Meet the Experts Transporter Conference Boston 2019

BAJAJ Piyush, PhD

Biography

Piyush Bajaj got his PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Dr. Bajaj then did a postdoc at Los Alamos national lab (LANL) developing organs-on-a-chip which could be used for both efficacy and safety assessment. After his postdoc at LANL, Dr. Bajaj moved to Pfizer where he developed/validated protocols for generating human pluripotent stem cell-derived three-dimensional (3D) kidney organoids and was involved in de-risking of potential target organ toxicities using physiologically relevant in vitro models. Dr. Bajaj is now a part of Takeda’s investigative toxicology group where he co-leads liver and kidney de-risking strategies which are applied for proactive management of potential safety liabilities of compounds in the discovery stages.

CHO Choi-Fong, PhD

Biography

Choi-Fong Cho, PhD is an Instructor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School. She is an Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and an Associated Scientist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She received her PhD in Medical Biophysics at Western University in Canada, which was fully supported by multiple national and provincial scholarships. She later completed her post-doctoral fellowship in Neuro-oncology at BWH, where her fellowship was fully funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research. She was promoted to become a junior faculty member within the Neurosurgery Department in 2017 to initiate her own laboratory. The Cho group at BWH has pioneered an organoid platform to model the blood-brain-barrier in culture for high-throughput screening and analysis of brain-penetrant drugs. They continue to employ this technology for designing novel anti-brain cancer drugs with improved tumor-specificity and delivery into the brain.

CHU Xiaoyan, Ph.D.

Biography

Dr. Xiaoyan Chu is a Senior Principle Scientist in the Department of Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics & Drug Metabolism (PPDM), Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Pharmacokinetics, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tokyo, Japan.  After completing her post-doctoral research at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Michigan, she joined the Department of PPDM at Merck & Co., Inc.  As the scientific leader for the Transporter & In Vitro Technology Group, her main responsibilities are to develop transporter strategies to support Merck discovery and development portfolio, and to evaluate and establish new technologies to study the role of drug transporters in drug disposition and drug-drug interactions. She has authored 70 peer-reviewed research papers, book chapters, and is an invited speaker at over 30 national/international scientific conferences.  She is a member of the International Transport Consortium (ITC) and serves as organizer and steering committee member of various scientific meetings/organizations.

DI Li, PhD

Biography

Dr. Li Di has 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical indus­try including Pfizer, Wyeth and Syntex. She is currently a research fellow at Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development, Groton, CT. Her research interests include the areas of drug metabo­lism, pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, absorption, transporters, blood–brain barrier and PBPK modeling and simulation. She has over 180 publications including two books and presented over 100 invited lectures. She is a recipient of the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, the New Jersey Association for Biomedical Research Outstanding Woman in Science Award, the Wyeth President’s Award and Peer Award for Excellence.

GANAPATHY Vadivel, PhD

Biography

Dr. Vadivel Ganapathy received his Ph. D. in biochemistry from the University of Madras, India in 1978. He joined the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA in the United States in 1979 for his post-doctoral training. He has cloned and characterized more than 40 mammalian transporters; these transporters mediate the cellular uptake of amino acids, vitamins, monocarboxylates, citric acid cycle intermediates, carnitine, and drugs. He has published 485 full-length papers and 30 reviews/book chapters. His Google Scholar citation h-index is 96. In recognition of his contributions to the field of nutrient transporters, he was awarded the Rank Prize for Nutrition in 2004, which he shared with two other scientists. To date, he has trained 13 Ph. D. students and mentored more than 15 post-doctoral fellows. His current lab consists of 5 graduate students (2 PhD. and 3 MD/PhD) and 4 post-doctoral fellows. Presently, he is a Grover Murray Professor and the Chair and also the Welch Endowed Chair in Biochemistry in the Department of Cell Biology and Biochemistry at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX, USA. His research areas include colitis, colon cancer, breast cancer, host-microbiome interaction, iron homeostasis, G-protein-coupled receptors for metabolites, obesity, and Alzheimer’s disease. He holds several patents related to therapeutic strategies for inflammatory bowel disease and cancer. He also teaches medical students various aspects of biochemistry and physiology, and has received numerous awards and recognition for outstanding teaching and innovation in education.   

