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PDDI Drug Discovery Award Recipients
 
   William J. Greenlee, Ph.D. (2011)

Dr. Greenlee earned his B.S. degree in chemistry at The Ohio State University, where he carried out research with Prof. Paul Gassman.  He conducted graduate studies on total synthesis with Prof. Robert B. Woodward at Harvard University and received his Ph.D. degree in 1976.  After a stint as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University with Prof. Gilbert Stork, Dr. Greenlee joined Merck Research Laboratories where he was part of the Merck team that discovered potent inhibitors of angiotensin-converting enzyme, including enalapril (Vasotec®) and lisinopril (Prinivil®). Greenlee and coworkers identified several potent angiotensin AT1 receptor antagonists, including MK-996; devised the first potent dual AT1/AT2 antagonists; and discovered orally bioavailable endothelin receptor antagonists.  In 1995, Dr. Greenlee joined the Schering-Plough Research Institute (SP) as Senior Director, Cardiovascular and CNS Chemical Research.  At Schering-Plough, he directed a group of 80 chemists in the design and synthesis of potential drug candidates for treating Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity, thrombosis, and chronic pain, which led to six development candidates that entered human clinical trials.  He is now back in Merck following the Merck-SP merger.  He is an author on over 200 scientific publications and an inventor of over 70 U.S. patents.  Dr. Greenlee received the prestigious Alfred Burger Award in Medicinal Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2004; he was elected to the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame in 2006 and to ACS Fellow in 2009 (inaugural class).  Dr. Greenlee has been very active for many years in serving the scientific community.  He chaired the Gordon Research Conference on Medicinal Chemistry in 1997, has served as Chair for the ACS Divisions of Medicinal Chemistry (2003) and Organic Chemistry (2004), and chaired the 42nd National Organic Symposium of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, which occurred at Princeton University in 2011.  He served as a Section Editor for Annual Reports in Medicinal Chemistry and is Perspectives Editor for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
 

   John (Jack) J. Baldwin, Ph.D. (2012)

Dr. John J. Baldwin received a B.S. degree in chemistry in 1956 from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota.  After graduation, he spent the next 50 years focused on drug discovery and new technologies for increasing the efficiency of the discovery process.  During his 30-year career at Merck Research Laboratories, Dr. Baldwin made important contributions to the discovery and development of Trusopt® and Cosopt®, for treating glaucoma, Aggrastat®, a parenteral antithrombotic agent; Crixivan®, a HIV protease inhibitor for treating AIDS; Edecrin®, a diuretic for treating hypertension and edema; and Pepcid®, a histamine H2-receptor blocker for peptic ulcer disease.  Dr. Baldwin next became a founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Pharmacopeia, Inc., where he pioneered the integration of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening into the drug discovery process.  In 2001, Dr. Baldwin co-founded Vitae Pharmaceuticals, where he served as President and Chief Scientific Officer, and successfully integrated rational drug design strategies with medicinal chemistry.  By using protein-ligand complexes, via X-ray structures and molecular modeling, inhibitors of renin and 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase were identified and advanced into human clinical studies.  Dr. Baldwin was early to recognize the drug discovery assets available in China.  He was a founder of WuXi PharmaTech in Shanghai and served on its Board of Directors, and recently became a founder and board member for Hua Medicine, in Shanghai.  Dr. Baldwin is on several other corporate and academic boards.  He has published over 125 scientific articles, has lectured at more than 125 national and international symposiums, and is an inventor on over 240 issued U.S. patents.   In recognition for his accomplishments, he has received the prestigious E. B. Hershberg Award for Important Discoveries in Medically Active Substance from the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Philadelphia ACS Section Award. Dr. Baldwin was inducted into the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Division (MEDI) Hall of Fame.


     Jonathan Chernoff, M.D., Ph.D. (2013)Dr. Chernoff received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY.  His research work has involved study of the process of neoplastic transformation, which can conceptually be divided into two components, proliferative transformation and morphologic transformation.   Proliferative transformation refers to the ability of transformed cells to bypass growth suppression signals, dividing when normal cells would not, and morphologic transformation refers to loss of normal cytoskeletal architecture, which is often accompanied by decreased adhesion and increased invasion of surrounding tissues.  These two fundamental properties have been dissected apart through the use of mutant oncogenes and abnormal signaling molecules.  He was Vice-Chair/Chair, Gordon Research Conference “Mechanisms of Cell Signaling”, is a Member of the Faculty of 1000, and was a Dozer Lecturer at Ben Gurion University. 


   Daniel M. Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D. (2014)

Dr. Skovronsky is Senior Vice President of Product and Clinical Development at Eli Lilly and Company, and also serves as Chairman of the Board at Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, the Philadelphia-based company he founded in late 2004.  At Avid he led clinical programs in molecular imaging of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Diabetes, and raised more than $70M in venture capital investments to support R&D efforts at Avid, prior to the sale to Lilly in 2010.  He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and did his undergraduate training in molecular biochemistry at Yale University.  He trained as a resident in pathology and completed a fellowship in neuropathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  He has more than 20 peer-reviewed publications and two NIH-funded grants on Alzheimer’s disease research. Prior to establishing Avid, he served as Scientific Director of High-Throughput Screening and Drug Discovery at the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at the University of Pennsylvania.  Dr. Skovronsky is the recipient of numerous scientific and business awards and was recently named by the Philadelphia Business Journal as one of their “Forty under Forty” business leaders in the region.  He received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2009 Award in the Emerging Company category in Greater Philadelphia, which recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses; Life Sciences CEO of the Year (Philadelphia Business Journal, 2010); and the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation’s Charles Evans Award for Excellence (2012).  Avid's product Amyvid (florbetapir) was named the #1 Innovation of 2011 by the Cleveland Clinic.


