Scientific Advisory Board

Balázs Sarkadi M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. (Chair) - Head of the Strategic Advisory Board. Head of the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the National Medical Center, Institute of Haematology and Immunology in Budapest, Hungary, and habilitated Professor at Semmelweis Medical University. Dr. Sarkadi is one of the founding members of Solvo Biotechnology. Dr. Sarkadi has done important research in the area of cellular membrane transport processes. In 1990 and 1991 he was Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then a Fulbright Research Professor at the same university in 2000-2001. Dr. Balázs Sarkadi worked in 1982-1983 as a Visiting Associate Professor at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada and in 1976-1977 as a Research Associate in the University of Chicago's Department of Physiology. Since 1990 he has focused on studying the membrane ATPases (ABC transporters), which play a major role in the multi-drug resistance of tumor cells. Dr. Sarkadi and his colleagues have devised new diagnostic methods for the quantitative functional analysis of these proteins. They have also been involved in developing pharmacologically relevant compounds that specifically and selectively modulate the function of multi-drug transporters. He is a member of several scientific organizations, including the International Cell Research Organization (panel member), the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the American Physiological Society. He is also Vice-President of the Hungarian Biochemical Society. Dr. Sarkadi has published more than one hundred papers in international scientific journals, including twenty-six publications on ABC transporters. He and his colleagues have obtained three international patents on new methods and compounds related to cancer multi-drug resistance.

Dietrich Keppler, M.D. -Professor of Tumor Biochemistry at the University of Heidelberg and Head of the Division of Tumor Biochemistry, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg. His scientific achievements include: the discovery of D-galactosamine-induced hepatitis; elucidation of mode of action of D-galactosamine; discovery of cell death in liver and hepatoma induced by uridine triphosphate deficiency and pyrimidine analogs; description of the metabolism, analysis, and transport of leukotrienes in vivo; description of the ATP-dependent transport across the hepatocyte canalicular membrane and mechanisms of cholestasis; the elucidation of the function of the multidrug resistance protein 1 (MRP1; symbol ABCC1) as a conjugate export pump and most recently the discovery, cloning, and characterization of the apical multidrug resistance protein MRP2 (symbol ABCC2) deficient in Dubin-Johnson syndrome as well as the cloning and localization of MRP3, MRP4, and MRP5; identification of MRP5 as export pump for the cyclic nucleotides and the cloning and characterization of uptake transporters of the OATP family. He has also been a leader in the generation of multiple-transfected polarized cells stably expressing OATP uptake transporters and MRP efflux pumps, as in vitro models for vectorial transport in hepatobiliary elimination and as tools in drug development. Professor Keppler has received numerous awards and prizes including: Prix Galien Deutschland (Galenus award), together with W. Hagmann and C. Denzlinger, for research on the role of cysteinyl leukotrienes in endotoxin action (1985); Heinrich Wieland Prize for research on metabolism and analysis of leukotrienes (1987); Nagai Foundation Tokyo, Japan, Distinguished Lectureship and award for achievement in medical and pharmaceutical sciences (2002); Lucie Bolte Award of the German Association for the Study of the Liver (GASL) for achievements in research on liver diseases (2004) and the Fourth Nathan Kaufman distinguished Lectureship, awarded by Queens University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ontario, Canada, for research on the molecular basis and pathobiology of transport into and out of the liver.

Karl Kuchler, Ph.D. is the Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics at the Medical University Vienna, Max F. Perutz Laboratories, Department of Medical Biochemistry, Austria. He was trained as a biochemist at the Technical University of Graz where he also received his PhD. His research interests are focused on the following areas: Molecular structure-function analysis and expression regulation of ABC proteins in lower eukaryotes (yeast, fungal pathogens, stress response, drug resistance mechanisms and signal transduction); Molecular mechanism of fungal virulence and host-pathogen interaction (Signal transduction during host cell invasion, immune response, animal models to study pathogenesis); Molecular medicine and systems biology of novel genes encoding mammalian ABC proteins (Genetic analysis of hepatic, intestinal and brain ABC transporters).
Dr Kuchler has over 75 peer-reviewed publications; he is the editor of a number of books and various journals and the author of 2 patents.

Bruno Stieger, Ph.D. is head of the research laboratory of the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Department of Medicine, University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland. He was trained as a biochemist at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich Switzerland from where he also received his PhD. His research interests are focused on physiological, biochemical and cell biological aspects of epithelia with a current focus on the liver. The Institute of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University Hospital Zurich has cloned the major bile salt transport systems of hepatocytes including the sodium-dependent uptake system Ntcp (Slc10a1), several organic anion transporting polypeptides, which are additionally important drug transporters (members of the Slco transporter family) and the bile salt export pump Bsep (Abcb11). The current research interests of the Institute are related to i) understand the role of the interaction of drugs with transport systems in the development of acquired liver disease, ii) the role of genetic polymorphisms in rendering patients susceptible to acquired liver disease and the iii) the investigation of molecular mechanisms of canalicular bile formation.

Yuichi Sugiyama, Ph.D. is a Professor and Chairman at the Department of Molecular Pharmacokinetics, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and serves concurrently as the head of the Pharmaceutical Regulatory Science department at the University of Tokyo. According to a recent report of ISI Essential Science Indicators, Professor Sugiyama has been ranked as the top cited scientist in the field of Pharmacology & Toxicology. His original articles published in the past 10 years, between January 1997 and February 2007, have received the highest number of citations in this field In particular, "Studies on drug transporters and the quantitative analysis of the role of drug transporters in drug clearance and tissue distribution of drugs" has been highly cited for the last 10 years.

His research focuses on two areas:
1. Physiologically based pharmacokinetics: prediction of drug dispositions from in vitro biochemical data.
2. Molecular pharmacokinetics of drug transport in liver, kidney, and brain.

Professor Sugiyama's research on membrane transporters has yielded better understanding of the basic aspects of transport mechanisms. He has discovered several examples in which transporters play a major role in drug disposition by integrating in vitro data with in vivo pharmacokinetic models. Professor Sugiyama has received numerous awards and prizes including: the PSWC (Pharmaceutical Sciences World Conference) Research Achievement Award in 2007, John G. Wagner Pfizer Lectureship Award in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2006; Scientific Achievement Award (Pharmaceutical Society of Japan) in 2004; AAPS Distinguished Pharmaceutical Scientist Award in 2003; The Troy Daniels Lectureship (UCSF) - Scientific Achievement Award 2001 from the "Japanese Society for Xenobiotic Metabolism and Disposition"; Scientific Achievement Award from the Academy of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Japan in 1995; FIP Pharmaceutical Scientist of the Year Award 1994 (The first prize winner); Scientific Prize for young scientists from the "Pharmaceutical Society of Japan" 1991 and Takeru-Aya Higuchi Prize in 1990. He is currently the President of "International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX) and "Japanese Society for Xenobiotic Metabolism and Disposition (JSSX)", and has served on the editorial board of several international journals.

András Váradi, Ph.D. - Head of the Research Group on Active Transport Proteins at the Institute of Enyzmology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Váradi received his doctorate in Hungary and worked as Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University and as Visiting Scientist at Yale University. His main interests are in exploring the molecular mechanisms of ABC transporters, delineation of their functional domains and their intramolecular interactions. He recently received a research award from the PXE International Foundation to support research on the functional consequences of pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) mutations in the ABCC6 gene. He has sixty peer-reviewed publications; twenty-five of which are ABC-protein related.