Scientific Advisory Board

Phylogica’s Scientific Advisory Board is composed of former executives from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and international scientists from prestigious and internationally acclaimed institutes. The members have significant knowledge, expertise and experience in drug discovery technologies and the application of these technologies to drug targets and disease indications.

• Professor Rob Aalberse, PhD
• Associate Professor Marie Bogoyevitch, PhD
• Dr Roland Dunbranck, PhD
• Professor  Erica Golemis,PhD
• Professor Patrik Holt, PhD
• Professor Johnathan Licht, PhD
• Dr Trevor Payne, PhD
• Professor Wayne Thomas, PhD
• Dr Paul Watt, BSc (Hons) DPhil
• Professor Gregory Weiss, PhD

Professor Rob Aalberse, Head of the Immunochemistry Department at Sanquin Research, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Professor of Biological Immunology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has over 30 years experience in the field of immunology and has published over 200 peer reviewed papers. Professor Aalberse has worked closely in providing crucial modeling information of Phylomer^® structures.  

Associate Professor Marie Bogoyevitch, Head of the Cell Signalling Laboratory at The Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute of the University of Melbourne, Australia. She has extensive knowledge in the role of kinases and their substrates in key inflammatory pathways such as the ischemic death seen in stroke and heart disease. She has published over 70 peer reviewed papers.

Dr Roland Dunbranck, Associate Professor, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA. He is a bioinformatician whose work has focused on computational structural biology. Roland has provided significant insight and knowledge in determining the structures of the Phylomer^® peptides by applying various structural modeling analysis. He has published over 80 peer reviewed papers.

Professor Erica Golemis, Deputy Chief Scientific Officer, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA has extensive experience in yeast-two-hybrid technologies. In addition, her speciality includes relevant expertise in protein interaction biology as well as key signal transduction and transcription factor pathways, which are relevant for the company’s drug targets. She has published over 110 peer reviewed papers.

Professor Patrick Holt, Head of the Cell Biology, Telethon Institute of Child Health Research, Perth, Western Australia has a strong track record of collaboration with large pharmaceutical companies and has developed technology which has resulted in key granted patents which have been out-licensed to large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He has been awarded the prestigious King Faisal International prize for Medicine. Patrick has published over 400 peer reviewed papers in the field of cellular immunology of Asthma and other allergic diseases

Professor Johnathan Licht, Associate Director, Clinical Sciences, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA.  Johnathan is a world expert in the field of cancer and transcription factors, which are regulatory proteins that modulate gene expression. He also has experience with using peptides to target cancer proteins. He has published over 110 peer reviewed papers.

Dr Trevor Payne, a former Novartis executive with over 32 years of experience, has significant knowledge and experience in rational based drug design and expertise in the areas of chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and pharmacology. His work in drug development was primarily focused in immunology and inflammation, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and immunosuppression.

Professor Wayne Thomas, Head of Molecular Biotechnology, Telethon Institute of Child Health Research, Perth, Western Australia, is an expert in the structure and function of antigens, including allergens and antigens involved in virulence and immunity to bacterial pathogens.  His extensive knowledge in the field of peptide mimetics of antigens is invaluable to Phylogica. He has published over 100 peer reviewed papers and is an inventor on 10 patent applications. Wayne has successfully translated his research commercially through licensing to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.  

Dr Paul Watt BSc (Hons), D Phil, CEO of Phylogica is the principle inventor of Phylogica’s drug discovery technologies. His specialises in drug discovery biotechnology and experimental genetics and he has attracted over A$5 million in research funding from Australia and the United States to develop the technology underpinning Phylogica.

Previously Paul founded InfaMed Ltd., now owned by Cambridge, UK-based Avita Medical Ltd, which is commercialising an FDA-approved/CE-marked paediatric drug delivery device that he invented and is currently being marketed internationally. He was also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Perth, Western Australia and was appointed Adjunct Professor at the School of Paediatrics and Child Health of the University of Western Australia.

Paul carried out postdoctoral research in yeast genetics at Harvard and Oxford Universities where he discovered and characterised proteins involved in maintaining genome stability.  He has a DPhil in Molecular Biology from Oxford University and BSc (Hons) from the University of Western Australia. He has published 45 peer reviewed papers, and has filed more than 19 patent applications many of which are granted in the US and Europe.

Professor Gregory Weiss, Professor, Departments of Chemistry, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Vice Chair for Graduate Affairs, Chemistry School of Physical Sciences at UC Irvine, CA., USA. He moved to UC Irvine in 2000, where his laboratory uses viruses to decipher general rules about biological processes and pioneers new anti-viral methods. The recipient of numerous awards, he is most proud to have been named the 2008 Outstanding Professor in the School of Physical Sciences at UC Irvine by the graduating senior class. New projects in his lab include wiring viruses into electronic circuits and directly watching single molecules with molecular electronics.

Formerly, Gregory was a NIH National Research Service Award post-doctoral fellow at Genentech, where he examined virus assembly and molecular recognition in the laboratory of Dr Jim Wells. In 1997, he obtained his PhD from Harvard University in chemistry and chemical biology. His graduate work with Professor Stuart Schreiber focused on the design, synthesis, and study of peptidomimetics bound to MHC proteins. He obtained his BSc from  UC Berkeley. He has published over 50 peer reviewed papers.