Jay E. Wrobel, Ph.D., Vice President, Academic Relations

Dr. Wrobel has spent 40 years as a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry, 26 years at Wyeth (later Pfizer), with his last position as Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry at the Collegeville, PA facility. At Wyeth he mentored and guided the efforts of 31 Ph.D./M.S. medicinal chemists and worked successfully with outside alliance partners. He was directly involved in bringing forward nine development track candidates (Phase 0 and beyond) in a variety of therapeutic areas. At FCTDI, Jay is specifically responsible for developing new collaborative research relationships, obtaining funding for early-stage opportunities in drug discovery and development, and guiding and directing the medicinal chemistry aspects of funded projects. At FCTDI, Jay has been PI or Key Personnel on 17 SBIR/STTR funded grants. He has co-authored 79 scientific publications and is an inventor on 84 issued US patents. Contact: [email protected].

Mark E. McDonnell, PH.D., Director of Chemistry

Dr. McDonnell is a Medicinal Chemist who has been with FCTDI for >14 years.  Prior to FCTDI, he worked at Johnson & Johnson for 18 years where he learned a repertoire of drug discovery skills and ultimately co-led a project team.  While at FCTDI Dr. McDonnell has contributed to advancing three New Chemical Entities into human clinical trials. He serves as a Principal Investigator on a Phase II SBIR-funded project directed to the discovery of new treatments for Chagas disease.  He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry and has >50 publications and issued U.S. patents.  Dr. McDonnell has experience working in multiple therapeutic areas, HTS hit triage, hit to lead optimization, fragment-based discovery, and small molecule drug conjugates (SMDCs).  Mark leads research collaborations with researchers at Duke University, The Wistar Institute, and other FCTDI partners.  Contact: [email protected].

John L. Kulp III, Ph.D. 

Dr. John L. Kulp III is the Director of Computational Chemistry at FCTDI and also the Chief Executive Officer of Conifer Point Pharmaceuticals which he founded in 2014.  He has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from New York University with a background in the field of bioorganic chemistry with specialization in (i) protein nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) structure determination, (ii) computational methods for studying protein structure, (iii) synthetic peptide chemistry, (iv) computational fragment-based drug design and, most recently, (v) application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to drug discovery. His Ph.D. work, in part, focused on stabilizing α-helical peptides for development as a new class of drug molecules and the study of peptide/protein structure by NMR. During his postdoctoral training at the Naval Research Laboratory, he developed peptide nanopores as stochastic sensing elements and patented a new class of β-helical peptide architectures. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship, he was hired as a federal staff scientist where he helped develop a program to study biointerfaces.  In 2010, Dr. Kulp joined BioLeap, a small business that specializes in protein-protein interactions and that has a proprietary fragment-based computational chemistry software platform.

Jeffrey C. Pelletier, Ph.D., Former Director of Chemistry, FCTDI

With over 35 years of experience Dr. Pelletier has had leadership positions at large pharmaceutical companies (Wyeth-Pfizer, Rhone Poulenc Rorer), start-up companies (Symphony Pharmaceuticals, Fox Chase Therapeutics Discovery, Neurokine Therapeutics, LLC) and academics (Northwestern University). In each environment he has discovered/co-discovered, and moved into development, novel small molecules for the treatment of various disorders such as prostate cancer, epilepsy, melanoma, and neurodegeneration. This includes a recent invention, Troriluzole (previously FC-4157 and BHV-4157), a glutamate modulator that is in Phase II/III clinical trials for the treatment of spinocerebellar ataxia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Dr. Pelletier has led large medicinal chemistry teams as well as chemical development teams to transition multiple inventions to development phase.

Kathleen Czupich, M.B.A., Former Chief Financial Officer, FCTDI

Ms. Czupich has over 25 years of experience in business development. Prior to joining FCTDI Ms. Czupich was the founding administrator, CFO and Director of Finance of the PA Biotechnology Center, Institute for Hepatitis and Virus Research and the Hepatitis B Foundation and was point of contact for all NIH grants and other government funding. Ms. Czupich holds a B.S. degree in Accounting from the Pennsylvania State University and an M.B.A. from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. Ms. Czupich’s strengths are in designing financial reporting systems, managing large projects and training staff. She is experienced in indirect cost requirements and negotiation as well as government accounting standards and audit requirements.  Contact: [email protected].

Matthew Todd, Ph.D.

Matthew Todd received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Michigan State University, under the direction of Dr. Robert Hausinger. He then trained with Dr. George Lorimer (protein folding) and Dr. Ernesto Freire (Calorimetry and Biophysics) before joining 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, where he developed ThermoFluor technology and led HTS efforts. Dr. Todd joined Johnson & Johnson on their purchase of 3DP, where he was Director of Lead Discovery for over 10 years, championing label-free technologies in early drug discovery. He has founded BioPhysical-Solutions, Inc., a startup biotech company offering label-free biophysical testing services where his capabilities and expertise overlaps client needs.

Nicholas A. Meanwell, Ph.D. 

After completing a post-doctoral fellowship with Professor Carl R. Johnson at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, he joined Bristol-Myers Squibb where he has led drug discovery programs in the cardiovascular, neurosciences and virology therapeutic areas, work that has resulted in the advancement of over 30 clinical candidates for the prevention of thrombosis, the treatment of stroke and therapy for viral infections, including human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Significant compounds advanced into therapy include daclatasvir (Daklinza™), a pioneering molecule that established NS5A inhibition as a clinically relevant target, and the HCV NS3 protease inhibitor asunaprevir (Sunvepra™), which incorporates the cyclopropyl acylsulfonamide moiety that has been widely adopted.

Patrick Lam, Ph.D.

Patrick Lam is currently a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Baruch S. Blumberg Institute and Adjunct Professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. He is the president of Lam Drug Discovery Consulting, LLC. He retired from a chemistry director position at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in 2011. Dr. Lam has more than 30 years of extensive experience in innovation in structure-based drug design, ADME-T, focused libraries, molecular recognition, and nucleic acid therapeutics to deliver biopharma clinical candidates with novel profiles. He is responsible for the discovery of a total of eight clinical candidates. At Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dr. Lam was the group leader/co-inventor responsible for the discovery of Eliquis®/Apixaban, a novel Factor Xa anticoagulant with annual sales of >$2 B. He and his team were awarded 2015 American Chemical Society Heroes of Chemistry Award for the discovery of Eliquis®.

Richard W. Scott, Ph.D., Former Vice President, Research

Dr. Scott has a strong background in preclinical research and drug development. He led a research team at PolyMedix, Inc. for over 10 years investigating small molecule mimics of host defense proteins (HDP mimics) as anti-infective and immune modulatory agents.  In his current position as Vice President of Research at Fox Chase Therapeutic Discovery, Inc., he has led research programs in several therapeutic indications involving anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal targets. During his 38-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, he has leadership experience in many areas of research and drug development including target identification, lead identification and optimization, mechanism of action, in vitro safety, animal efficacy and safety, ADME, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, GLP toxicology and intellectual property protection. Furthermore, has served as the PI or co-PI on numerous (19) NIH grants and Department of Defense grants and contracts.  Contact: [email protected].