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Management
The current management
team includes:
Nicolas Druz,
Chief Executive Officer,
Chairman of the Board
Mr. Nicolas Druz joined Pharmagenesis, Inc. in 1993 as advisor to the Chairman,
and became a member of the Board in 1995. He was
appointed CEO in 1996 by Pharmagenesis' founder, Mr. Tih-Wu Wang, and led the company
during its successful development of PG2, TriptoSar and WilGraf.
In
2003, Mr. Druz became Executive Chairman of Pharmagenesis, Inc.
Mr. Druz is also President and CEO of Europe Journal, President of
Jeanne Lanvin SA, President and CEO of Euro Pacific Communication, Board member
of Société des Papiers de Presse. He
represents the private interests of the Wang family in various institutions, like
W.B.A., Inc., a hotel company located in Paris.
Mr. Druz is Managing Director of Harmonie SA, Vice Chairman of Tianjin
Hualong Pharmaceutical, Board Member of PhytoHealth, and Director of EcoPharm
limited.
John H. Musser,
Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer
Before joining Pharmagenesis, Inc. in 1995, Dr.
Musser was Vice President of Chemistry and a Corporate Officer at Glycomed.
There he built and led Chemical R&D with a focus on carbohydrates. Product candidates included ilomastat, a matrix
metalloproteinase inhibitor to treat ocular ulceration which reached Phase III
clinical trials, astenose, a heparin derivative to treat restenosis following
balloon angioplasty with an IND filed in 1994, and celadin, a pre-IND sialyl
Lewis X analog to treat sepsis. An
IPO was filed in 1991 employing Montgomery Securities.
Corporate collaborations included Eli Lilly, Genentech and Sankyo.
Glycomed merged with Ligand Pharmaceutical in 1995.
From 1982 to 1991, Dr. Musser was at Wyeth first as Manager than as
Director of Medicinal Chemistry. His
department initiated the rapamycin immune suppression chemical research program.
Rapamycin (sirolimus, Rapamune® ) is now a product used to treat renal
transplant rejection. Also during
this time, he was an inventor of Wy-50295 and ritolukast both anti-asthma agents
which reached IND status. From
1978-1982, Dr Musser was a Group Leader at USV Pharmaceutical Corporation,
(currently Aventis via Rhône Poulenc Rorer).
There he discovered quazolast, and RHC5901 both of which entered clinical
trials. Dr. Musser started his
career at the Upjohn Company after receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree in
Chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1976.
He served on 3 Editorial Advisory Boards, authored 68 publications and
invented 87 US patents.
K.C. Chen,
Vice President, Asia
Mr. Chen has more
than 37 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in sales and marketing,
operations and management. Prior to
joining Pharmagenesis, Inc., he was general manager of the Bristol-Myers Squibb
operation in Taiwan, and additionally headed Squibb Pharmaceutical's Taiwan
operations pre-merger with Bristol-Myers for 18 years.
Mr. Chen is founder of the International Research-Based Pharmaceutical
Manufacturers Association (IRPMA) in Taiwan and currently serves as honorary
president; Mr. Chen is also Chairman of the Federation of Asian Pharmaceutical
Associations; and consultant to the Taiwan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer's
Association. Mr. Chen also assumes
the position of Trustee, National Health Research Institute of
Taiwan. Mr. Chen received the Minister's Health Award in 1995.
He received his B.S. degree in Pharmacy from National Taiwan University.
He is currently Vice Chairman of Phytohealth Research & Development
in Taiwan in charge of the PG2 development in Taiwan.
He is also currently Secretary General of the Organizing Committee of
Taiwan DIA International Conference and Chairman of the Federation of Asian
Pharmaceutical Association.
John M. Fidler, Ph.D.,
Vice President, Biology
Dr. Fidler joined
Pharmagenesis, Inc. in 1993 as Principal Scientist, then served as Senior
Research Fellow before his current position.
