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

The alliance with the Telethon Institute for Child Health has been instrumental in the recruitment of world authorities in the field of immunology. Professor Wayne Thomas and Professor Patrick Holt from the Institute share between them over forty years of knowledge and experience in the area of immunology and inflammation.
 
Professor Patrick Holt has published over 400 papers in the field of cellular immunology of Asthma and other allergic diseases and has been awarded the prestigious King Faisal International prize for Medicine.  Click here to see list of his publications in high impact factor journal.  His insights into the modulation fo the inflammatory response is highly relevant to the Company’s pipeline in this area.  Professor Holt 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 outlicensed to Big Pharma and Biotech companies.

Professor Wayne Thomas 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 papers and is an inventor on 10 patent applications.   Professor Thomas has successfully translated his research commercially through licensing to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.  

Dr Erica Golemis, from Phylogica’s other founding research institute, Fox Chase Cancer Center, brings with her enormous 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.

Associate Professor Marie Bogoyevitch is the head of the Cell Signalling Laboratory at The Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute of the University of Melbourne.  She has extensive knowledge in the role of specialty proteins called kinases and their substrates in key inflammatory pathways such as the ischemic death seen in stroke and heart disease.   This knowledge of signal transduction pathways relevant to the Company targets has been valuable to Phylogica.

Professor Johnathan Licht is Associate Director, Clinical Sciences, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago.  Professor Licht 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. His expertise is therefore particularly useful in advising Phylogica on the stroke project, which is targeting a transcription factor, and the collaborative project with Fox Chase Cancer Center, which is exploring another intracellular validated target in cancers and inflammatory diseases.


Dr Trevor Payne, a former Novartis executive with over 32 years of experience, brings with him 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 Rob Aalberse, from the University of Amsterdam has over 30 years experience in the field of immunology, with over 200 publications in this field. Professor Aalberse has worked closely in providing crucial modeling information of Phylomer® structures.  

Dr Roland Dunbranck, from Fox Chase Cancer Center, is a more recent member of Phylogica’s SAB.  Dr Dunbrack is a bioinformatician whose work has focused on computational structural biology.  He has provided significant insight and knowledge in determining the structures of the Phylomer® peptides by applying various structural modeling analysis.

Professor Paul Watt, is a key member of the SAB and has been instrumental in the recruitment of each of the members. Dr Watt is the CSO and VP of Corporate Development of Phylogica. He is key inventor of Phylogica’s drug discovery technologies has published more than 40 papers, and has filed more than 15 patent applications.  Specialising in drug discovery biotechnology and experimental genetics, he has attracted over $5 million in research funding from Australia and the United States for the technology underpinning Phylogica.   As a top graduate from the University of Western Australia, Dr Watt won a Commonwealth Overseas Scholarship and completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford. After Post Doctoral appointments at Oxford and Harvard Universities, he returned to Western Australia in 1996 to work at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.  Dr Watt now holds an appointment at the Institute as Honorary Research Fellow and adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia. He is also a non-executive director of  another publicly listed Australian biotechnology company.

Associate Professor Gregory Weiss, is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Chemistry, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at UC Irvine. A Californian who grew up in Palos Verdes, Dr Weiss attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate. He moved East for graduate school, attending Harvard University and graduating with a Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical biology in 1997. His graduate work with Professor Stuart Schriber focused on the design, synthesis, and study of pepridomimetics bound to MHC proteins. As a NIH National Research Service Award post-doctoral fellow at Genentech, Dr Weiss examined virus assembly and molecular recognition in the laboratory of Dr Jim Wells. He moved to UC Irvine in 2000, where his laboratory uses viruses to decipher general rules about 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.