HOWELL Brett, PhD

Biography

Brett A. Howell is the President of DILIsym Services, a Simulations Plus company developing and using DILIsym and other software tools to improve the development of safer and more effective drug therapies. He is also an associate director of the DILI-sim Initiative since its inception in 2011. In addition to overseeing DILIsym Services operations, Dr. Howell also helps guide the architecture and use of the DILIsym modeling software. Dr. Howell has published over 30 scientific papers in the areas of PBPK/PD modeling, in vitro toxicity testing, novel drug delivery systems, and drug safety. He has given invited scientific presentations at numerous national and international meetings, including the Society of Toxicology annual meeting, the Japanese Society of Toxicology annual meeting, the annual FDA/AASLD Drug-Induced Liver Injury meeting, the American Conference on Pharmacometrics (ACOP) annual meeting, the European Microsomes and Drug Oxidations annual meeting, and the Drug Information Association (DIA) annual safety meeting. He serves on the editorial board for the prominent Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) journal, “CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology,” published by the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Dr. Howell holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Florida and Bachelor of Science degrees in chemical engineering and textile engineering from North Carolina State University.

KRAJCSI Péter, PhD

Biography

Dr. Peter Krajcsi has extensive experience in biotechnology. He received his PhD in biochemistry from University of Szeged and later a Doctor of Sciences degree in biological sciences from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In his academic career he has focused on three major topics (i) steroid receptors (ii) molecular biology of adenoviruses and (iii) apoptosis. For the past 13 years he has been working in R&D management positions for small and medium size enterprises in drug research and gene therapy in Hungary as well as in the United States. Since 2002 he is the Chief Scientific Officer of Solvo Biotechnology. At Solvo the focus is on membrane transporters and utilization of membrane transporter technology in drug discovery and development as well as in development of diagnostics tools for cancer and inflammatory diseases.

LI Yutai, PhD

Biography

Yutai Li obtained her BS in 1986 from Liaoning University, China and Ph.D.  in 1995 from North Carolina State University. She worked at DuPont, Schering Plough, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before she joined the proteomics and metabolomics group in Merck & Co. in 2004.  She currently works on toxicity biomarker discovery using LC-MS based metabolomics approach. Also, she has been working on drug induced liver injury due to transporter inhibition using rodent models.

LIRAS Jennifer, PhD

Biography

Dr. Jennifer Liras is the Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics, and Metabolism Portfolio Lead at Pfizer, Inc.  She has more than 20 years of experience leading scientists responsible for characterizing and optimizing the pharmacokinetic properties of large and small molecule drugs.  She has a successful record of drug discovery and development across the portfolio in Cardiovascular Metabolic and Endocrine Diseases (CVMED), Antibacterials, Inflammation and Immunology, Neuroscience, Oncology and Rare Disease therapeutic areas.   She has dedicated her career to advancing predictive ADME sciences and most recently in tissue targeting, where she was instrumental in the development of predictive capabilities in brain penetration of efflux substrates.  Jenny received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1995 from The University of Texas at Austin and conducted her postdoctoral research in enzymology at Brandeis University.

MCFEELY Savannah, PhD

Biography

Dr. McFeely is a Research Scientist at University of Washington (UW) Drug Interaction Solutions. She obtained her PhD from the department of Pharmaceutics at the UW, working to evaluate the clinical significance and regulatory framework for the evaluation of organic anion transporting polypeptide 1B-based drug-drug interactions. Prior to her graduate studies she was a part of the DMPK department at Amgen working in clinical bioanalytical method development as well as metabolite identification. Currently she is working on research grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a knowledgebase of excipients and anti-infectives to advance the understanding of the DDI risk to patients in low income countries through PBPK modeling. 

