recently as Global Chief Medical Officer at Guardant Health, Inc., a precision oncology company that developed a blood test replacing invasive tissue biopsies to sequence tumor DNA and improve cancer treatment selection.

Lanman has worked in five different medical specialties, oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, pulmonology, and psychiatry, as well as historical ecology, and has authored or co-authored over 125 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Lanman was born at an U.S. Army Hospital in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany, in 1955.

He is the son of American Indian art dealer and author Martha Lee Hopkins Lanman Struever and Lieutenant Richard Burnham Lanman Sr. Lanman grew up in Munster, Indiana where his parents had a hardware store.

At age 11, his father died from leukemia.

Lanman graduated Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford University, with a B.S. in Chemistry in 1977.

After obtaining his M.D. from the Northwestern University School of Medicine in 1980, Lanman began his medical internship at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, then in July 1981 began another medical internship at the University of California San Francisco Moffit Hospital.

From 1982 to 1985 he completed his residency in psychiatry at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, also at UCSF.

Lanman began his medical career as an attending psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara County, California in 1985, where he served as Chief of Psychiatry and Chemical Dependency, then, as Chief of Quality.

At Kaiser Lanman encouraged adoption of less invasive procedures and improvements in diagnosis in other specialties, culminating in a book chapter he authored on variation in physician practice patterns and hospitalization rates for children with asthma across Kaiser's 14 hospitals in Northern California.

He became a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1990.

During medical school and residency, Lanman authored journal articles in cardiology and psychiatry, including a book chapter.

Lanman left Kaiser Permanente to serve as Chief Medical Officer and Sr. Vice President at San Jose Medical Group (SJMG), in San Jose, California from 1993 to 1995, a large multispecialty physician group practice.

In 1995, Lanman founded Adesso Healthcare Technology Services as Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Adesso offered an alternative to a cost-cutting approach by health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that had been using primary care physicians as gatekeepers, limiting access to specialty physician care.

Under Adesso, patients could be referred to specialist physician networks, such as cardiologists or ophthalmologists, without preauthorization.

In return the specialist networks contracted directly with health insurers, and instead of fee-for-service, the specialists were reimbursed utilizing severity-adjusted case rates for each episode of care.

San Jose Medical Group was named the "most effective managed care medical group in the country" in 1996 by The Advisory Board Company.

Adesso filed for an IPO in early 2000, however, the public offering succumbed to the stock market crash that year.

Lanman transitioned to the biotechnology sector from physician practice management, first joining Atherotech, Inc. as Chief Medical Officer in 2000.

Atherotech offered a cardiovascular biomarker diagnostic known as the Vertical Auto Profile- or VAP-expanded cholesterol and lipoprotein test, to improve prediction of risk of heart attack and stroke.

There he published validation studies on the VAP test's unique lipoprotein (a) (Lp(a)) cholesterol measurement and other lipoprotein biomarkers.

Atherotech was privately acquired by Behrman Capital.

In 2005, Lanman joined a second preventive cardiology biomarker company, diaDexus, Inc., as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer.

DiaDexus developed a test for lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), the first FDA-cleared biomarker test to predict risk of stroke.

After working in two companies to improve prediction of risk for cardiovascular events, Lanman joined Veracyte, Inc. in 2008 as Chief Medical Officer.

Veracyte develops minimally invasive diagnostic tests utilizing genomics.

Veracyte's initial genomics tests improved the diagnosis of thyroid nodules and lung nodules without resorting to surgery.

Lanman was also principal investigator in a study validating Veracyte's third genomics test to improve diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis versus other idiopathic interstitial pneumonias.

DiaDexus completed a reverse IPO via merger with VaxGen in 2010.

Veracyte, Inc. went public in October, 2013.

In September 2014, Lanman joined Guardant Health, Inc. where he served as Global Chief Medical Officer.

Guardant's first diagnostic test, Guardant360® enabled sequencing of the DNA in patients' advanced cancers with a simple blood test, as an aid in treatment selection for targeted therapy or immunotherapy without requiring invasive tissue biopsies.

Guardant Health went public in October, 2018.

Lanman has also published on historical ecology, establishing novel physical evidence that the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) was native to most of California.

This non-invasive test was approved by Medicare to help identify targetable mutations in most solid tumor cancers in 2019.

Lanman retired from Guardant Health on December 31, 2019, but continued as an Advisor through early 2021.

In early 2020, Lanman presented a scientific study based on ancient DNA sequencing of salmonid remains from archaeological excavations at Mission Santa Clara which extended the southern limit of the historic spawning range of Chinook salmon, 120 km further south to San Jose, California.

His most recent ecology paper proposes reintroduction of elk (Cervus canadensis) to the San Francisco Peninsula Counties.