Speakers and Panelists

Hui Cai, Senior Scientist, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, L.L.C.
Dr. Hui Cai received her B.S. and M.S. from Peking University, and Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1999 from The Scripps Research Institute, where she worked under the guidance of Professor Dale Boger. She then joined Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, L.L.C. in San Diego, working on small molecule drug discovery programs targeting immune mediated inflammatory diseases. She is a co-author and co-inventor to over thirty scientific publications and issued or pending patents.

Dr. Cai is a commissioner at City of San Diego Science and Technology Commission. She also serves as a board member of Sino-American Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SABPA), the American Chemical Society San Diego Section (ACS San Diego), and was former President of San Diego Chinese Association (SDCA).

Dr. Cai is attending the Rady School of Management of UC San Diego as a DLA Piper - Athena FlexMBA Scholar, and expects to receive her MBA in summer 2007.

Steven M. Chang, President and CEO, MultiCell Technologies, Inc.
Dr. Stephen Chang has served as a director of the Company since June 2004, became president of the Company in February 2005, and was appointed chief executive officer (CEO) in May 2006. Dr. Chang is also president of MCT Rhode Island Corp. and Xenogenics Corporation, and president, chief financial officer (CFO), treasurer, and director of MCTI, a partially-owned subsidiary of the Company. Dr. Chang is president of CURES, a coalition of patient advocates, biotechnology companies, pharmaceutical companies, and venture capitalists dedicated to ensuring the safety, research, and development of innovative life saving medications. Dr. Chang is also on the Board of BIOCOM, San Diego’s premier life sciences organization. Dr. Chang was chief science officer (CSO) and vice president of Canji Inc./Schering Plough Research Institute in San Diego from 1998 to 2004. He earned his doctoral degree in biological chemistry, molecular biology, and biochemistry from the University of California, Irvine.

Chao Dou, Associate Director of Diazyme Laboratories, a Division of General Atomics
Dr. Chao Dou is currently the associate director of Diazyme Laboratories, a division of General Atomics. At General Atomics, his effort has been dedicated to the development of clinical chemistry reagents for enzymatic detection of cardiac markers, diabetes, electrolytes and others with automated biochemistry analyzers. Prior to that, he served as an R&D manager at Apogent Technologies and senior research scientist at Roche Diagnostics. During his tenure at both companies, he successfully developed a dozen of commercial immunoassays for drug testing. He has brought more than a dozen of FDA 510 approval products to the US market and CE Marking products to the European market. He has published more than 20 papers in the peer-reviewed scientific journals and 4 patent applications.

He obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from Nankai University in 1987 and 1990 respectively. After that he was admitted by Peking University as a Ph.D. candidate. In 1993, he came to the University of California at San Diego and obtained his Ph.D. of Biochemistry in1997.

James P. Edwards , Senior Research Fellow, J&J PRD L.L.C.
Dr. James P. Edwards received his undergraduate education at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA. He moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1986 to pursue his doctorate in the laboratories of Professor Scott Denmark, studying organocerium additions to imine derivatives and later the structure of zinc-based cyclopropanation agents. Upon attaining his Ph.D. in 1991, Jim performed post-doctoral work on the preparation of densely functionalized aromatics derived from cyclobutanones in the laboratories of Professor Lanny Liebeskind at Emory University, under an NIH post-doctoral fellowship. He began his career in the pharmaceutical industry at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, where he helped discover novel non-steroidal progesterone, androgen, and glucocorticoid receptor modulators. In 1999, he moved to Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development in La Jolla, California, where he is currently a Senior Research Fellow and chemistry Team Leader of the Immunology Team.

R. Wayne Frost, VP of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance, Metabasis Therapeutics, Inc.
R. Wayne Frost, Pharm.D., JD has served as Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance at Metabasis Therapeutics since January 2006. Dr. Frost has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including 15 years in regulatory affairs. Prior to joining Metabasis, Dr. Frost was with Amgen, Inc. where he served as Director, Global Regulatory Leader, and Regulatory Affairs Liaison for the nephrology franchise. In 1997, he joined Pfizer Global Research, where he acted as Director of Regulatory Strategy & Registration and Therapeutic Area Head of Respiratory, Allergy, Inflammation and Immunology. Dr. Frost earned his Pharm.D. at Creighton University School of Pharmacy, his J. D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law, and his post-doctoral fellowship in pharmacokinetics/infectious diseases at SUNY-Buffalo. Dr. Frost was an adjunct professor in the Temple University School of Pharmacy QA/RA Master's Degree Program from 2000 to 2003 and continues to be a guest lecturer at Yale University School of Public Health on Food and Drug Law.