RODRIGUES David, PhD

Biography

David has been in the pharmaceutical industry for 32 years and currently holds the title of Senior Scientific Director as head of the Transporter Sciences Group at Pfizer (Groton, CT, USA).  Before joining Pfizer in 2014, he spent productive periods at other US-based pharmaceutical companies (Searle, Abbott Labs, Merck, and Bristol-Myers Squibb).  During that time, he served on both scientific and managerial ladders.  He has authored 179 peer-reviewed manuscripts, presented >85 seminars/talks/webinars, and in the past served on the editorial boards of various DMPK-related journals (Xenobiotica, Drug Metabolism & Disposition, Current Drug Metabolism). In addition, he has edited/co-edited four DMPK-related textbooks.  Presently, he serves as adjunct professor at the College of Pharmacy, University of Rhode Island, and is a member of the International Transporter Consortium (ITC). In 2009, David was inducted as Fellow of The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS).  He is the recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Accomplishments in Drug Discovery & Development Award bestowed by the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX).

RONALDSON Patrick T., PhD

Biography

Dr. Patrick Ronaldson is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Ronaldson’s research is focused on studying blood-brain barrier (BBB) physiology and pharmacology with an emphasis on the challenges of effectively delivering drugs to the brain in disease states. His research continues to develop “state of the art” methods/procedures/tools/models for the in vivo examination of BBB/neurovascular unit (NVU) integrity, regulation of endothelial “barrier” properties at the molecular level, and how pharmacology of drug transport proteins is altered by stroke, neurodegenerative diseases or acute/chronic pain. Dr. Ronaldson has over 40 peer-reviewed publications and 5 book chapters on BBB physiology and transporter pharmacology. Additionally, he is the past chair of the Drug Transporter Community of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), the chair-elect of the Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Drug Metabolism (PPDM) Community of AAPS, and the chair of the Drug Discovery for the Nervous System (DDNS) Study Section of the National Institutes of Health.

SALPHATI Laurent, PhD

Biography

Dr. Laurent Salphati is currently a Principal Scientist in the Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics department at
Genentech, Inc. He heads the Permeability/Drug Transporters group and has been supporting and leading immunology
and oncology project teams from preclinical discovery to late stage clinical development. He received his Pharm.D.
from the University of Paris XI, France, and conducted his Ph.D research, investigating the complementary roles of
P-glycoprotein and CYP3A in drug absorption and disposition, at the University of California, San Francisco under
the guidance of Dr. Leslie Z. Benet. His research interests include the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of
drugs (PK/PD and PB/PK modeling) and the roles of drug transporters in drug absorption and disposition.

SCHLESSINGER Avner, PhD

Biography

Dr. Avner Schlessinger is an Assistant Professor of Pharmacological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, an Associate Director of Mt. Sinai Center for Therapeutics Discovery, and Co-Director of the Pharmacology, Discovery and Therapeutics Training Area. The overall goal of Dr. Schlessinger’s lab is to improve and automate the structure-based drug discovery process by developing and applying computational methods, and to characterize disease pathways, with a long-term goal of developing drugs against novel targets. His lab publishes in the areas of chemical biology, bioinformatics, and drug discovery, as well as in personalized medicine and pharmacogenomics.

Dr. Schlessinger graduated from Tel Aviv University with a BSc in Biology and Chemistry, and completed his PhD from Columbia University in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. As a PhD student, he developed programs predicting protein structure and function using various machine-learning approaches such as artificial neural networks. Following his graduate studies, Dr. Schlessinger was an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF, where he established methods for structure-based drug design and used these approaches to rationally design tool compounds for membrane proteins and protein kinases. Dr. Schlessinger serves on the editorial boards of PLOS Computational Biology and Journal of General Physiology. He is also an Advisory Board Member of the ReSolute Transporter Consortium as well as a Member of the International Transporter Consortium.

