BIOS
Paul Aristoff, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Aristoff is a drug discovery scientist and leader with extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry at Upjohn, Pharmacia, and Pfizer. Paul has been responsible for leading multi-disciplinary research teams and chemistry departments of up to 160 scientists in a broad variety of therapeutic areas that produced over 35 development candidates, including three drugs that are on the US market. Paul is the inventor or co-inventor on twelve development candidates, including four drugs thatreached the marketplace. He successfully initiated and led multiple collaborations with academia and the biotech industry. Paul possesses deep medicinal chemistry expertise, particularly in the antibacterial, antiviral, and oncology research areas. Paul is also author or co-author on 57 publications and 78 presentations, including 38 invited lectures. He is also inventor or co-inventor on 30 issued US patents, including four marked drugs.
Alex Bridges, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Bridges has had a 25 year big pharma and biotech career following six years in academics. Prior to joining IDSC, Alex spent five years as the senior director of preclinical sciences at Quatrx Pharmaceuticals. In this role, Alex headed chemical development, managed outsourcing, evaluated in licensing opportunities, and designed pharmacology and PD studies. This came after a 20 year career at Parke-Davis/Pfizer where Alex headed up the preclinical oncology program and metabolic disease medicinal chemistry. In his 20 years at Parke-Davis/Pfizer, Alex was directly responsible for multiple clinical candidates and phase 1 clinical trial starts. Alex has 143 peer-reviewed publications and 32 granted patents.
Mark Creswell
President and CEO
Mark began his career at Warner-Lambert's Ann Arbor, Michigan facility. While working in many therapeutic areas including cardiovascular, antibacterials, oncology, and CNS, Mark held many positions of increasing responsibility. In 1998, Mark accepted the responsibility of building and managing Warner-Lambert's Discovery Chemistry Outsourcing Program. He and his team pioneered the art of managing a successful outsourcing program that brought tremendous value to Warner-Lambert. Following the Pfizer acquisition of Warner-Lambert, Mark was instrumental in forming a centralized global sourcing team. Following the closure of the Pfizer Ann Arbor facility, Mark founded IDSC. More...John Domagala, Ph.D.
Director
After receiving his Ph. D., John joined Warner-Lambert in Ann Arbor in 1977 as a medicinal chemist in the Infectious disease TA. While gaining experience in penicillins, cephalosporins, and monobactams, he led Warner-Lambert into the quinolone field in 1981. John and his group were instrumental in defining the world wide quinolone activity and side effect SARs. He became group leader in 1986, TA leader in 1991, and the Pfizer Global TA head in 2000 leading over 100 scientists and managing over 30 projects at two sites. John also led Pfizer's Antibacterial in licensing efforts evaluating over 100 compounds per year. During his 30 plus year tenure in Infectious diseases, John had over 100 publications and more than 30 patents. John was associated with 31 clinical candidates with 8 entered into advanced human trials, and has had some experience in almost every antibacterial class of drugs. As Executive Director of the TA, John was intimately involved in the development of the Pfizer global TA strategy which included the defining of the medical/market needs, all product profiles, and an integrated market strategy. From various task forces and study groups John became expert in portfolio development and pharmaceutical attrition. John left Pfizer in September of 2007 to be the first of several Pfizer directors to join IDSC. More...
David J. Dooley, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Dooley has over 27 years of research experience and project management in CNS drug discovery. He was Research Fellow in CNS Pharmacology at Pfizer prior to joining IDSC. As a neuropharmacologist, he contributed to the nomination of 12 clinical candidates, 6 being advanced to clinical testing. He has worked on both small molecule and peptide strategies targeting various psychiatric and neurological disorders. He has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and presented at more than 70 international scientific meetings. In 1990, he relocated to the Ann Arbor labs of Parke-Davis after being employed by European pharmaceutical firms. Dr. Dooley received his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Washington in Seattle. More...
Rose Feng, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Feng brings to IDSC a career of PK/PD, human PK modeling, and toxicokinetics experience. Dr. Feng is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Associate Research Scientist of PK/PD Core Facility at the College of Pharmacy and Engineering at the University of Michigan. She has over 15 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry in Pharmacokinetics, Metabolism, and Pharmacodynamics. Throughout her career, Dr. Feng has been recognized for her expertise in the research of: (1) classic pharmacokinetics, toxicokinetics, population pharmacokinetics, and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling, (2) interspecies scaling and predictive ADME, (3) blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration, transporters, and quantitative structure-BBB penetration relationship, (4) CNS and cancer drug delivery. Dr. Feng has authored or co-authored approximately 80 peer reviewed publications and scientific presentations. She is an invited speaker at a variety of national and international forums. Dr. Feng received her B.S. in pharmaceutical sciences from China Pharmaceutical University in 1981, Ph.D. in pharmacology from Institute "Mario Negri" in 1984, and postdoctoral training from The University of Michigan in 1989 - 1990. She joined Parke-Davis/Pfizer in August 1990 as a senior scientist and had worked for 15 years to a high-rank research position as an Associate Research Fellow. During her service at Parke-Davis/Pfizer, she has advanced many drugs (e.g. Lyrica, Neurontin) into development and registration (IND, NDA, and MAA).
