Frontiers of Biomedical Science

Speakers

Soren F. Anderson

Wyeth Research
email

Soren Anderson gained his legal training at Copenhagen University, and subsequently his MBA from Harvard Business School. He has a wealth of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, having worked in the past for Eli Lilly in the U.S. and the UK, Altana GmbH in Germany, Lundbeck in Denmark, GlaxoSmithKline in the UK, and now Wyeth.

In his position as vice president of strategy, operations, and portfolio management, Anderson manages two groups charged with the management of the Discovery Research Portfolio and Operations, and also the overall strategic direction of discovery research. A member of the Wyeth Discovery Executive Committee, Anderson works closely with senior R&D colleagues to shape the future success of discovery research on establishing novel partnering models with government, academia, and industry.

Étienne-Émile Baulieu, PhD

French Academy of Science
email | web site | publications

Étienne-Émile Baulieu is a member of the French Académie de Médicine and of the Conseil Consultatif National d'Ethique. He is also president of the Institut de la Longévité et du Vieillissement. He recently served as president of the Société de Secours des Amis des Sciences.

Baulieu received his medical degree and his PhD from Paris Hospitals and went on to become professor of biochemistry at Bicêtre Medical School, Université Paris-Sud. He then became a professor at the Collège de France, where he was named chair of the foundations and principles of human reproduction department in 1993. He was named director of the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale and consultant of Roussel Uclaf.

In addition to his academic positions, Baulieu has served on the editorial boards of several French and international journals as well as on scientific committees such as the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale Française, INSERM, and Centre National de Recherches Médicales de Franceville, Gabon. He is the recipient of numerous scientific awards, including the Distinguished Biomedical Science Achievement Award from Oakland University, the Sawyer Distinguished Award from UCLA, the Golden Plate from the American Academy of Achievement, and the Premio Minerva from Rome. He is the International Academy of Humanism Laureate and the emeritus member of Academia Europea.

Jan Carlstedt-Duke, PhD

Karolinska Institute
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Jan Carlstedt-Duke is professor of molecular endocrinology and dean of research at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. He received his medical training at Karolinska Institutet, where he also obtained his PhD in 1979 and became a licensed physician in 1984. His clinical experience is in pediatric endocrinology. His main field of research has been the structure and function of steroid hormone receptors, particularly the glucocorticoid receptor.

Under Carlstedt-Duke's direction, Karolinska Institutet has made strategic investments in establishing the KI Biobank and developed new informatics systems. He serves as the chairman of the board of KI Biobank. He is also a member of the joint steering committees for a number of active collaborations between KI and different companies including Affymetrix, Biovitrum, IBM, and Pfizer.

Zhu Chen, MD, PhD

Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Zhu Chen is vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the Chinese Human Genome Center at Shanghai, and director of the Shanghai Institute of Hematology at Ruijin Hospital. He also serves as co-chair and inter-Academy panel member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences (United States); titular member of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities; and council member of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO).

Virginia Cornish, PhD

Columbia University
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Virginia Cornish graduated summa cum laude with a BA in biochemistry in 1991 from Columbia University, where she did undergraduate research with Ronald Breslow in the chemistry department. She then conducted research with Peter Schultz in the chemistry department at the University of California at Berkeley as a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow. In Schultz's laboratory she helped develop a new methodology for incorporating synthetic amino acids into proteins using the protein biosynthetic machinery.

In 1996, she became an NSF postdoctoral fellow in the biology department at MIT under the guidance of Robert Sauer. At MIT she initiated an independent project that formed the basis for research in her own laboratory at Columbia. Cornish joined the faculty of the Columbia chemistry department in 1999, where she carries out research at the interface of chemistry and biology, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2004.

Her laboratory brings together modern methods in synthetic chemistry and DNA technology to co-opt biological systems for the synthesis of new materials, understanding the function of these complex biological systems by challenging their specificity at the molecular level. Her research has been recognized by numerous awards including a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, and an NSF Career Award.

Peter B. Corr, PhD

Pfizer Inc.
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Peter Corr is a member of the Pfizer Human Health Leadership Team, an executive body responsible for managing Pfizer's global human health business. Prior to assuming his current role in July 2002, Corr served as senior vice president of Pfizer, as executive vice president of Pfizer Global Research & Development, and as president of Worldwide Development. Before joining Pfizer in 2000, he held senior leadership positions at Warner Lambert/Parke Davis until the merger with Pfizer in 2000.

Corr received his doctorate from Georgetown University School of Medicine and Dentistry and spent more than 18 years as a researcher in molecular biology and pharmacology at Washington University in St. Louis. When he left Washington University, Corr was a professor in the department of medicine (cardiology) as well in the department of pharmacology and molecular biology. His research has been published in more than 160 scientific manuscripts.

