Bijan Almassian, Ph.D., President & Chief Executive Officer

Marc A. Silver, M.B.A., Senior Vice-President of Commercial Operations

Yoshitomo Hamuro, Ph.D., Director of H/D Exchange Research and Development

Sam Milstein, Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Development Consultant


Bijan Almassian, Ph.D., President & Chief Executive Officer
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 patents 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.

Marc A. Silver, M.B.A., Senior Vice-President of Commercial Operations
Mr. Silver has over twenty years of business development experience in the biotechnology industry. Mr. Silver previously held senior management positions at Praecis Pharmaceuticals, Ardais Corp. and the American Type Culture Collection where he held responsibilities for corporate partnership development, licensing, intellectual property, and initial operations. He has an extensive “deal sheet” including significant development and commercialization transactions with Synthelabo (now Sanofi-Aventis), F. Hoffman-La Roche and Amgen Corp. Mr. Silver has also been involved in the founding, financing and initial development of a number of life science companies including Aspect Medical Corp., Arris Pharmaceuticals, TargeTech Inc. and Envirogen Corp. He received an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Carnegie Mellon University and his Master's in Business from MIT's Sloan School of Management.

Yoshitomo Hamuro, Ph.D., Director of H/D Exchange Research and Development
Dr. Hamuro joined ExSAR in 2002 and has led the development of hydrogen/ deuterium exchange (H/D-Exchange) analysis of protein dynamics, protein-ligand interactions and protein-protein interactions using mass spectrometry.

Prior to joining ExSAR, he was instrumental in the development of modern H/D-Exchange technology at the University of California, San Diego, in the laboratory of Professor Virgil Woods, scientific co-founder of EXSAR.

Dr. Hamuro previously conducted postdoctoral research on combinatorial chemistry and solid-phase chemistry at DuPont Central Research and Development and later on antibacterial β-peptides at the University of Pennsylvania in the laboratories of Professor William DeGrado. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Pittsburgh under Professor Andrew Hamilton on protein structure mimetics.

Sam Milstein, Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Development Consultant
Dr. Milstein is currently the Scientific Officer at Ception Therapeutics, Inc. Ception’s lead program is a monoclonal antibody, currently in clinical trials, for the treatment Eosinophilic Esophagisitis and Asthma. Dr. Milstein is responsible for technical planning and oversight of the drug discovery arm of the company. From 2001-2006, Dr. Milstein was the founder/CEO of Fulcrum Pharmaceuticals (later merged with Ception), a drug discovery, drug design company. Fulcrum’s technology designed an oral MRSA compound with a novel mechanism of action and a family of TNFR1 inhibitors for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Milstein received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at New York University. He completed his Post-Doc Fellowship at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in 1982.

Company Profile (History) | Senior Management Team | Board of Directors | Scientific Advisory Board
Bijan Almassian, Ph.D. | Marc A. Silver, M.B.A. | Yoshitomo Hamuro, Ph.D. | Sam Milstein, Ph.D