| SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
Dr. Artem Cherkasov
Chairman, Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Cherkasov, a faculty member of UBC Department of Infectious Disease, is the author of more than 100 scientific articles in the fields of biochemistry, molecular modeling, and drug design. Dr. Cherkasov was formerly a researcher at BC Cancer Research Center's Genome Sciences Centre.
Michael Hayden, Ph.D.
Dr. Hayden has co-founded three companies: Xenon Pharmaceuticals, Aspreva Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Neurovir. He is currently serving as chief scientific officer for Xenon and chairman of the medical advisory board for Aspreva. Aspreva focuses on repurposing existing drugs to treat rare diseases and was purchased in a deal worth approximately $915 million US by the Galenica Group. Dr. Hayden is a full professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia as well as Director of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) in Vancouver; the CMMT is a gene research center under UBC’s Faculty of Medicine.
Author of over 400 peer-reviewed publications and invited submissions, Dr. Hayden focuses his research primarily on genetic diseases, including genetics of lipoprotein disorders, Huntington’s disease and predictive medicine. In association with his colleagues, Dr. Hayden developed the proposal which led to the award of the Canadian Centers of Excellence on the genetic basis of disease. This effort has been furthered by his involvement in the Canadian Genetic Diseases Network; Dr. Hayden has served as the Network’s Scientific Director since its inception in 1990.
Dr. Hayden has pioneered the development of predictive testing for Huntington's disease, an incurable condition that affects approximately one in 10,000 people. He has made major contributions to determine how specific genes lead to Huntington's, premature coronary artery disease and diabetes. In 2007, he provided the first evidence of prevalence of Huntington's disease in laboratory mice.
Alexander Tropsha, Ph.D
Dr. Tropsha, of the University of North Carolina (UNC), is one of the world’s leading chemoinformatics experts. Dr. Tropsha is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Chair of the Division of Medicine Chemistry and Natural Products of UNC’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Dr. Tropsha is also Director of the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling at the School of Pharmacy and Director of the UNC Graduate Program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
The research in Dr. Tropsha’s laboratory is supported by several grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and pharmaceutical companies. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.
His current research interests include computer-aided drug design (ligand-based and structure-based design methods), chemoinformatics (quantitative structure activity relationships, combinatorial library design, and database mining), structural bioinformatics (protein structure analysis and prediction, identification of structural and functional protein motifs), and molecular simulations of proteins and peptides.
Dr. Tropsha is a member of several editorial boards, including the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. He is a permanent member of the National Institutes of Health Biodata Management and Analysis Study Section.
He is an elected member of the Board and vice-chair of the International QSAR and Modeling Society. QSAR (quantitative structure-activity relationships) is used to predict chemical properties directly from chemical structure. When combined with other alternative test methods, QSAR can minimize the need for animal tests while making the use of chemicals safer.
Dr. Tropsha received his MS degree in chemical enzymology in 1982 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry and pharmacology in 1986, both from Moscow State University. He emigrated to the United States in 1989, two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1991, after two years of postdoctoral research at UNC, he joined the School of Pharmacy as an assistant professor and director of the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling.
Mr. Edward Kiruluta
Former Senior Director of Informatics at Merck Research Labs (MRL) where he led the development of the Target Genome Index (TGI), an environment to help researchers gain better insights into biological function and drug response by integrating clinical data with genomics, proteomics and metabolomics technologies. Mr. Kiruluta has over 15 years of experience in the software and life science industries.
Dr. Winston Hide
Dr. Hide is a world-renowned bioinformatics expert who is the founder and Director of the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Cape Town, South Africa. He is Professor of Genomics at UWC and currently serves as Visiting Professor of Bioinformatics at the Harvard University School of Public Health. Dr. Hide's areas of expertise include computational biology and bioinformatics, genomics, tropical diseases and cancer. He has had a distinguished career as a researcher and teacher and also played a major role in creating a series of institutions for advanced biological and medical research in Africa and elsewhere.
In addition to his roles at UWC and Harvard, Dr. Hide currently leads a pathogen bioinformatics unit of the South African Medical Research Council where he is responsible for the bioinformatics of the Tsetse Fly Genome Project. The tsetse fly carries the pathogen that causes African sleeping sickness. In collaboration with the European 6th Framework Programme, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Brazilian Genome Project and the International Human Genome Consortium, Dr. Hide has developed several systems for disease gene discovery. Collaborating Institutions include Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Riken, Cambridge and Tokyo Universities, and the Pasteur Institute.
Dr. Hide founded the African Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and established Africa's first World Health Organisation African Regional Training Centre for Bioinformatics, its first National Bioinformatics Network, its first large-scale HIV bioinformatics program and its first accredited graduate program in bioinformatics. He was the first African to be elected to the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Biology. Dr. Hide was a Keck Computational Fellow at the Baylor College of Medicine Department of Molecular Genetics and also a Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. He was a Director of Genomics at MasPar Computer Corporation in Silicon Valley. Dr. Hide is an International Kerr Programme Fellow of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.
Dr. Hide received a BSc degree from the University College Cardiff, University of Wales and a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Temple University. He lectures widely and serves as an editorial board member and reviewer for numerous scientific journals. Dr. Hide is the recipient of many honors and awards.
Dr. Robert D. Sindelar
Dr. Sindelar’s expertise lies in medicinal chemistry, computer-aided drug discovery and design, pharmaceutical biotechnology, and creating opportunities to integrate innovation into the health care system. He maintained an active research program that focused on the human immune system and drug design for related diseases. This work resulted in more than $14 million (US$) in extramural funding as Principle (PI) and Co-PI Investigator, about 60 refereed journal articles, six U.S. patents, several foreign patents and over 100 scientific and professional presentations. Dr. Sindelar is the recipient of several School and University-wide teaching honors. In addition to his leadership role in the Faculty, Dr. Sindelar continues to teach in the professional undergraduate curriculum in several courses. He currently sits on the Council of The College of Pharmacists of British Columbia, serves on the Board of Directors of BC Biotech and serves on other scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Wyeth Wasserman
Dr. Wasserman is a Professor at the University of British Columbia and senior scientist at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT). Prior to this, he worked with GlaxoSmithKline Inc. and Pharmacia Corp. (since acquired by Pfizer Inc.), and is world renowned for his ground breaking research in the identification of key functional regions in the Human Genome. Dr. Wasserman leads the field in the development of bioinformatics tools used to discover the on/off switches for human genes. These genetic switches, called transcription factor binding sites, are the control points that define when and where each gene will be active. An individual with genetic abnormalities at these key points in their genome may be susceptible to various forms of disease or may be overly responsive or non-responsive to certain drugs.
Dr. Brett Casey
Dr. Casey is the Director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at British Columbia's Children's Hospital and Head of the Program in Laboratory Genetics at BC Children’s Hospital, completed residency in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at the University of California, San Diego, and fellowships in Pediatric Pathology and Human Molecular Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Casey’s research interests have focused on human malformation syndromes, and his clinical expertise encompasses a broad range of applications in molecular genetics. He is a diplomate of the American Boards of Pathology and of Genetics and a Fellow of both the American and Canadian College of Medical Genetics.
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