Richard DiMarchi, PhD.
Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry, Indiana University
Jesse Dong. Ph.D.
Vice President Chemistry, Ipsen
Soumitra Ghosh Ph.D.
Senior Director, Research Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Janice Reichert, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow, Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development
Pierre Rivière, Ph.D.
Managing Director and Vice President Research Ferring Research Institute
Jane Salik, Ph.D.
CEO PolyPeptide Group
Richard DiMarchi, PhD.
Richard DiMarchi is the Linda & Jack Gill Chair in Biomolecular Sciences, Professor and Chairman of Chemistry at Indiana University. He is a retired Group Vice President at Eli Lilly & Company where for more than two decades he provided leadership in biotechnology, endocrine research and product development. He is a co-founder of Ambrx, Inc. and Marcadia Biotech. He serves as a board member to Ambrx, Marcadia, and Isis Pharmaceuticals. He is a scientific advisor to Alba Therapeutics, Kai Pharmaceuticals, Semafore Biotechnologies, Zydus-Cadila, 5AM Ventures, TMP Partners and Twilight Ventures.
Professor DiMarchi is readily recognized for discovery and development of rDNA-derived Humalog® (LisPro-human insulin). This designer insulin represents the first demonstration that structurally altered rDNA-derived biosynthetic proteins can improve pharmacological performance without increasing the risk of an abnormal immunological response. As scientist and administrator Dr. DiMarchi participated in the commercial development of Humulin®, Humatrope®, Xigris®, rGlucagon® and Forteo®.
The goal of his current research and commercial endeavors is to develop proteins with enhanced therapeutic properties through biochemical optimization with non-natural amino acids, an approach he has termed chemical-biotechnology. He has published more than one hundred papers and he is co-inventor on ninety patents. He received the 2005 AAPS Career Research Achievement Award in Biotechnology, the 2006 ACS Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management, the 2006 ACS Gustavus Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Service of Public Interest, and the 2007 Wallace Carothers Award for Excellence in Polymer Sciences.
Jesse Dong. Ph.D.
Dr. Dong is Vice President of Chemistry at Ipsen Incorporated in Milford. He joined Ipsen in 1993 as a scientist in the medicinal chemistry department. He is the inventor of several drugs, three of which (Taspoglutide, BA058 and BIM-23A2760) are currently in clinical development. His distinguished scientific career had resulted in the generation of over 110 publications and 18 issued U.S. patents. Previously, he was a Research Fellow, Unit for Rational Drug Design, Department of Medicine, Boston University Medical Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio and M.S. and B.S. degrees from Peking University, Beijing, China.
Soumitra Ghosh Ph.D.
Soumitra Ghosh is Senior Director, Research at Amylin Pharmaceuticals,
Inc. and joined the company in 2003. He provides oversight to the
chemistry and biology research functions and leads a joint clinical
development program of a diabetes drug candidate with Biocon, India.
Prior to Amylin, Dr. Ghosh was Senior Director of Chemical Biology at
Mitokor, where he directed drug discovery programs for CNS disorders,
osteoarthritis and obesity. His work experience also includes
development of DNA-based diagnostic tools and peptidase inhibitors at
Baxter Diagnostics, Inc. and at the Salk Institute
Biotechnology/Industrials Associates (SIBIA). Dr. Ghosh received his
undergraduate training at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and obtained his
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Kanpur and the University of Chicago, respectively. He
conducted his post-doctoral research at the Rockefeller University in
New York.
Janice Reichert, Ph.D.
Dr. Janice Reichert is a Senior Research Fellow at Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (CSDD) and Editor-in-Chief of mAbs, a new Landes Bioscience journal. She has studied innovation in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries at the Tufts CSDD since 1999. Her work includes strategic analyses of candidate and approved products, including clinical development and approval times and probabilities of success for new therapeutics and vaccines. These analyses have been featured in over 25 publications by Dr. Reichert. As Editor-in-Chief of mAbs, Dr. Reichert has recruited a 63-member editorial board and is actively preparing for the journal’s launch in January 2009.
Dr. Reichert received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and her postdoctoral training as a National Institutes of Health Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Before joining the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, Dr. Reichert performed drug discovery research and preclinical development at several companies in the Boston area.
Pierre Rivière, Ph.D.
Dr. Pierre Rivière is Managing Director and Vice President of Research at Ferring Research Institute in San Diego, a role he has held since 2006. He joined Ferring in 1996 to help establish the company’s peptide research center in San Diego. In recent years, Dr. Rivière has contributed to the discovery of a number of peptide new chemical entities (NCEs), now at various stage of development, either in house or through licensees. Previously, he led the gastrointestinal drug discovery department of the Institut de Recherche Jouveinal in Fresnes, France (which was later acquired by Parke-Davis, and now part of Pfizer). Dr. Rivière has a scientific background in visceral pain, particular, kappa opioid receptor agonists. He holds a Ph.D. in Biology and Physiology from the Institut National Polytechnique of Toulouse, France, and completed post-doctoral training in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Jane Salik, Ph.D.
Dr. Jane Salik is the CEO of the PolyPeptide Group and President and co-founder of PolyPeptide Laboratories Inc in Torrance, California, the US subsidiary of the PolyPeptide Group. The PolyPeptide Group is a world leader in the industrial-scale manufacture of proprietary and generic GMP peptides used as Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) by pharmaceutical, biotech and research organizations.
Dr. Salik has been involved in management, business development and sales and marketing in the peptide business for over 20 years, having served as Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Business Development at Bachem California before founding PolyPeptide Laboratories Inc. Prior to that, she was Marketing Manager at Boehringer Mannheim Biochemicals where she was in charge of sales and marketing of reagents for molecular biology, immunology and biochemistry. Dr. Salik received her Ph.D. degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from The State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1981, and her B.A. degree from Lafayette College in 1975.