Rich Heyman, Senior VP, Kalypsys.
Dr.Rich Heyman joined Kalypsys Inc. as Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery in September 2006. He was formerly Senior Vice President of Metabolic Diseases and site head at the San Diego research site of Exelixis Inc. In 1999, he co-founded X-Ceptor Therapeutics, a drug discovery company that focused on the identification of new therapeutic agents targeting nuclear receptors for the treatment of metabolic diseases. He was Chief Scientific Officer and Sr. Vice President of Research at X-Ceptor prior to its acquisition by Exelixis in 2004. Prior to joining X-Ceptor, Dr. Heyman held the position of Vice President of Nuclear Receptor Discovery at Ligand Pharmaceuticals and was responsible for multiple drug discovery programs including the successful discovery and development of Panretin® and Targretin® retinoids approved for the treatment of cancer. Dr. Heyman has more than a dozen issued patents and co-authored over 100 scientific publications. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Connecticut, a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Minnesota.

John L. Higgins , President & CEO, Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc.
John L. Higgins is President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. Prior to joining Ligand, Mr. Higgins served as Executive Vice President, Finance and Administration and Corporate Development, and Chief Financial Officer of Connetics Corporation, a specialty pharmaceutical company, which was acquired by Stiefel Laboratories in December 2006. Before joining Connetics, he was a member of the executive management team at BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company. Currently, he is a Director of BioCryst and serves as chairperson of its Audit Committee. Earlier, Mr. Higgins was a member of the healthcare banking team of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., an investment banking firm. Mr. Higgins received his A.B. from Colgate University.

Zhi Hong, Senior VP, Center for Excellence in Drug Discovery, GlaxoSmithKline
Dr. Hong is Senior VP, Center for Excellence in Drug Discovery, GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to that he was the Executive Vice President, Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Ardea Biosciences. Previously Dr. Hong was Vice President of Research at Valeant, which he joined in 2000. During his tenure with Valeant, Dr. Hong directed both the virology and cancer/immunology programs and held leadership positions on the HBV, HCV and HIV project teams that led to four US investigational new drug (IND) applications in six years. Prior to joining Valeant, Dr. Hong was with Schering-Plough Research Institute. He is an expert in viral replication and a renowned investigator in the mechanism of action of ribavirin and interferon. Dr. Hong received a B.S. in Biochemistry from Fudan University in Shanghai, China and his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Dr. Hong has authored/co-authored close to 100 research publications in peer-reviewed journals and has been involved in the issuance and/or publishing of more than 40 patents.

Todd Jones, Vice President of Drug Discovery, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C.
Todd Jones, Ph.D., Vice President, Drug Discovery, for Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C., in La Jolla, California has responsibility for the discovery chemistry and enabling teams at the La Jolla site. Prior to joining J&JPRD as the La Jolla chemistry site director, he was the head of chemistry at Ontogen Corporation (Carlsbad, CA), an automated high throughput chemical synthesis drug discovery company. Todd earned his B.S. in chemistry from the Colorado School of Mines followed by a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in Professor Scott Denmark's laboratories. Todd was awarded a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University under the direction of Professor David Evans. Following his academic training, he joined Merck Research Laboratories (Rahway, NJ), and gained experience in process and medicinal chemistry. He then moved to Ligand Pharmaceuticals (San Diego, CA), where he ultimately became the head of chemistry. Todd has worked on projects spanning anti-parasitic, inflammatory, reproductive and metabolic therapeutic areas. The J&JRPD La Jolla site currently has pain, neuroscience, immunology, and internal medicine projects ongoing within the discovery teams.