Corr is the recipient of numerous awards, including membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha National Medical Honorary Society, an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. He also serves on the board of governors at the New York Academy of Sciences.

Jingzhi Guo, PhD

Shanghai Jiao-Tong University

Jingzhi Guo works in collaboration with Lin He in the Institute of Bio-X Science at Shanghai Jiao-Tong University.

Hua-Liang Jiang, PhD

Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica
Chinese Academy of Sciences
email | web site | publications

Hualiang Jiang earned his PhD in organic chemistry in 1995 from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, where he is now a professor and associate director. From 1997 to 2002 he worked variously at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Max Planck Institute for Solid Physics, and the Weizmann Institute of Science as a visiting professor and scholar.

Jiang's research interest is in discovering new drugs and in related basic research that synthetically employs approaches of computational chemistry and biology, computer aided drug design, organic chemistry, molecular biology, and structural biology.

Keith Jones, PhD

Affymetrix
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Keith Jones started his scientific career with dual undergraduate degrees in biological sciences and chemistry from the University of California, Irvine and went on to receive a PhD in molecular pharmacology from Stanford University. His postdoctoral fellowship was with Keith Fournier at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where he was introduced to the field of molecular genetics. He currently holds the position of vice president, molecular genetics at Affymetrix, where he works on developing novel methodologies to access genetic information and applies these methodologies to new or emerging fields of study.

Xiangyin Kong, PhD

Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Xiangyin Kong is a research professor at the Health Science Center, Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, where he is working to identify linkages between genes and human disease. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Biosciences.

Bruce Lahn, PhD

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Chicago
Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
email | web site | publications

Bruce Lahn is founder and chief scientific advisor of the Center for Stem Cell Research and Tissue Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University in China. He is also an investigator at the Cancer Research Center at the University of Chicago, an assistant investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a fellow at the Brain Research Institute, and an assistant professor at the department of human genetics at the University of Chicago. In addition, he is a member of committees on genetics, evolutionary biology, and cancer biology at the University of Chicago.

Lahn received his BA from Harvard in 1991 and his PhD in biology from MIT in 1998. He has received numerous honors, including the Merrill Lynch Forum Global Innovation Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences, and the Cancer Research Foundation Young Investigator Award. He was named Searle Scholar in 2000. Lahn was also selected to "TR 100" by Technology Review magazine: "100 top future innovators" and, most recently, to the "40 Under 40" by Crain's Chicago Business magazine: "Chicago's rising stars in business, government, and academia."

Chi-Ming Lee, PhD

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
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In his position at AstraZeneca in Wilmington, Delaware, Chi-Ming Lee is responsible for building and developing the capability to translate advances in basic neuroscience research into effective therapies in patients in a more predictive and cost-effective manner.

Lee is a neuroscientist who has spent more than 20 years in drug discovery and development. He created and led several multidisciplinary project teams to discover and validate novel molecule targets, generate appropriate animal models, identify drug candidates for diseases of the central nervous system, and to deliver drug candidates to proof-of-principle studies in the clinic for Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis. He has experience in developing global CNS discovery strategy and facilitating strategic alignment of the tasks and goals of the discovery and development functions. He has extensive experience in working at the interface of R&D.

Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Lee taught biochemistry in a medical school for 10 years and performed neuropharmacology and herbal medicine research. He received a PhD from Cambridge University and did postdoctoral training at John Hopkins University. He has published more than 90 peer-reviewed research reports in neuropharmacology, neurochemistry, and phytotherapeutics.

Marc Lipsitch, DPhil

Harvard School of Public Health
email | web site | publications

Marc Lipsitch is an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, with appointments in the departments of epidemiology and immunology & infectious diseases. He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in philosophy from Yale University and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He received a PhD in zoology in 1995 and did postdoctoral work at Emory University and at the Centers for Disease Control from 1995-1999.

Lipsitch is the author of more than 55 peer-reviewed publications on antimicrobial resistance, mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission, bacterial and human population genetics, and, most recently, immunology. One part of his present research programs focuses on the population biological and immunological aspects of colonization with Streptococcus pneumoniae; most recently, he and colleagues showed that naturally developed immune responses to pneumococcal colonization may be primarily directed at conserved, noncapsular antigens and mediated through CD4+ T cells, rather than antibodies. The other part of his research focuses on mathematical modeling and the development of quantitative methods for studying disease transmission.

Lipsitch has received outstanding young investigator awards from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the American Society for Microbiology, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers' Association Foundation. He also serves as associate editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology and Emerging Themes in Epidemiology.

Dawei Ma, PhD

Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry
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Dawei Ma has been a research professor at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry since 1995, and since 1997 he has been director of State Key Laboratory of Bioorganic & Natural Products Chemistry, and Joint Professor in the department of chemistry of Fudan University.

