Robert F. Johnston - Chairman of the Board

Charles R. Cantor, Ph.D.

Myra Williams, Ph.D.

Arnold Levine, Ph.D.

Bijan Almassian, Ph.D.


Robert F. Johnston - Chairman of the Board
Mr. Johnston is currently the head of Robert Johnston Associates. Mr. Johnston was President of Johnston Associates, a venture capital firm which he founded in 1968 to provide seed capital for start-ups emerging in the biotechnology and healthcare fields. Mr. Johnston is the executive chairman of Pharmos Corporation, which acquired Vela Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He was acting CEO at ExSAR from July 2001 until the appointment of Dr. Almassian as CEO and President in August 2005. He has founded numerous public companies including Sepracor, Cytogen, I-STAT, Genex and Envirogen, and was instrumental in the early formation of many private companies such as Sonomed, Immunicon, PharmaStem (formerly Biocyte), Praelux and Targent. Mr. Johnston served as CEO of Cytogen from July 1988 to April 1989 and as CEO of Praelux (formerly SEQ) from November 1997 to January 1999. Additionally, he is a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, and the Executive Committee of the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Mr. Johnston received his B.A. from Princeton University and his M.B.A. from New York University.

Charles R. Cantor, Ph.D.
Dr. Cantor is the Chief Scientific Officer and Chairman of Sequenom (NASD:SQNM), and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was previously the chair and professor of the department of biomedical engineering and biophysics, and director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology, at Boston University. Prior to this, Dr. Cantor held faculty positions at Columbia University. He was also director of the Human Genome Center Project of the Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Dr. Cantor is a consultant to more than 16 biotech firms, has published more than 325 peer reviewed articles and has been granted 26 U.S. patents.

Myra Williams, Ph.D.
Dr. Williams served most recently as President and CEO of Molecular Applications Group, a bioinformatics company that developed proprietary technology to predict gene and protein function for use in pharmaceutical and agricultural product discovery. Previously, Dr. Williams was Vice President of Worldwide R & D Information Resources for Glaxo Wellcome plc and Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Glaxo, Inc. She served in an executive capacity at Merck Research Laboratories for over twenty years, including several years as the Executive Director of Information Resources and Strategic Planning. Dr. Williams is a member of the Boards of Directors of a number of companies, and is a consultant to venture capital, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and software companies.

Arnold Levine, Ph.D.
Dr. Levine has made significant contributions in the field of oncology in his research on the causes of cancer in both humans and animals. He was the first to discover the p53 tumour suppressor gene, which acts to protect individuals from developing cancer. Following his discovery, thousands of researchers have followed in Dr. Levine’s footsteps, seeking to focus on the p53 gene which is the most commonly mutated gene in cancer.

Dr. Levine is currently a Professor at The Simons Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a joint professor in the Paediatrics and Biochemistry Departments at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

He received his PhD in microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Later he was a post-doctoral fellow of the Public Health Service at the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Levine also holds honorary degrees from, among other institutions, Rider University, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He has received many honours, his most recent include, the Kirk A. Landon-AACR Prize for Basic Cancer Research (2008), the Award for Basic Research from the Surgical Society of Oncologists (2003), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2001), and the Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Biomedical Research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (2000).

Bijan Almassian, Ph.D.
Prior to joining ExSAR, Dr. Almassian had over eighteen years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry across multiple disciplines including Research & Development, Operations, and Business Development. He joined ExSAR in 2005 and set about transforming the company from a platform-based drug discovery service provider to a drug development enterprise focused on protein misfolding disorders. Prior to joining ExSAR, Dr. Almassian was the Chief Operating Officer at Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a CNS and Oncology company in Maryland, where he oversaw research, development, operations and business development. At Panacea, he led the discovery of a novel class of neuroprotective agents including a lead drug, PAN-811, for potential treatment of stroke and traumatic brain injury.

Before joining Panacea, Dr. Almassian held several senior executive positions at VION Pharmaceuticals (VION), a spin-off from Yale University. As an officer of the company, he helped grow the start-up from 4 senior staff to over 75 full time employees over a six-year period. He built the drug development operations teams, which championed the development of five drugs and biologics through all phases of development. Dr. Almassian was instrumental in a number of important academic and pharma-biotech deals for VION, including a $57 million partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim to co-develop globally a Phase III head and neck cancer drug. Before VION, he was with Genelabs Technologies (GNLB) in California, where he was responsible for the pharmaceutical development of three drugs for the treatment of cancer, HIV and lupus.

Over his career, Dr. Almassian has authored numerous publications and several patients covering a broad range of therapeutic areas including CNS, cardiovascular and cancer. Dr. Almassian received his M.S. in Medicinal Chemistry from Northeastern University in Boston. After receiving his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences in Boston under the mentorship of Professor William O Foye, a world renowned medicinal chemist, he was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Boston University Medical Center, where he performed cardiovascular and cancer research.

Company Profile (History) | Senior Management Team | Board of Directors | Scientific Advisory Board
Robert F. Johnston - Chairman of the Board | Charles R. Cantor, Ph.D. | Myra Williams, Ph.D. | Arnold Levine, Ph.D. | Bijan Almassian, Ph.D.