Dr. Sherman has been working and publishing in the field of biotherapy for over 30 years. Born in Los Angeles, Ronald Sherman earned his B.S. in Entomology at UC Riverside (1979), and his medical degree at UCLA. Between his internship in San Francisco, and his Internal Medicine Residency at UC Davis, he spent a year as a general practitioner in Arizona, treating Native Americans, the Urban Poor, and the rural under-served. From 1987 – 1988, Dr. Sherman completed the Masters Degree program in Clinical Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and also received his Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Royal College of Physicians. Upon returning to the US, he underwent 2 years of additional training as a Fellow in Infectious Diseases at UC Irvine. It was during this fellowship that Dr. Sherman began his clinical studies of wound care and maggot therapy.
Dr. Sherman spent the next 4 years on staff at the VA Medical Center, Long Beach, where he continued his clinical studies of maggot therapy, growth factors, and other wound care treatments, while working as a full-time staff physician in Geriatrics and Infectious Disease. In 1995, he left the VA to work with Dr. Michael Selsted’s research group at UC Irvine. With NIH funding, Dr. Sherman worked until 2002 isolating some of the active molecules responsible for the maggots’ wound-healing activity.
In 2003, the FDA began regulating medicinal maggots as a medical device. Dr. Sherman received marketing clearance for the Medical Maggots brand produced in his laboratory. Available resources at the University were not adequate to meet FDA requirements, so the maggot laboratory separated, and became Monarch Labs. Dr. Sherman is Co-Founder and Laboratory Director of Monarch Labs, supplying medical grade maggots to physicians throughout North America. He is also the current Director and Board chair of the BTER Foundation.
To minimize conflicts of interest, Dr. Sherman does not accept salary from Monarch Labs, and does not accept honoraria for his speaking engagements. All proceeds are donated to the BTER Foundation. Dr. Sherman supports his family by other means – working for the Orange County health department as a clinic physician (HIV/STD).