John Kozarich, Chairman & President, ActivX
Dr. Kozarich joins ActivX with over 20 years experience in academic and pharmaceutical research. Most recently, he was Vice President at Merck Research Laboratories, where he was responsible for programs including antimicrobial drug discovery, enzymology, 5a-reductase biology, lipid biochemistry, nuclear receptors, ion channels and structural biology. He has been involved in a number of Merck drug programs, including Propecia, Type-1 5a-reductase inhibitor, and MRSA carbapenams. He also has had primary responsibility for a number of Merck collaborations with biotechnology companies, such as Aurora Biosciences, Cubist and KaroBio. In addition, he has played a major role in Merck's acquisition of SIBIA and in the development of its new Boston Research Center. Previously, Dr. Kozarich held faculty positions at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Yale University School of Medicine. He also served as Vice President, Research and Development at Alkermes, a biotechnology company that develops products based on sophisticated drug delivery technologies. Dr. Kozarich is internationally known for his work on enzyme mechanisms and on the chemistry of DNA cleaving antitumor drugs. He was an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Awardee and in 1988 received the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry of the American Chemical Society for his unique and broad research contributions. He has also served on numerous government and academic committees. Dr. Kozarich has authored over 125 primary scientific publications and holds three patents.

Michael J. LaBarre, VP of Product Development, Paramount BioSciences, LLC
Michael J. LaBarre, Ph.D. joined Paramount BioSciences, LLC in April of 2006 as Vice President of Product Development where he oversees all of the CMC aspects of Paramount’s drug development programs. He was previously Director of Analytical and Formulation Sciences at Biogen Idec in San Diego, California. During his 10+ years at Biogen Idec Mike’s groups had responsibility for physicochemical and biochemical characterization, analytical methods development, formulation development, analytical services, immunochemistry, protein chemistry, and research process development. Mike was involved in the BLA filing and approvals for Rituxan® and Zevalin®. Mike’s groups were responsible for the characterization, formulation development, and analytical methods development for all of IDEC’s antibody programs in clinical development between 1995 and 2005. During that time Mike and his group prepared the physicochemical, biochemical, and formulation sections of 2 BLAs, 5 INDs, and 9 comparability amendments to the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Mike received his Ph.D. in Bioinorganic Chemistry from the University of Arizona in 1992 where his research focused on the molybdoenzyme sulfite oxidase. He began his career at Hybritech in San Diego where he held positions in Regulatory Affairs and Manufacturing Technical Support until 1994 focusing on radiolabeled antibody technologies and analytical chemistry. After Hybritech, Mike spent 2 years in the Quality Control Department at Vical in San Diego working on several plasmid DNA projects that are currently in clinical development.

Alan J. Lewis, President & CEO, Novocell.
Alan J. Lewis, Ph.D., joined Novocell in February 2006 as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director. Prior to Novocell, Dr. Lewis served as CEO and Director of Signal Pharmaceuticals before its acquisition in 2000 by Celgene, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of small molecule drugs for cancer and immunological diseases. He then served as President of the Signal Research Division at Celgene. Dr. Lewis previously held the position of Vice President of Research at Wyeth-Ayerst, where he spent 15 years leading research efforts in diabetes, CNS, cardiovascular, inflammatory, allergy, and bone metabolism diseases. Dr. Lewis currently serves as a Director of BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Inc., and Cytochroma, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Wales in Cardiff and completed his postdoctoral training at Yale University.

David T. Lin, Senior Consultant, Biologics Consulting Group, Inc.
Dr. David Lin is a senior consultant at Biologics Consulting Group Inc. and has over 12 years of pharmaceutical regulatory experience in the technical, quality and regulatory requirements for chemical (small molecule synthetics) and biopharmaceutical (biotechnological and biological) product development. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in the area of protein chemistry in 1989 and an M.B.A. in 2002. Dr. Lin’s regulatory product development expertise was developed while working as a CMC reviewer, CMC Team Leader, acting Deputy Division Director, and acting Division Director in the Office of New Drug Chemistry in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), FDA. He has review experience in numerous therapeutic areas. In addition to his review and management duties, Dr. Lin was involved in the development of FDA guidances and good review practices. He was the Chair of the Stability Guidance Technical Committee, and Co-chair of the Conjugated Estrogens and Co-chair of the Drug Product Good Review Practices Working Groups. He is a member of numerous professional organizations including AAPS, DIA, RAPS, and is actively involved in the planning committees of AAPS sections.

