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Antibiotics: Bad Bugs - Few Drugs

Wednesday, April 23
8:30 am

Scores of bugs are becoming resistant to current drugs, leading to an epidemic in our hospitals.  Pharmaceutical companies have not introduced a truly novel approach to antibiotics in 20 years.  Development risks are also being compounded by FDA's shifting rules related to what constitutes an approvable new antibiotic.  This panel will discuss what the future needs will be in this space and how biotech can address those needs.

Moderator:

Panelists:

Who's Who

Praveen Tipirneni has served as vice President, Business Development since January 2006. In his five years at Cubist, Praveen has operated in both the business development and clinical development functions. Prior to joining Cubist, Dr. Tipirneni worked at Sun Microsystems in Corporate Strategy, Covad Communications in Corporate Strategy, and Deltagen, in Business Development and also served time as 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Dr. Tipirneni received a bachelor's degree from MIT in Mechanical Engineering, an M.D. from McGill University Faculty of Medicine. After completing his post-graduate residency in Internal Medicine at University of Illinois, Chicago, he received his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in healthcare finance.

Robert Moellering Jr, MD, is the Shields Warren-Mallinckrodt Professor of Medical Research at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. From 1998-2005, he served as Physician-in-Chief and Department Chair of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Herrman L. Blumgart Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Moellering also served as President and CEO of Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians. His work includes numerous studies of the mechanism of action and mechanisms of resistance to antimicrobial agents. Dr. Moellering’s work is reported in over 390 publications in scientific journals. He is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Editor of Infectious Disease Clinics of North America, and Editor of the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and Co-Editor of The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy.

Lowell Young, MD, is Director of the Kuzell Institute for Arthritis & Infectious Diseases at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco. Dr. Young is also attending physician and clinical professor at University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. He is a highly regarded infectious disease expert. He specializes in anti-infectives clinical research and drug development. He is also the Editor at Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and serves on the editorial boards of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Infection, Infectious Diseases in Clinical Practice and Infection and Immunity. His academic interests include infections in immunocompromised hosts (cancer, transplants, AIDS), antimicrobial chemotherapy, and the pathogenesis and treatment of septicemia. He is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. Previously, he was the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute. Dr. Young received the Langmuir Prize of the Center for Disease Control and the Garrod Medal of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

Giorgio is co-founder, President and COO of ACUREON Pharmaceuticals. Prior to this, he served as Senior Vice President, Business Development, at Vicuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: MICU) since the start of operations. Vicuron resulted from the merger between Biosearch Italia (Nuovo Mercato: MICU.MI) and Versicor Inc. (Nasdaq: VERS). In 2000 Giorgio joined Biosearch Italia, a newly formed private biotech company, as Vice President, Medical Affairs and Business Development, where he made a significant contribution to the definition and implementation of the Company strategy that led to a very successful IPO (220 M Euro). Between 1996 and 2000, he was European Executive Director for R&D Antiinfectives and Immunology at Bristol-Myers-Squibb. Giorgio and his team have been instrumental in the development and registration of several anti-infective drugs, including Zerit (stavudine) and DDI QD (didanosine) and anti HIV/AIDS combination therapy. Prior to joining BMS, Giorgio worked at Marion Merrell Dow (now Sanofi-Aventis) as European Therapeutic Leader. In this role he championed the medical development and supported the launch of Teicoplanin, which became the #1 selling drug for MMD Europe. Giorgio is author and co-author of 15 patents and more than 60 scientific papers published on international medical journals. 

Donald Levine, MD, is the Division Head and a Professor of Medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. In addition to practicing infectious diseases, he has participated in many studies with investigational antibiotics. His major area of interest is the treatment of infective endocarditis and staphyolcoccal infections. He has been especially interested in the treatment of resistant staphylococcal infections and the development of novel approaches to treatment of infections caused by resistant pathogens. He has collaborated on both in-vitro and clinical studies and participates in the International Collaboration of Endocarditis investigators.