Announcements
1. Dr. David J. Pompliano joins BioLeap's Advisory Board.
“Dr. Pompliano is broadly recognized in the pharmaceutical industry as a senior executive with extensive drug discovery and early development experience in infectious diseases, oncology and musculoskeletal diseases. We are privileged to have the opportunity to work with David as we leverage our new techniques in computational fragment-based ligand design to become the recognized leader in small molecule drug discovery and development”, commented Dr. John Kulp, CEO of BioLeap. "I believe the BioLeap approach can truly accelerate the Drug Discovery process and is particularly useful when applied to historically intractable targets", commented Dr. David Pompliano, “I am pleased to be part of the team that is improving the process of drug design.”
Dr. Pompliano has eighteen years of leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry with a focus on driving strategic change in research and development. Most recently he served as Vice President, Worldwide Basic Head, Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Franchise for Merck Research Laboratories. Prior to Merck, David was Vice President, Head of Biology, Infectious Diseases Center for Excellence in Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline. Earlier in his career, David served as Executive Director and Head of Antimicrobial and Angiogenesis Research at DuPont Pharmaceuticals and as Director in the Department of Biochemistry at Merck Research Laboratories. As a drug hunter, David has contributed to the discovery or development of two marketed drugs (Tykerb and Altabax) and four drugs that have reached clinical proof of concept (pazopanib, ronacaleret, Rezonic, and Promacta). He is an internationally recognized scientist and innovator who has published >50 research papers, has given >25 invited lectures internationally and holds three patents for novel methods in drug discovery.
Dr. Pompliano received his B.S. (Chemistry) at the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. (Chemistry) from Stanford University. David was a NIH Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University in the Department of Chemistry.
2. Dr. Leslie J. Browne joins BioLeap's Advisory Board.
“Dr. Browne is broadly recognized in the pharmaceutical industry as a business leader and entrepreneur with deep expertise in the process of developing novel therapeutic candidates. We are excited by the opportunity to benefit from Les’s experience and guidance at BioLeap in building a capital-efficient business that leverages our new techniques in computational moiety-based ligand design”, commented Dr. John Kulp, CEO of BioLeap. "I’m pleased to be helping BioLeap realize the full potential of their technology", commented Dr. Les Browne, “The team’s approach is proving to be unusually efficient in identifying and optimizing discovery candidates for clinical development.”
Dr. Browne has over twenty-five years of leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry across multiple disciplines including research & development, operations, business development and the board room. Most recently he served as President, CEO and Director of Pharmacopeia where he transformed the company from a discovery contract research organization to a clinical development stage biopharmaceutical company with multiple internal development programs. He currently serves as a Director of Genelabs Technologies and as Chairman of the New Jersey Technology Council. Prior to joining Pharmacopeia, Dr. Browne was the Chief Operating Officer at Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately-held chemogenomics company, where he led research, development and informatics operations. Prior to Iconix Dr. Browne held key positions at Berlex/Schering AG, including Corporate Vice President, Berlex Laboratories, Inc. and President of Schering Berlin Venture Corporation. Before Berlex, he served at Novartis (formerly Ciba-Geigy), where he discovered Fadrozole, the first marketed non-steroidal aromatase inhibitor for the treatment of estrogen-dependent breast cancer, which led to the subsequent discovery of letrozole, marketed as Femara®. He also managed Ciba Geigy’s cardiovascular research group during a period when it discovered valsartan angiotensin II antagonist, subsequently marketed as Diovan®. Femara® and Diovan® both became major products for Novartis.
Dr. Browne received his B.Sc. at Strathclyde University, in Glasgow, Scotland. After receiving his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan, he was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Harvard with the Nobel laureate Professor Robert Burns Woodward.
3. Dr. Raymond Salemme joins BioLeap’s Advisory Board.
“Dr. Salemme is broadly recognized in the pharmaceutical industry as a business leader and entrepreneur with deep expertise in the application of crystallography and structure-based design to drug discovery and, more broadly, to molecular research. As the founder of 3D-Pharmaceuticals (3DP), he was the first to integrate crystallography, calorimetry-based label-free assays, and state-of-the-art cheminformatics into a high-efficiency discovery platform. He led 3DP from founding, through IPO, and eventual sale to Johnson & Johnson. We are excited by the opportunity to benefit from Ray's experience and guidance at BioLeap in building a capital-efficient business leveraging our new techniques in moiety-based design of novel therapeutic compounds”, commented Dr. John Kulp, CEO of BioLeap. "I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with BioLeap. They have a great team that has developed a streamlined approach to structure-based drug design that can be leveraged to a variety of business models", commented Dr. Raymond Salemme.
Dr. Salemme is currently the CEO of Redpoint Bio, a leading biotechnology company developing better tasting products for the pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries. Previously Dr. Salemme was the founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (3DP), a publicly traded biotechnology company founded in 1993, and acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2003. Dr. Salemme established and directed the technical, operating, business and financing strategies leading to 3DP's successful IPO in 2000, and was co-inventor on 30 of 3DP's key technology patents. Dr. Salemme received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Greater Philadelphia in 1998 for his role in building 3DP.
Prior to 3DP, Dr. Salemme directed research groups for biophysics, computational chemistry, and structure-based drug design at Sterling Winthrop Pharmaceuticals and DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals. Prior to DuPont Merck, he worked at DuPont Central Research, where he directed molecular design teams for new pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and engineered biopolymers. Dr. Salemme joined DuPont from Genex Corporation, one of the first biotechnology companies, where he pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography and computer-aided molecular design for engineering proteins with novel or enhanced functional properties. Prior to Genex, Dr. Salemme was Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona, where he worked in the area of structural proteomics and determined the 3D X-ray structures of several redox proteins.
