Frans L. Stassen, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Stassen has extensive experience and a proven track record in drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology Industry. Prior to founding SPRL, he was the founding President and Chief Executive Officer of MyoGenics, Inc., later called ProScript, Inc. Before joining the biotechnology industry, Dr. Stassen was Vice President of Research in Inflammation/Osteoarthritis, Molecular Biology and Enzymology at Ciba-Geigy, Summit, NJ. He directed the discovery and preclinical development of several new anti-inflammatory drugs and established collaborations with academia and biotechnology companies. He joined Ciba-Geigy from SmithKline in Philadelphia where he was Director of a cardiovascular drug discovery program. Dr. Stassen received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He held academic appointments at the Departments of Pathology of the University of Nijmegen Medical School and the University of Maastricht Medical School. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, Nutley, NJ and a visiting scientist at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, La Jolla, CA.

Sherin Abdel-Meguid, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Abdel-Meguid has extensive experience in drug discovery. He joined SPRL from SmithKline Beecham (SB) where he was Transnational Director of Structural Biology and Director of Macromolecular Sciences. He also served as Director of the IL18, Herpes virus Protease and CD28 Programs. During his tenure at SB, he built effective macromolecular crystallography, biophysics and protein engineering groups, established numerous academic and industrial collaborations, and initiated SB's first structural-based genomics program that identified several novel proteins. His department was credited with championing and advancing a number of protein agents to preclinical development and with contributing to the rational design of numerous enzyme inhibitors. Prior to SB, he was head of Biophysical Sciences and Protein Engineering at Monsanto. While at Monsanto, he built one of the first macromolecular crystallography groups in the pharmaceutical industry, and made seminal contributions to our understanding of the growth hormone structure. Dr. Abdel-Meguid has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and M.S. and B.S. in Biochemistry. He also is the recipient of the 1997 Kuwait Prize in Basic Sciences.

Robert E. Babine, Ph.D., joined SPRL in the fall of 2000 as the Director of Structural and Computational Chemistry. Dr. Babine has been an active researcher in the area of structure-based design for more than thriteen years. He works at the interface of experimental and computational methods to address drug design problems for which a protein structure is available. He has more than eighteen years of pharmaceutical industrial experience at Lederle Laboratories, Eli Lilly, and Agouron Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Babine received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Rhode Island and his Ph. D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Brown University.

Howard W. Benjamin, Ph.D., Vice President of Corporate Development and Implementation. Dr. Benjamin was a founding scientist of Praecis Pharmaceuticals, formally Pharmaceutical Peptides, where he served as Director of Molecular Biology and then as Vice President of Discovery Research. He was the developer of Praecis' core discovery technology in gene-based display libraries. Dr. Benjamin was also responsible for establishing research programs in prostate cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Benjamin received his S.B. in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of California at Berkeley prior to completing postdoctoral work at Harvard University and a research scientist position at MIT.

Donald J. Ciappenelli, Ph.D., Vice President of Operations and Treasurer. Dr. Ciappenelli was on the faculty and Director of the Chemistry Department at Harvard University for fifteen years. Since 1980 he has been a Principle of Cambridge Laboratory Consultants, a science management consulting group specializing in the startup and early stage development of biotechnology, pharmaceutical, chemical, and nanotechnology companies, including Genetics Institute, Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Myogenics, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and Praecis Pharmaceuticals. Most recently, Dr. Ciappenelli served as President of Aprilis, Inc. and was President and CEO of Gallia, Inc. He has been on the Board of Directors of several private and public high technology companies. Currently he is a member of the Board of Directors of The Science Hotel, a facility for startup research in biotechnology and nanotechnology and Polycarbon Industries, a fine chemical and pharmaceutical intermediates company. Dr. Ciappenelli received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Brandies University and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. F.A. Cotton at MIT.

Neil J. Hayward, Ph.D., Ph.D., joined SPRL as Director of Pharmacology in the fall of 2001. Dr. Hayward joined SPRL from Praecis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where he was Director of Pharmacology. He has more than fifteen years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience at Glaxo, Parke-Davis, Alkermes, and Praecis. He has extensive expertise with in vivo efficacy studies in the drug discovery phase and in safety and ADME studies of compounds in formal preclinical development. Most recently at Praecis, Dr. Hayward played a key role in all phases of the Alzheimer disease project from its conception to IND filing of APAN™. Dr. Hayward received his B.Sc. (Hons) degree from London University and M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees in Pharmacology from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Harold V. Meyers, Ph.D., joined SPRL as Director of Chemistry, including synthetic, combinatorial, and medicinal chemistry. Prior to SPRL, Dr. Meyers was Senior Director, Chemistry and Drug Discovery at New Chemical Entities (NCE), where he helped organize the company and developed technology plans, proprietary drug discovery informatics and compound libraries. He joined NCE from Sphinx Pharmaceuticals, a Division of Eli Lilly & Co., where he was Head, Cambridge Research. Dr. Meyers was a primary contributor to the development of the Sphinx combinatorial chemistry technology, where he led several projects employing solid-phase parallel synthesis methods for small molecule library generation. Prior to Sphinx, Dr. Meyers was a scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals engaged in rational drug design projects for immunophilin and HIV protease inhibitors. He discovered several novel lead series of compounds. He received his postdoctoral training at Columbia University with Prof. K. Nakanishi and received his Ph.D. at Yale University with Prof. S. Schreiber.

James E. Strickler, Ph.D., joined SPRL as Director of Biochemistry. Prior to joining SPRL, Dr. Strickler was Director of Protein Chemistry at Ares Advanced Technology, Inc. (a division of Ares-Serono, S.A.) where he led a department utilizing DNA microarray and proteome analysis to identify novel targets and therapeutic agents for the treatment of infertility. In addition, his department was responsible for large-scale bioproduction, purification, and characterization of potential therapeutic proteins. He also gained extensive experience at SmithKline Beecham where he was actively engaged in the start-up of programs on HIV and Herpes proteases and projects in inflammation, asthma, and cardiovascular disease. He received his B.S. from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and his Ph.D. and post-doctoral training at Yale University.

David T. Weaver, Ph.D., joined SPRL as Director of Molecular and Cell Biology. Dr. Weaver came to SPRL from Harvard Medical School where he was an Associate Professor and Investigator at the Center for Blood Research. His laboratory is recognized for fundamental contributions to the understanding of genome stability mechanisms, and the molecular biology of the immune system. His research focused on human pre-cancer and immunodeficiency diseases and in vivo models of DNA repair pathways. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics of Harvard Medical School with an appointment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Weaver was a member of the Harvard Immunology Program, trained Ph.D. students in his laboratory, and taught graduate-level courses through the Biological and Biomedical Sciences graduate program of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Weaver received a B.S. in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from Harvard University, and completed postdoctoral work at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT.

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Scientific Advisory Board:

John W. Erickson, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer, Sequoia Pharmaceuticals,Gaithersburg, MD

Jeffery D. Molkentin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology, Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH

William E. Paul, M.D., Chief, Laboratory of Immunology, NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, MD

Kenneth L. Rock, M.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Pathology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA

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