   Amos B. Smith, III, Ph.D. (2015)

Dr. Amos B. Smith, III, received a combined B.S-M.S. degree in chemistry from Bucknell University.  After a year at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, he moved to the Rockefeller University, where he obtained his PhD.  He stayed at the Rockefeller as a Research Associate before joining the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is now the Rhodes-Thompson Professor of Chemistry, as well as being a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center and Associate Director of the Penn Center for Molecular Discovery.  His research interests are quite diverse and he has made seminal scientific contributions in the areas of natural product synthesis, bioorganic chemistry, and materials science.  He collaborated with the late Dr. Ralph Hirschmann on peptidomimetics of neuropeptide hormone/transmitters, with Dr. Stephen Benovic (Penn State Univ) on haptens for the production of catalytic antibodies, and with Dr. Peter Jurs (Penn State Univ) on the use of computerized pattern recognition techniques to assess chemical communication in primates.  He was the first Editor-in-Chief of the journal Organic Letters and served as Department of Chemistry Chairman for several years.  He is on the editorial boards of numerous journals in addition to serving as both the chair and a member on the NIH Medicinal Chemistry Study Section.  Prof. Smith has co-authored over 600 publications and has delivered over 600 invited lectures.  His honors and awards include the Philadelphia Section Award of the ACS (1986), the Kitasato Institute Medal (1990), the first Philadelphia Organic Chemist's Club Award (1990), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1991), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists (1992), the ACS Ernest Guenther Award (1993), the ACS Award for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (1997), Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002), the Centenary Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, London, UK (2002), the 2003 Yamada Prize (Tokyo, Japan), the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon from the Government of Japan (2004), Fellow, American Academy of the Arts and Sciences (2006), and Inaugural Fellow, American Chemical Society (2009).


     Eddy Arnold, Ph.D. (2016) Dr. Arnold is the Board of Governors Professor and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry and organic Chemistry, respectively, from Cornell University and did postdoctoral studies in the lab of Dr. Michael Rossmann at Purdue University. Dr. Arnold is a fellow of the AAAS, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Crystallographic Association. His lab has worked to better understand both the structural and molecular basis of human infectious diseases, focusing on HIV/AIDS and influenza, and addressing general strategies for targeting drug resistance. Dr. Arnold was the recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship and twice received the NIH MERIT award. He has been the recipient of numerous NIH grants during his productive career, in which he has been an author on more than 240 articles in refereed publications and on 29 chapters in books and monographs. He has also served as a consultant for numerous biopharma companies and mentored numerous MS and PhD students who worked in his lab.

Dr. Tarnowski received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Southeast Missouri State University and his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences.  He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology in Nutley, NJ. His independent career began at the pharma icon Hoffmann-La Roche.  He subsequently moved to a series of companies, including Interferon Sciences, Scios, CellPro, and ImClone Sciences, then joined Bristol Myers-Squibb as Senior Vice President for Biologics Manufacturing and Process Development.  He moved to GlaxoSmithKline in 2016 as Senior Vice President, Cell and Gene Therapy Platforms.  Dr. Tarnowski is the author of many publications in peer-reviewed journals and the holder of 13 patents.

Professor David Christianson

Dr. Christianson received his BA, MA and PhD from Harvard University and joined Penn in 1988. He was the recipient of the Searle Scholar Award, Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a member of the National Academies Board of Chemical Science and Technology and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London). The common theme of his lab at the University of Pennsylvania is the structure and function of metal-requiring enzymes. His research is funded by research grants from the NIH. Technology originating in his lab has been licensed by various biopharma firms. He was a founder of Arginetix. He serves as a consultant for various biopharma firms (GSK, Roche, Alcon) as well as a number of start-ups such as DNX, Manus Biosynthesis and An2H. Along with Dr. Anna Marie Pyle, he is the Co-Editor of Methods in Enzymology.

 

  Dr. Michael Sofia received his B.A. in Chemistry from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He pursued postdoctoral studies in Organic Synthesis at Columbia University and also has a certificate in pharmaceutical management from the Wharton School. Dr. Sofia is a medicinal chemist whose main research focus has been on hepatitis C and B virus drug discovery. He was awarded the 2016 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his research on hepatitis C, along with Charles Rice and Ralf Bartenschlager. He was also awarded the 2016 IUPAC-Richter Prize in Medicinal Chemistry and the Economist's 2015 Innovation Award in the Bioscience category for the development of sofosbuvir, which was named after Sofia for his contributions to the discovery and development of the drug. Sofosbuvir's U.S. launch was the fastest of any new drug in history.  He was Sr. Vice President of Chemistry at Pharmasset from 2005 to 2012 when Pharmasset was acquired by Gilead, after which he became a Senior Advisor. Following that, he was President, CSO and Co-Founder of OnCore Biopharma which merged with Tekmira to form Arbutus.

 

  David B. Weiner, PhD.