Professor Ma has received many awards and honors including the JAPS Visiting Scholar Award in 1999, the Second Class National Natural Science Award in 2000, and Top Ten Outstanding Youth of Shanghai City in 2001.

His research interests are development of selective modulators for special proteins and biological processes, total synthesis of complex natural products with interesting biological activities, and exploring new synthetic methodologies.

Jeremy Paul, PhD

New York Academy of Sciences
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Jeremy Paul is the director of the Frontiers of Science program at the New York Academy of Sciences. Prior to joining the Academy in September 2003, he spent 13 years in the biotechnology sector in the New York area at Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Cadus Pharmaceuticals (which he helped found in 1992), OSI Pharmaceuticals, and most recently at Aton Pharma Inc.

Paul obtained an AB from the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in the biology department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Richard O. Hunes in the Center for Cancer Research. He also did postdoctoral work at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Chicago in the laboratories of Donald F. Steiner and R. Michael Gravito.

David Perlin, PhD

Public Health Research Institute
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David Perlin is president and scientific director of the Public Health Research Institute, a 64-year-old biomedical research organization specializing in infectious diseases. He has helped establish PHRI as one of the leading tuberculosis and opportunistic infections research organizations in the world and was instrumental in the creation of the International Center for Public Health on the UMDNJ campus in Newark, NJ. Perlin is an expert in drug-resistant fungal infections and in rapid diagnosis of opportunistic pathogens in high-risk patients. He is a member of several organizations related to bioterrorism and infectious diseases, such as the New York City Department of Health Advisory Panel on Bioterrorism and Emerging Infections. He was also a special consultant to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee's investigation of the October 2001 anthrax outbreak. Most recently, he has worked with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences to develop programs on TB and molecular diagnosis of emerging infections in China.

Perlin earned his AB from Brandeis University in 1976 and his PhD from Cornell University in 1980. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the Yale University School of Medicine and at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Perlin joined PHRI in 1985; he was named scientific director in 1992 and president in 2005. He was appointed professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at New Jersey Medical School-UMDNJ in 2003.

John Reid, PhD

AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
email

John Reid is the director of Global Discovery Alliances with responsibility for managing alliances in the CNS/Pain Research Area at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. Previous positions at AstraZeneca include Director of Knowledge Management, coordinating business intelligence support for CNS R&D strategy, portfolio management, and in licensing. He also served as director of molecular sciences for CNS Drug Discovery. Before joining Astra in 1997, he was a scientist and group leader at the GlaxoWellcome Institute for Molecular Biology in Geneva and a scientists at Genentech in San Francisco. He earned a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.

Glenn Rice, PhD

Bridge Phramaceuticals
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Glenn Rice is the founder, CEO, and president of Bridge Pharmaceuticals, which is the leading contractor of Asian FDA compliant drug development services for the U.S. and EU markets. He is an inventor on more than 20 patents or patent applications and has authored more than 75 manuscripts and book chapters. He is also the founder of EmergingMed, an online clinical trial prequalification and matching database and director of C-PATH, an institute focused on drug development and regulatory innovation he helped found with the DFA, SRI, and the University of Arizona.

After heading a discovery laboratory at Genetech from 1987 to 1993, Rice served as VP of research at Cytokine Networks. He went on to become the founder and CEO as well as president and chairman of Convergence Pharmaceuticals, a privately held cancer biopharmaceutical company, which was sold to ILEX Oncology. He then served as board director and researcher at ILEX Oncology. In 2002, Rice became the head of the department of life sciences at Stanford Research Institute.

Ellis Rubinstein

New York Academy of Sciences
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As president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences since November 2002, Ellis Rubinstein is rejuvenating the 187-year-old institution through a series of novel initiatives. For instance, the Academy's Frontiers of Science Program has become a "science salon" for leading researchers in the hottest fields of science. And an innovative Web project—Science Without Borders—disseminates leading-edge content to the Academy's 23,000-plus members in 150 countries and yet another 50,000 Web visitors each month.

Rubinstein joined the Academy after more than 13 years with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he served as editor of Science magazine from 1993-2002. Prior to Science, Rubinstein was editor of The Scientist and a senior editor at Newsweek. He also served as managing editor of Science 86 and IEEE Spectrum (the principal magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

As a journalist and editor, Mr. Rubinstein conducted the first one-on-one interview with Chinese President Jiang Zemin granted to a Western magazine editor and he garnered President Bill Clinton's first interview with a science magazine. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Rubinstein is a Fellow of the AAAS and a member of the IEEE and the National Association of Science Writers. He is a member of the World Economic Forum and annually moderates panels exploring issues at the nexus of science and society in Davos, Switzerland.