Jeffrey F. McKelvy, , President & CTO, Avera Pharmaceuticals
Dr. McKelvy served as the founding CEO and President of Avera from April 2002 until September 2006. Prior to joining the founding team of Avera, Dr. McKelvy was Vice President of Merck Research Laboratories and Site Head for the San Diego site in 1999. In that capacity, he oversaw the integration of SIBIA into Merck Research Laboratories. Dr. McKelvy had joined SIBIA Neurosciences, Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company as Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer and Director in 1998.

Prior to SIBIA, Dr. McKelvy was founding CEO of Trophix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a private biotechnology company in 1997. He then led the acquisition of Trophix by Allelix Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., and played a transitional role for the integration of the new company as Senior Vice President for Neuroscience, Allelix Biopharmaceuticals, and President, Allelix Neurosciences, Inc., U.S. Allelix was subsequently acquired by NPS Pharma, Inc.

Prior to Trophix, Dr. McKelvy served as Vice President of the Central Nervous System Strategic Business Unit for CIBA. In 1987, he left his position as Professor of Neurobiology, Molecular Biology and Psychiatry at SUNY Stony Brook and Chairman of the Neuroscience Research Review Committee of the National Institutes of Mental Health, to join Abbott Laboratories, first as Area Head for Neuroscience Drug Discovery and then as founding Venture Head for the Neuroscience Venture. While at Abbott, Dr. McKelvy established joint ventures with NOVO/NORDISK, resulting in the registration and marketing of the novel antiepileptic drug GABITRIL®, and with H. Lundbeck A.S., which resulted in the registration and marketing of SERLECT®, a novel antipsychotic drug.

Dr. McKelvy received his medical and scientific training at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

Richard M. Soll, CSO, VP of research, TargeGen, Inc.

Dr. Soll has over 20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience including 11 years at Wyeth Ayerst and 8 years at 3-D Pharmaceuticals where he founded the Chemistry Dept. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Dartmouth College and conducted post doctoral research at Harvard. He is an author on numerous scientific publications and is named as an inventor or co-inventor on more than 65 issued or pending patents.

Charles P. Theuer, President & CEO, Tracon Pharmaceuticals

Charles Theuer, M.D. Ph.D., is President and CEO of TRACON Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company developing targeted therapies for cancer and related diseases. TRACON seeks to address unmet needs in this arena with product candidates that focus on cellular targets specifically implicated in cancer growth, including agents that inhibit angiogenesis. TRACON has established partnerships with academic and commercial entities that have identified candidates in late preclinical or early clinical development for cancer and related diseases. Using this strategy, TRACON has built a pipeline of drug development candidates, including:
  • TRC105: a human chimeric monoclonal antibody that binds the essential angiogenesis target CD105 to prevent endothelial cell proliferation.
  • TRC102: a base excision repair inhibitor intended to reverse resistance to chemotherapy, including the agents used in the treatment of melanoma and lung cancer.
  • TRC093: a humanized monoclonal antibody that prevents angiogenesis by binding to the cleaved collagen scaffold used by proliferating endothelial cells.
  • TRC101: a nanoliposome technology that incorporates the apoptosis-inducing compound ceramide.
Dr. Theuer joined TRACON from TargeGen Inc, where he was Chief Medical Officer leading the clinical development of kinase inhibitors in oncology, ophthalmology and cardiovascular disease. Previously at Pfizer, he led the clinical development of Sutent® (sunitinib maleate) in kidney cancer; Sutent® was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January, 2006 for treating advanced kidney cancer. Dr. Theuer also held senior positions at IDEC Pharmaceuticals and the National Cancer Institute developing other agents, including small molecules and monoclonal antibody therapies. He holds a B.S. degree from MIT, M.D. degree from UC San Francisco and Ph.D. degree from UC Irvine. He trained in general surgery at UCLA and was board certified in 1997.