He directed the Pharmacology effort in immunosuppression and cancer,
providing IND-enabling efficacy studies for PG490-88 in cancer and coordinating
pharm/tox/PK efforts. From 1988 to
1992, Dr. Fidler was Scientist and then Senior Scientist at Cetus/Chiron, where
he was Group Leader in Preclinical
Studies in Autoimmunity and directed enabling efficacy and tox/PK studies for
preparation of an IND in Graft-vs.-host disease. Prior to that, Dr. Fidler established and directed the
Cellular and Molecular Immunoregulation Research Group at Lederle Labs (now
Wyeth) to develop and conduct in vitro and whole animal assays for
immunoregulatory drug activities. He
led the characterization of the cellular mechanism of mitoxantrone
immunoregulatory activity. Dr.
Fidler was an Assistant Member of the Immunpathology Dept. of the Scripps
Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, from 1976-1982, after conducting post-doctoral
research at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in
Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Fidler
received his B.A. with Biology Departmental Honors from The Johns Hopkins
University and his Ph.D. in Immunology from Purdue University.
Jinhua An, Ph.D., DVM, Chief Representative -
China
Dr. An joined
Pharmagenesis in 1994 and continuously rose in responsibility to his current
position. He directed the PG2
chemistry research and development efforts in China that resulted in a
successful NDA in 2001. Also, Dr.
An has assumed all PG490 supply responsibility in China.
Recently, he was appointed Vice President of Technology at our
Tianjin Hualong Pharmaceutical JV. From
1991-1994, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Complex Carbohydrate
Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, working with Professors Peter Albersheim and Alan
Darvill. While there, he collaborated with
a number of pharmaceutical companies on carbohydrate-based new drug development,
and also conducted research on complex polysaccharide structure
identification. From 1985-1990, he was a Research Assistant at the Department of
Biochemistry, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, under the
supervision of Professor Andrew Mort. There,
he did research on purification, derivatization, and structural characterization
of oligo- and polysaccharides from plant cell walls.
In 1990, Dr. An received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry form Oklahoma State
University, Stillwater, Oklahoma and in 1983 he earned a DVM degree in Veterinary
Medicine from the Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, China.
Alain
Le Berre, Group Controller
Mr.
Alain Le Berre has extensive experience in business development and corporate
finance. Prior to joining Pharmagenesis in October 1999, he headed for three
years the Corporate Planning Department of Air France. As such, he was
inter alia a member of the team that successfully floated the airline in early
1998. He has also worked as a Project Manager with a leading German consulting firm, Roland Berger & Partners. He started his career as a
Project developer in Singapore and Tokyo with the French construction company
GTM Dumez.
Lun
H. Lam, Sc.D., Director of Operations
Dr. Lam
joined Pharmagenesis as a Senior Scientist in 1998, and headed the analytical
chemistry group. His prior experience working with bioactive carbohydrates
and his background in cancer biology made him particularly well suited to work
on Pharmagenesis' PG2-2000 Project. He joined the Management Team in 2000,
and became Director of Operations in 2003. Dr.
Lam came to Pharmagenesis from Glycomed, Inc., where he spent
nearly 10 years - first as a founding scientist, and eventually as Director
of Bioanalytical Chemistry - working to develop bioactive carbohydrates as
pharmaceuticals. There, he contributed to the filing of an IND for
Astenose, a chemically-modified heparin that inhibits restenosis following
angioplasty. Dr. Lam was recruited to join Glycomed because of the work
that he did at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, which contributed to the elucidation of the specific pentasaccharide sequence that is
now known to be responsible for the pharmacologic action of the anticoagulant
heparin. Before Glycomed, Dr. Lam was a Staff Scientist in the
Molecular Biology Department at SRI International, Inc., and before that, he was
a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Genetics Department at the Stanford University
School of Medicine. Dr. Lam received his Sc.D. degree in Cancer Biology in
1985, and his M.S. degree in Physiology in 1980, both from the Harvard
University School of Public Health, and he received his B.S. degree in Life
Sciences in 1974 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Lam
is co-author on 12 scientific publications, and he is co-inventor on 3 issued
patents.
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