Raymond P. Warrell, Jr., M.D.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Raymond P. Warrell, Jr., M.D. has been our Chief Executive Officer and a member of our Board since December 1999 and our Chairman since January 2001. From 1978 to 1999, Dr. Warrell was associated with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he held tenured positions as Member, Attending Physician, and Associate Physician-in-Chief, and with the Cornell University Medical College, where he was Professor of Medicine.
Dr. Warrell also has more than 20 years of development and consulting experience in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology products. He was a co-founder and chairman of the scientific advisory board of PolaRx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., which originated Trisenox®, a drug for the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia.
Dr. Warrell holds or has filed numerous patents and patent applications for biomedical therapeutic or diagnostic agents. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and more than 240 book chapters and abstracts, most of which are focused upon drug development in oncology.
Dr. Warrell is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the American Society of Hematology, the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Among many awards, he has received the U.S. Public Health Service Award for Exceptional Achievement in Orphan Drug Development from the FDA.
Christopher P. Parios
Christopher P. Parios has been a member of our Board since September 2005. Mr. Parios has more than thirty-seven years of pharmaceutical industry experience, including product development, marketing and promotion, strategy and tactic development, and managing pharmaco-economic and reimbursement issues. He has worked with many of the major companies in the pharmaceutical industry including Hoffmann-LaRoche, Ortho-McNeil, Pfizer, Novartis, Schering Plough, Janssen, Ortho Biotech, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
For the period 1997 to May of 2008, Mr. Parios was Executive Director of The Dominion Group, an independent healthcare consulting firm that specializes in market research, strategic planning, and competitive intelligence monitoring. In this role, he was responsible for the full range of market research, consulting, and business planning activities to facilitate informed business decisions for clients regarding product development, acquisitions, product positioning, and promotion.
Mr. Parios continues to consult with the Dominion Group on a part-time basis. Previously, Mr. Parios was President and Chief Operating Officer of the Ferguson Communication Group, as well as Vice Chairman of the parent company, CommonHealth USA, a leading full-service communications resource for the healthcare industry. Mr. Parios was a partner in Pracon, Inc., a health-care marketing consulting firm from 1982 to 1991, and helped engineer the sale of that firm to Reed-Elsevier in 1989.
Over a twenty-year period, Mr. Parios held progressively senior positions at Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc., most recently as Director of New Product Planning and Regulatory Affairs Management. This group established the project management system for drug development at Roche and coordinated developmental activities for such products as Versed®, Rocephin®, Roferon®, Accutane®, Rimadyl®, and Tegison®. Mr. Parios was also a member of the corporate team responsible for domestic and international product and technology licensing activities.
Daniel D. Von Hoff, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Daniel D. Von Hoff, M.D., F.A.C.P., has been a member of our Board since January 2000. Since November 2002, he has been Physician in Chief and Director of Translational Research at Translational Genomics Research Institute’s (Tgen) in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also Chief Scientific Officer for US Oncology since January 2003 and he is also the Chief Scientific Officer, Scottsdale Clinical Research Institute since November 2005.
Dr. Von Hoff’s major interest is in the development of new anticancer agents, both in the clinic and in the laboratory. He and his colleagues were involved in the beginning of the development of many of the agents now used routinely, including: mitoxantrone, fludarabine, paclitaxel, docetaxel, gemcitabine, CPT-11, and others.
At present, he and his colleagues are concentrating on the development of molecularly targeted therapies. Dr. Von Hoff’s laboratory interests and contributions have been in the area of in vitro drug sensitivity testing to individualize treatment for the patient. He and his laboratory are now concentrating on discovery of new targets in pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Von Hoff has published more than 531 papers, 129 book chapters, and more than 891 abstracts. Dr. Von Hoff was appointed to the President’s National Cancer Advisory Board for June 2004 — March 2010. Dr. Von Hoff is the past President of the American Association for Cancer Research, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and a member and past board member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
He is a founder of ILEX™ Oncology, Inc. (acquired by Genzyme). He is founder and the Editor Emeritus of Investigational New Drugs — The Journal of New Anticancer Agents; and, Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.
Douglas G. Watson
Douglas G. Watson has been a member of our Board since April 2002 and was appointed Vice Chairman of our Board and Lead Director in March 2005. From 1999 through the present, Mr. Watson was the founder and has served as Chief Executive Officer of Pittencrieff Glen Associates, a leadership and management-consulting firm. Prior to taking early retirement in 1999, Mr. Watson spent 33 years with Geigy/Ciba-Geigy/Novartis, during which time he held a variety of positions in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States.
From 1986 to 1996, he was President of Ciba U.S. Pharmaceuticals Division, and in 1996 he was appointed President & Chief Executive Officer of Ciba-Geigy Corporation. During this ten-year period, Mr. Watson was an active member of the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers Association board in Washington, DC. Mr. Watson became President & Chief Executive Officer of Novartis Corporation in 1997 when the merger of Ciba-Geigy & Sandoz was approved by the Federal Trade Commission.
Mr. Watson is currently Chairman of the Board of OraSure Technologies Inc., and Chairman of the Board of Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc. He also serves on the boards of Dendreon Corporation and BioMimetic Therapeutics Inc.
