Team

He has co-authored multiple US government grant and contract applications supporting the discovery and early development programs. His prior positions include Senior Director of Chemistry at Knopp Biosciences LLC in Pittsburgh, Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Array BioPharma, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado, and Senior Group Leader at Abbott Laboratories in Illinois. Dr. Boyd earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Oregon Honors College, a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an NCI-funded post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

At Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc., he established a small-molecule antiviral drug discovery program and identified multiple lead series that targeted HCV fusion/entry including a Pre-Development Candidate, PRO0371155. At Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., his research focus was directed against a wide variety of human viral pathogens including hepatitis B virus (HBV), alphaviruses, influenza virus, filoviruses, polyomaviruses, coronaviruses and orthopoxviruses. Both structure-guided and traditional medicinal chemistry driven optimization efforts led to the discovery of multiple lead series targeting emerging viral diseases and to the delivery of VNRX-9945, a capsid assembly modulator for the treatment of chronic HBV infection, that successfully completed Phase 1 testing in healthy volunteers. Prior to industry, Dr. Coburn earned a B.Sc. in Genetics from the University of Western Ontario and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of British Columbia. Following his graduate work, Dr. Coburn completed post-Doctoral training at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Duke University Medical Center in the department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology.

At Venatorx, he was involved in discovery, optimization and supporting development of clinical candidate oral and IV BLIs taniborbactam (VNRX-5133 paired with cefepime) and ledaborbactam etzadroxil (VNRX-7145 paired with ceftibuten) and most recently overseeing a world-class team of biologists focused on cyclic boronates and diazabicyclooctanes as direct acting non-β-lactam Penicillin Binding Protein (PBP) inhibitors. These efforts led to several PBP inhibitor discovery programs retained by Spring Mill Pharma targeting high priority WHO and CDC pathogens: i) carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE), ii) 3rd gen cephalosporin-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and iii) multidrug resistant non-fermenting gram-negatives including carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA). Dr. Daigle earned a B.Sc. in biochemistry from the University of Moncton, a Ph.D. in biochemistry from McMaster University and a Presidential Research Fellowship from the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research.

In the last five years he acted as the lead Project Manager on two government contracts including NIAID BAA (75N930C00016) for development of a novel antibacterial series through phase 1 clinical trials, and a DTRA contract (HDTRA117C0070) for development of antibacterials active against B. pseudomallei. In addition, he was also the contract lead on a CARB-X award (450003206) for discovery and early development of novel antibacterials active against drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae. In addition to managing research contracts, he also had the opportunity to act as the alliance manager for a research collaboration with Roche exploring novel inhibitors of penicillin binding proteins. Prior to this, he was primarily involved in antibacterial and antiviral drug discovery spanning the entire discovery process from High Throughput Screening (HTS) campaigns, to lead optimization and pre-clinical candidate selection, as well as early clinical development. Mr. Hamrick earned a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.