Dr. Antonio Da Silva is a driven strategic thinker and demonstrated leader with 20+ years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, helping to drive innovation and deliver new products/drugs in the ever-evolving healthcare business. He has served the industry as a catalyst to drive change based on facts and qualified research, as well as to leverage a strong scientific background in pharmaceutical technologies, CMC analytics, molecular biology, pharmacology and translational sciences across disease etiologies. Dr. Da Silva was formerly Head of Innovation & New Technologies for Sandoz Biopharmaceuticals, a division of Novartis where he led the line-function to deliver and execute high quality and value driven programs in compliance with Sandoz / Novartis standards. Also at Sandoz, Dr. Da Silva was Head Preclinical Development where he led the development and execution of preclinical programs, as well as the non-clinical pharmacology and analytical strategies for biosimilars. In this role he supported strategic development of new products, early development strategies and business development in-licensing opportunities evaluations across disease areas. Dr. Da Silva has previously worked in a variety of roles at Novartis, DIREVO Biotech, Micromet AG, and Biogen.
Dr. Merrie Mosedale is a research assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics. Dr. Mosedale is also the assistant director of the Institute for Drug Safety Sciences where she leads the Translational Pharmacogenomics Research Program. Through partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and academic scientists, she is working to solve safety problems by integrating cutting-edge pharmacogenomics approaches with novel in vivo, in vitro, and in silico platforms. Her goal is to develop pioneering new technologies that will impact regulatory decisions and policies.
Currently, Dr. Mosedale is focusing on the application of mouse genetics to identify individual susceptibilities to adverse drug reactions in humans, organotypic culture models to understand mechanisms of drug toxicities, and exosome biology to predict toxicity liabilities earlier in drug development. Findings from her research highlight the potential for these novel approaches to improve human risk assessment in drug-safety testing as well as to provide mechanistic insights into drug toxicity. She has been recognized for her work by the Society of Toxicology and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
Prior to joining UNC, Dr. Mosedale was a research investigator at the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences. She received her B.S. from Duke University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Raphael Nir is presently the Co-Founder, President and CSO of SBH Sciences and SBH Diagnostics. Formerly, he was an Associate Principal Scientist at Schering-Plough Research Institute. I have 30 years of experience in molecular and cellular biotechnology, drug development, and good lab practice (GLP) for therapeutics. Additionally, he continue to manage the research and development activities with a focus on the development and implementation of immunoassays and efficient manufacturing of recombinant cytokines and enzymes. Dr. Nir is a world leader in these fields, having developed over 40 processes for protein production and over 300 bioassays to determine the biological activity of cytokines that are available for commercial use in the R&D market. As an angel Investor and experienced biotech entrepreneur, he has co-founded multiple biotechnology companies [(e.g., SBH Sciences, Woodland Biosciences - in-vivo CRO, SBH Diagnostics, Karyopharm Therapeutics (KPT), Alma BioTherapeutics, Galectin Sciences, Vuja De Sciences, and NeuroDex, Inc.)] and is a Managing Partner and CSO of ABI-LAB bioincubator (Natick, MA), which currently houses 20 start-up biotechnology companies.
Dr. Marian Raschke is head of Mechanistic Toxicology within Investigational Toxicology at Bayer AG, Pharmaceuticals Division in Berlin, Germany. Marian studied Nutritional Sciences and received a doctorate from the faculty of Biology and Pharmacy at the University of Jena, Germany. After working as postdoctoral fellow for Schering AG, he joint Bayer in 2008, working as research scientist in Mechanistic and Molecular Toxicology and became head of laboratory in 2012. Marian’s fields of special interest and expertise include advanced cellular in vitro models for organ toxicity (i.e. organs-on-chips), in vitro toxicity testing, hepatotoxicity, mitochondrial toxicity, and safety biomarkers. In addition, he represents Toxicology as project team member in several preclinical R&D oncology programs.