Mason Freeman, MD, is Chief of the Lipid Metabolism Unit and Director of Translational Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Trained in internal medicine and endocrinology, Dr. Freeman has spent the past twenty years studying the trafficking of cholesterol into and out of macrophages. He and his lab group have cloned and characterized key proteins involved in this process. His lab has also performed seminal studies on the role of the innate immune system in the genesis of atherosclerotic plaques. In addition to this basic science work, Dr. Freeman performed some of the early human studies with HMG CoA reductase inhibitors (statins) prior to the approval of the first drug in this class. Dr. Freeman founded and still directs the Lipid Clinic at MGH and is an internationally recognized expert in the treatment of lipid disorders. In 2005, Dr. Freeman was Vice-President and Global Head of Translational Medicine for Cardiovascular, Diabetes, and Metabolic Diseases at the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA. In this role, he was responsible for partnering with pre-clinical research teams to design the early development programs for more than 20 new chemical entities. Several of these drugs are now moving into later phases of clinical development. Dr. Freeman received his A.B from Harvard College and his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco. He is chair of the scientific advisory board for translational medicine at Novartis, a member of the scientific program committee for the American Heart Association, and section editor or author of multiple textbook chapters on lipid disorders.
Peter Schultz, PhD, is Director of
the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research
Foundation and a Scripps Professor of Chemistry
at The Scripps Research Institute. Dr. Schultz
graduated summa cum laude from the California
Institute of Technology in 1979 and received
his PhD there in 1984, working with Professor
Peter Dervan. He then spent a year at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology with
Professor Christopher Walsh before moving
to the University of California, Berkeley,
and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Dr. Schultz has made a number of major contributions
to science, including the discovery of catalytic
antibodies, methodology that for the first
time expands the genetic codes of living
organisms, and the development and application
of combinatorial methods in chemistry and
biology, including the first generation
of combinatorial materials libraries. Dr.
Schultz has received numerous awards, including
the National Science Foundation's Alan T.
Waterman Award (1988), the ACS Award in
Pure Chemistry (1990), the Wolf Prize in
Chemistry (1994), and the Paul Ehrlich Prize
(2002). He has been a member of the National
Academy of Sciences, USA, since 1993 and
a member of the Institute of Medicine of
the National Academy of Sciences since 1998.
Dr. Schultz is active on many editorial
and scientific advisory boards. Dr. Schultz
is a founding scientist of Affymax Research
Institute and cofounder of Symyx Technologies,
Syrrx, Kalypsys, Phenomix, and Ambrx.
Richard Lerner, MD, directs all scientific
activities at The Scripps Research Institute
as its President, a position he’s
held since 1986. Dr. Lerner, whose 30-year
career in biomedical research is notable
for its broad scope, is perhaps most well
known for his innovative work of converting
antibodies into enzymes, thus permitting
the catalysis of chemical reactions considered
impossible to achieve by classical chemical
procedures. He has received numerous honors,
including election to the National Academy
of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences, and is the recipient of the
Wolf Prize in Chemistry.
Richard DiMarchi, PhD, holds the
Linda and Jack Gill Chair in Biomolecular
Science and is a Professor 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 for biotechnology, endocrine
research, and product development. He currently
serves as a cofounder and board member of
the biotechnology companies Ambrx and Inproteo.
Dr. DiMarchi previously served as a board
member of the biotechnology trade group
BIO and of Millennium BioTherapeutics. His
current research focuses on the relationship
of protein structure and function, with
a particular interest in novel methods of
macromolecular synthesis and drug delivery.
Dr. DiMarchi contributed appreciably to
the discovery of Humalog® and to the commercial development of Humulin®,
Humatrope®, Glucagon®,
Xigris®, Forteo®,
and Evista®. Humalog represents
the first biosynthetic hormone optimized
by rDNA technology approved as a human medicine
and presently registers annual sales in
excess of $1 billion. Dr. DiMarchi is a
leading proponent for the integration of
new technologies and approaches in pharmaceutical
R&D, and an ardent supporter of molecular
diversity.
S. Gail Eckhardt, MD, is Professor
of Medicine at the University of Colorado
Health Sciences Center in Denver, where
she also serves as Director of the Developmental
Therapeutics and GI Malignancies Programs.
Prior to joining the University of Colorado,
Dr. Eckhardt served as Associate Director
of Clinical Research and Director of the
Drug Development Fellowship Training Program
at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center’s
Institute for Drug Development in San Antonio,
Texas. Dr. Eckhardt is the Principal Investigator
on two NIH grants involving early clinical
trials research and has conducted numerous
Phase I and II clinical trials. Dr. Eckhardt
serves on numerous committees and study
sections, including the GI Steering Committee
of the Southwest Oncology Group, the ASCO
Molecular Oncology Task Force, and the EORTC
Early Clinical Trials Review Panel. In 2003,
she was Chair of the ASCO Program Committee
and currently serves as an external reviewer
for the Drug Development Group, NCI. Dr.
Eckhardt is an Associate Editor of the Journal
of Clinical Oncology, Clinical Cancer
Research, and Investigational New
Drugs.
Kevan Shokat, PhD, a leading investigator
in the field of chemical biology, is a Professor
in the Department of Cellular and Molecular
Pharmacology at the University of California,
San Francisco, and Professor of Chemistry
at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Shokat’s research focuses on the
development of novel chemically based tools
to decipher signal transduction pathways
on a genome-wide scale. Dr. Shokat and his
colleagues have developed a method for producing
small molecules specific for any target
of interest in a signaling cascade by combining
protein design and chemical synthesis. Dr.
Shokat is the scientific cofounder of Cellular
Genomics Inc., which utilizes these methods
to carry out protein kinase target-based
drug discovery in several disease areas.
He received a PhD in 1991 from the University
of California, Berkeley; completed postdoctoral
work at Stanford in 1994; and went on to
serve as Assistant Professor of Chemistry
and Molecular Biology at Princeton University.
Dr. Shokat is a Pew, Cottrell, Searle, and
Glaxo-Wellcome Scholar as well as an Alfred
P. Sloan Fellow, and has received the Eli
Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry from
the American Chemical Society.
Ben Cravatt, PhD, PhD, a nationally
recognized leader in the fields of bioorganic
chemistry and enzymology, is a Professor
in the departments of Cell Biology and Chemistry
at The Scripps Research Institute, and is
a member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical
Biology. Dr. Cravatt’s research group
has a broad range of experimental expertise,
ranging from synthetic chemistry to molecular
biology to mammalian physiology. His group
has obtained fundamental insights into the
workings of several important mammalian
enzymes, including hydrolases involved in
the neurobiology of pain and proteases associated
with tumor progression. Dr. Cravatt has
received several honors, including selection
as a Searle Scholar and one of Technology
Review's Top 100 Young Innovators. In
2002, Dr. Cravatt became Director of the
Helen L. Dorris Institute for the Study
of Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders
of Children and Adolescents. He received
a PhD from The Scripps Research Institute,
and a BS in Biological Sciences and a BA
in History from Stanford University.