Roger Y. Tsien, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Professor of Pharmacology and Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCSD
Roger Y. Tsien, M.D. Ph.D., was born in New York City in 1952 and received his A.B. in Chemistry and Physics summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1972. A Marshall Scholarship then took him to the Physiological Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where he received his Ph.D. in 1977 and remained as a Research Fellow until 1981. He then became an Assistant, Associate, then full Professor in the Dept. of Physiology-Anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1989 he moved to the University of California, San Diego, where he is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor in the Depts. of Pharmacology and of Chemistry & Biochemistry.

His honors include 1st prize in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (1968), Searle Scholar Award (1983), Passano Foundation Young Scientist Award (1991), W. Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology from Columbia University (1991), Artois-Baillet-Latour Health Prize (1995), Gairdner Foundation International Award (1995), American Heart Association Basic Research Prize (1995), Faculty Research Lectureship at UCSD (1997), the Herbert Sober Lectureship of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2000), the Pearse Prize of the Royal Microscopical Society (2000), and Award for Creative Invention from the American Chemical Society (2002). He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1995, the National Academy of Sciences in 1998, and the Royal Academy in 2006.

Dr. Tsien's research has been at the interfaces between organic chemistry, cell biology, and neurobiology, starting long before such interdisciplinary efforts became fashionable. He is best known for designing and building molecules that either report or perturb signal transduction inside living cells. These molecules have enabled many laboratories including his own to gain new insights into signaling via calcium, sodium, pH, cyclic nucleotides, nitric oxide, inositol polyphosphates, membrane potential changes, protein phosphorylation, active export of proteins from the nucleus, and gene transcription. The optical reporter molecules are also valuable in miniaturized high-throughput screening of candidate drugs in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to his traditional emphasis on trying to understand how the spatial and temporal dynamics of signal transduction orchestrate complex cellular responses such as synaptic plasticity, Dr. Tsien is currently working on the design of molecules which specifically target cancer cells to d

Flossie Wong-Staal, CSO, Executive VP of Research, Immusol Inc.
Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal is a co-founder of Immusol and leads its drug discovery program. Dr. Wong-Staal worked at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and at the University of California, San Diego. While serving as the Section Chief in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology at the NCI, Dr. Wong-Staal was the first scientist to define the structure of several human oncogene homologues as well as the genetic structure of HIV. Dr. Wong-Staal not only identified many of the fundamental properties of HIV, but also provided many of the early key reagents for the field of HIV molecular biology. Dr. Wong-Staal was co-Director of the AIDS Research Institute at UCSD and maintains her status as Research Professor of Medicine at UCSD. Dr. Wong-Staal is a member of the esteemed Institute of Medicine and serves on the editorial boards of many scientific journals. Dr. Wong-Staal received a bachelor’s degree in Bacteriology and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from UCLA.

Feng Tian, Scientific Investigator, Metabasis Therapeutics, Inc.
Dr. Feng Tian is a Scientific Investigator in Metabasis Therapeutics, Inc. where he focuses on the discovery of novel small molecule drugs targeting liver diseases and metabolic diseases such as hyperlipidemia, liver fibrosis, and diabetes.  After obtaining his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Peking University, he went to Michigan State University and recieved his Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry. He completed his postdoctral research at the Scripps Research Institute.

Kleanthis G. Xanthopoulos, Managing Director, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital
Kleanthis G. Xanthopoulos, Ph.D. MBA, is a Managing Director at Enterprise Partners Venture Capital in the Life Sciences practice. Kleanthis focuses on pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices and consumer healthcare.

Prior to joining Enterprise Partners in 2007, Kleanthis was a founder of Anadys Pharmaceuticals and has served as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a Director since May 2000.

From 1997 to 2000 Kleanthis held a variety of positions at Aurora Biosciences Corporation, including Vice President, Genomics & Molecular Biology.

Dr. Xanthopoulos was a Section Head of the National Human Genome Research Institute at The National Institutes of Health. Kleanthis was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Rockefeller University from 1987 to 1990 and an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at the Karolinska Nobel Medical Institute, Sweden from 1991 to 1995. Dr. Xanthopoulos is also a member of the board of directors of Odyssey Thera, Inc. and BIOCOM, Southern California's life science industry association.

An Onassis Scholar, Dr. Xanthopoulos received his B.Sc. in Biology with honors from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and received both his M.Sc. in Microbiology and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Stockholm, Sweden.

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