Joanna Rubinstein, DDS, PhD

As the director of Global Health and Science Initiatives of the UN Millennium Project, Joanna Rubinstein coordinates international partnerships with the private sector, academic institutions, and research funding bodies. She also leads the "Quick Wins" initiatives as well as fund-raising efforts for the Millennium Project. Moreover, she represents the Millennium Project internationally and leads cross-country initiatives.

Rubinstein joined the Earth Institute from the Columbia University Medical Center, where she supervised the medical center's graduate and postdoctoral programs and organized a wide variety of institutional and international initiatives. She also has 15 years of experience as a practicing scientist and senior administrator in Europe, where she organized joint scientific meetings, faculty and student exchanges, business and training collaborations, and strategic partnerships between the universities, medical centers, and pharmaceutical companies across the United States, Asia, and Europe.

Previous to joining Columbia University Rubinstein was at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where she was the director for Research and Postgraduate Education. Prior to her appointment at the Karolinska, she was a director at Sweden's Medical Research Council with responsibility for the peer review process. Before that, she was a cell biologist at the Karolinska, authoring nearly 60 papers. Rubinstein holds a DDS and a PhD in cell biology from the Karolinska.

Bing Sun, PhD

Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
email | web site | publications

Bing Sun works on Th1 and Th2 cell differentiation and has demonstrated that Th1 cells play a crucial role in initiating Experimental Autoimmune Uveitis. His lab has also shown that PTX is able to promote DC maturation and naïve T-cell differentiation into Th1 cells.

He and his colleagues have identified a new protein, 3a, from SARS CoV. He has also contributed to the development of a diagnostic kit for SARS-CoV infection.

He was the recipient in 2003 of an award for distinguished young scientists in China.

Gregory Verdine, PhD

Harvard University
email | web site | publications

Gregory Verdine's research interests lie in the emerging area of chemical biology. He studies biological processes underlying control of gene expression and preservation of genomic integrity. He has made major contributions to the understanding of DNA damage recognition and repair by base-excision DNA repair enzymes. He has also pioneered new and powerful approaches for the discovery of potent bioactive ligands for peptide receptors. His work has illuminated the biochemical and structural basis for enzymatic recognition and repair of mutagenic damage in DNA.

Verdine received a BS from St. Joseph's University and a PhD from Columbia University. Following an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at MIT and Harvard Medical School, he joined the Harvard University department of chemistry in 1988. Named Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in 1992, Verdine was promoted to full professor in 1994 and was named Harvard College professor in 2000. He was also recently named the Erving Professor of Chemistry, one of Harvard's longest-running endowed professorships. He is a founding faculty member of the Harvard Institute for Chemistry and Cell Biology and a full member of the Harvard department of molecular and cellular biology. Verdine recently became the director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Program in Cancer Chemical Biology.

Verdine has received numerous awards and honors, including the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Sloan Fellowship, Searle Scholar Award, an Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society. He currently serves as director and chair of the scientific advisory boards of Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Renegade Therapeutics, and Gloucester Pharmaceuticals. He also serves in an advisory capacity to the director of the NCI Center for Cancer Research and the Japanese Ministry of Science and Education.

Yizheng Wang, MD, PhD

Shanghai Institutes for Biological Science
Chinese Academy of Sciences
email | web site | publications

Yizheng Wang is an investigator and head of the Laboratory for Neuronal Signal Transduction at Institute of Neuroscience (ION) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He earned his medical degree from the China Medical University in 1982 and received his PhD from the University of Laval, Canada, in 1991. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the university of Nice, France, and Case Western Reserve University from 1991-1994. He served as a faculty member at the National Research Council of Canada and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia before joining ION in 2001. His research focuses on signal transduction involving G proteins and protein kinase cascade and the molecular mechanisms underlying neuronal apoptosis.

Zheng-Hong Yuan, PhD

Fudan University
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Zheng-Hong Yuan is director of the Ministry-of-Health and Ministry-of-Education Key Lab of Medical Molecular Virology, and vice dean of Shanghai Medical College.

Xu Zhang, PhD

Shanghai Institutes for Biological Science
Chinese Academy of Sciences
email | web site

Xu Zhang graduated from the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an China in 1985 and obtained a PhD at the department of neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, in 1994. He joined ION in 1999 and is now an investigator and head of the Laboratory of Sensory Systems. His main interest is to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in the regulation of sensory signaling in the dorsal root ganglian neurons and spinal dorsal horn neurons, especially the mechanisms of chronic pain and nerve regeneration following peripheral nerve injury.

Adrienne Burke

Adrienne Burke is editor of Science & the City.

Julia Karow

Julia Karow contributed additional reporting to this eBriefing.