SCHUETZ, John D., PhD

Biography

John D. Schuetz received his Ph.D. in Biochemical Pharmacology/Toxicology (with Robert B. Diasio) from the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond in 1984 and completed his postdoctoral training in Molecular Cancer Biology (with I. David Goldman and Eric H. Westin (a Dr. Robert C. Gallo protégé), and subsequently worked with Dr. Philip Guzelian on CYPs, also at the Medical College of Virginia. In 1992, he joined the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as an Assistant Member.  He was promoted to the rank of Associate Member in 1997 and then to Member in 2005.  In 2006, he was appointed Vice Chair of the department and currently holds this position. He has broad research interests in the role of ABC transporters in normal physiology and pathophysiology.  His lab’s current studies are elucidating how transporters affect the biology as well as the therapeutic response of medulloblastoma and acute myeloid leukemia.  Dr. Schuetz has authored over 154 articles in peer-reviewed journals and contributed several book chapters. Dr. Schuetz has been elected to the AAAS Electorate nominating committee, elected Chair of the Toxicology Division of American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), Councilor to ASPET and is currently serving as Past-President of ASPET.  Further, he was nominated to membership in the ASBMB.  He has also been a permanent member of the NIH DMP study section (2002-2007) and contributed service as an Ad hoc member on multiple other national and international grant review panels. Moreover, he is an Associate Editor for the journal Drug Metabolism and Disposition and serves on the editorial board of other peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Scientific Reports, The FASEB Journal).

SHELDON Adrian, PhD

Biography

Adrian has 27 years of experience in the drug discovery and contract research services area, most recently as Director of In Vitro ADME at Charles River Laboratories in Worcester, MA.  The group performs a variety of in vitro ADME assays, including custom and high-throughput (automated) studies.  Prior to CRL, Adrian was an Associate Director at Agilux Labs (acquired by CRL), and prior to that was a Senior Investigator and Group Leader at ArQule, and a Senior Scientist at OsteoArthritis Sciences.  His experience also includes protein biochemistry, lead optimization and assay development/HTS.  Adrian received his A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Physiology and Cell Biology from Boston University in 1988.  He has published over 30 papers and abstracts, and holds 1 patent.

TÁTRAI Péter, PhD

Biography

Dr. Tátrai is a Senior Research Scientist at SOLVO. He graduated from the Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary, in Cell and Developmental Biology, and did his PhD on extracellular matrix biology of chronic liver diseases and liver cancer at the Semmelweis University, Budapest. Following a brief involvement in molecular cancer diagnostics he moved to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences where he worked on the immortalisation and differentiation of adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells for experimental regenerative medicine. During a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute he studied mouse models of centrosomal disease. He joined Solvo in 2017, where he is responsible for product development as well as research collaborations.

VARMA, Manthena, PhD

Biography

Manthena Varma, PhD is Research Fellow, at Pfizer Inc. Dr. Varma received his B. Pharm. degree from the Kakatiya University, Warangal, India; and an M.S. degree (2001) and PhD in Pharmaceutics (2005), from the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and research (NIPER), Mohali, India.  Later, Dr. Varma worked as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis). In 2008, he joined Worldwide R&D, Pfizer, Groton, CT.  Dr. Varma holds an Adjunct faculty position in the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Varma’s research is focused in the fields of ADME/PK technologies and strategies in drug design and development, role of drug transporters and transporter-enzyme interplay (extended clearance) in ADME/PK, clinical pharmacokinetics and DDI predictions/evaluation via mechanistic (PBPK) modeling.  He published about 125 original articles/reviews and presented over 75 presentations at the scientific conferences in these areas. 

ZHANG Yan, PhD

Biography

Yan Zhang, PhD, is an Associate Director in the Department of Drug Metabolism, Pharmacokinetics & Clinical Pharmacology (DMPK/CP) at Incyte Corporation in Wilmington, Delaware.  She received her M.Sc. degree from the Pharmacology Department at South Dakota State University and her PhD from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Nebraska Medical Center.  She has fifteen years’ experiences in oncology drug discovery and more than twenty years’ experience in the field of drug transporters.  Dr. Zhang is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and abstracts.  She serves on the committees of the CPLG Transporter Working Group of the IQ Consortium and the Delaware Valley Drug Metabolism Discussion Group (DVDMDG).  She is currently leading the drug absorption, transporter, and drug-drug interactions (DDI) strategies to support Incyte discovery and development programs.  Research interests include the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, clinical pharmacology, and transporter mediated toxicity and DDI.