Shelly Glase, Ph.D.
Director
Shelly Glase has 17 years CNS Medicinal Chemistry experience, covering both psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. While at Pfizer/Parke-Davis she developed expertise in all aspects of preclinical drug discovery, from evaluation and optimization of chemical leads to rational design of clinical candidates. Her experience also includes 6 years of project management, leading a large multi-disciplinary project team that advanced 5 drug candidates to preclinical development. Shelly received her postdoctoral training at the University of Rochester, Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Houston and B.S. in Chemistry from Carnegie-Mellon University. More...
Bob Kennedy, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Robert Kennedy has 16 years of research and management experience in the fields of cardiovascular, CNS and high throughput drug discovery. He has developed a significant knowledge of all disciplines relevant to the drug discovery process as well as a broad expertise in multiple therapeutic areas. Prior to joining IDSC, Dr Kennedy was Director of Cardiovascular Chemistry at Pfizer's Ann Arbor Laboratories and Chair of the Chemistry Technology Council. During his tenure at Parke-Davis/Pfizer, his knowledge and experience has helped identify 9 clinical candidates, with 5 compounds having progressed to clinical trials, including follow on candidate to Lipitor®. Upon completing his Ph.D. in 1985, he took an NIH post-doctoral fellowship at MIT and three years hence joined the chemistry faculty at Columbia University. In 1992 Bob joined Lederle Laboratories, part of the American Cyanamid Company, in Pearl River, New York where he started a combinatorial chemistry group. In 1995 he moved to Parke-Davis and shortly rose to lead the 25 member combinatorial chemistry group and managed a $100 million combinatorial chemistry collaboration. More...
Ken King, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. King has been in the pharmaceutical business for over 30 years with more than 20 years in regulatory affairs. Ken was the Senior Vice President, Worldwide Regulatory Affairs at Warner Lambert with global responsibility for regulatory affairs, drug safety and pre-approval compliance [GLP, GCP & GMP]. With Pfizer he was Senior Vice President, Worldwide Development and served as Pfizer's representative to the Prescription Drug User Fee [PDUFA] negotiation team that worked with senior FDA officials and congress to secure the reauthorization of this important legislation. Throughout his career he has managed many line functions [Pharmaceutical Development, Statistics and Clinical Information, Quality Assurance, Information Management, Pharmacokinetics, Clinical Pharmacy, Project Management within drug development. This experience forms the basis for his approach of understanding the evolving science and then determining how to make the current regulations fit the new science. This diverse experience also provides the basis of his business approach of ensuring alignment of all of the parties involved in providing safe and effective therapeutic agents to patients in need. When alignment is achieved, approval and appropriate pricing are the natural sequelae. He received his B.S. in Pharmacy and Ph. D. in Organic Chemistry for the University of Illinois. Dr. King is currently President of Ken King Consulting.
Katie Kostlan, Ph.D.
Director
Katie Kostlan is an experienced medicinal chemist with proven success as a scientific leader in drug discovery, including 24 years experience at a major pharmaceutical company. During that time, she developed a broad expertise in multiple therapeutic areas, particularly Dermatology, Inflammation, and CNS. Her demonstrated ability to move projects from identification of initial biochemical target and discovery of chemical leads, to delivery of quality clinical candidates has resulted in 13 clinical candidates, with 7 having progressed to Phase 1 or Phase 2 clinical trials. In addition, she has made successful use of key technologies, including structure based drug design, parallel medicinal chemistry and high throughput screening to identify chemical leads and to move projects forward. Her experience includes a range of molecular target types (proteinases, kinases, and other enzyme inhibitors; agonists and antagonists of nuclear receptors and GPCRs; arachidonic acid cascade). More...
David Moreland, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Moreland joined IDSC after gaining over 21 years of research experience in a large pharmaceutical environment. With broad expertise in molecular modeling, cheminformatics/QSAR, and structural bioinformatics, he has made key contributions to projects in several therapeutic areas, including CNS, cardiovascular, antiretroviral, and antibacterial. He has applied ligand-based, structure-based, and statistical techniques, helping teams identify numerous early clinical candidates, including one phase II compound. He has worked on GPCR, nuclear hormone receptor, protease, and RNA targets. Dr. Moreland obtained his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, then earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley in Prof. W. G. Dauben's group, where he studied the synthesis and properties of strained cage molecules before completing his thesis work on the application of conformational analysis and statistics to the understanding of reaction mechanisms. More...
TJ O'Donnell
Director
Dr. O'Donnell has 27 years of experience working with pharmaceutical and other chemical companies. His early work in computer graphics led to one of the first molecular modeling and graphics systems at a major pharmaceutical company. He has applied computational chemistry methods to implement algorithms for chemical modeling and to produce web-based applications for use by research chemists. He is also an expert in the design and use of relational databases in chemistry. More...
Deanne Murden
Director
Deanna Murden is a Regulatory Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) professional with 15 years of industry experience in global drug development and registration. She brings clients a diverse global perspective on Regulatory CMC strategy and content management from phases I through IV. Deanna has direct experience with agency interactions for first in human clinical trials and has negotiated regulatory issues leading to the successful and timely approvals of NDAs and post-approval supplements. As a result of this diverse and practical experience, she excels in streamlining processes and systems across the regulatory continuum for content management and compliance. Deanna is also a recognized leader in electronic submission policy and practice for CMC aspects of regulatory documentation, and is the founder and served as topic lead for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) eCTD/CMC topic group.
Robert (Bob) Sigler, DVM, Ph.D., Dipl., ACVP
Director
Dr. Sigler has more than 21 years experience as a drug development pathologist and study director at Parke-Davis, Pfizer and Esperion Therapeutics, a small cardiovascular company which was acquired by Pfizer. He received his DVM from Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine (East Lansing), his ACVP board-certification while in residency at the University Of Tennessee College Of Veterinary Medicine (Knoxville) in 1983, and his Ph.D. in Pathology from the University of Maryland Medical School (Baltimore) in 1987. As listed above, he has experience in large pharma as well as start-ups and small companies. Bob has served as a veterinary pathologist, designing the pathology endpoints and performing pathologic evaluation in numerous investigational, discovery and development projects for drug candidates and has co-authored several IND applications as well as safety assessments and FDA briefing documents. Drug indications have varied from anticonvulsant, antipsychotic, antiinfective, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and the treatment of atherosclerosis. Bob did extensive toxicology work supporting the safety package for Lipitor and Neurontin, marketed by Parke-Davis and Pfizer. From 2000 until 2007, he was Director of Pathology (Esperion Therapeutics, Inc, a start-up company acquired by Pfizer in February, 2004), managed a vivarium, chaired the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), and designed new facilities for histology and necropsy laboratories at the Pfizer Plymouth Township Facility (Esperion Therapeutics), and worked as a study director and study pathologist.
Bob Sliskovic, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Bob Sliskovic has 25 years of research and management experience in the fields of cardiovascular, inflammation, CNS and dermatology drug discovery. He has developed a significant knowledge of all disciplines relevant to the drug discovery process as well as a broad expertise in multiple therapeutic areas. Prior to joining IDSC, Dr Sliskovic was Senior Director of both CNS and Inflammation Chemistry at Pfizer's Ann Arbor Laboratories. During his tenure at Parke-Davis/Pfizer, his knowledge and experience has helped identify 33 clinical candidates, with 12 compounds having progressed to clinical trials, including Lipitor® Upon completing his Ph.D. in 1982, he moved to the US and joined Lederle Laboratories, part of the American Cynanamid Company, in Pearl River, New York where he worked on the discovery of novel anti-cancer agents. Dr Sliskovic received his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Keele in the UK. More...
Les Stafford
Business Development Director
Les joined IDSC in September, 2007. Prior to joining IDSC, he was a sourcing scientist for the global outsourcing group at Pfizer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He had a 25 year career as a metabolism scientist and project manager with the environmental chemistry group at Dow AgroSciences in Indianapolis, Indiana. Before Dow, Les was a metabolism chemist with the US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service in Fargo, North Dakota for 6 years. Les received BA and MS degrees in chemistry/biochemistry from Minnesota State University Moorhead. More...
Ken Tack, MD
Director
Kenneth Tack earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After completing his training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota, he took a position with the Michigan State College of Human Medicine. He then moved to the pharmaceutical industry, initially with Johnson & Johnson, and then with Upjohn, and Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert (acquired by Pfizer). He has had extensive clinical trial experience with quinolones, cephalosporins, and glycopeptides, and has worked with regulatory agencies in Europe, Asia, and North America. He has presented at the FDA Anti-Infective Advisory Committee, at IDSA, at the annual Superbugs and Superdrugsmeeting, and has over 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Since March 2008, he has been an independent consultant working with multiple companies developing antibacterial compounds for a variety of indications.
Chris Whitehead, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Whitehead brings to IDSC over 10 years experience in computational chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to his expertise in molecular modeling and structure-based drug design, he is experienced in developing computational models to assist medicinal chemists in drug discovery. In this regard he has collaborated with an interdisciplinary team of scientists to develop a software package to predict physical properties of chemicals and has tested and validated methodologies for their ability to model and predict physical properties. Chris has served as a National Science Foundation SBIR Commercialization Panelist. Additionally, he has performed chemical due diligence of potential project acquisitions and has contributed to patents and peer-reviewed scientific publications. His accomplishments include having provided technical and scientific leadership for project teams in four disease areas resulting in 6 pre-clinical drug candidates.