Appendix B
Speaker Biographies
Mark Avigan, MDCM, obtained his BSc (1972) and MDCM (1977) degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He completed residency training in internal medicine at the VA Medical Center/Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Subsequently, he served as chief medical resident and completed a clinical GI/hepatology/nutrition fellowship. Dr. Avigan served as a staff fellow in the Liver unit of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in Bethesda, Maryland, where he participated in the clinical evaluation of new therapeutics for the treatment of viral hepatitis. He later moved to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he pursued studies in molecular and cellular mechanisms governing the dysfunctional expression of oncogenes during carcinogenesis. In 1990 he joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at Georgetown University. As an assistant and later associate professor, he attended patients on the GI/Liver service at the Georgetown University Medical Center, and served as a mentor of graduate students in the Department of Pathology and clinical fellows in the Division of Gastroenterology’s clinical program. In addition, he was the principal investigator of National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded R-29 and R0-1 grants that supported studies to elucidate transcriptional and post-transcriptional growth regulation pathways. After joining the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1999 as a medical officer in the Division of Gastrointestinal and Coagulation Drug Products, he developed a strong interest in drug-induced liver injury and the impact of pharmacogenomic analysis on evaluation of the risk associated with drug treatment. Since 2003 he has served as a division director in the Office of Surveillance and
Epidemiology. He is currently a member of CDER’s Drug Safety Oversight Board.
Melanie Blank, MD, is a nephrologist in the Division of Cardiovascular and Renal Products at the FDA. She is a member of the Biomarker Qualification Review Team. Prior to joining her current division, Dr. Blank was a medical officer in the Division of Medical Imaging. She performed her internal medicine residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and her nephrology fellowship at George Washington University Hospital. She was in private practice for 14 years prior to joining the FDA 4 years ago.
John C. Bloom, PhD, holds a BS degree in biology from the University of Pittsburgh and doctorates in veterinary medicine and experimental hematology from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his postdoctoral training at Lankenau Hospital (Jefferson Medical College) in hematology/oncology and served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine as chief, clinical laboratory medicine before joining Smith Kline & French Laboratories in 1981 as associate director of pathology. Dr. Bloom is a past president of the American Society for Veterinary Clinical Pathology and has been active in the fields of hematotoxicology, hepatotoxicology, and immunotoxicology within the pharmaceutical industry. He has authored several manuscripts, chapters, and reviews on these topics; edited texts on toxicology and clinical biomarkers in drug development; and served on several committees sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the Society of Toxicologic Pathology, and PhRMA. He joined Lilly Research Laboratories in 1989 as head, clinical pathology in the Toxicology Division, and in 1991 moved to the Medical Division, where he established the department of Clinical Laboratory Medicine, and later the departments of Experimental Medicine and Clinical Diagnostic Services. As distinguished medical fellow (executive director), diagnostic and experimental medicine, he is now responsible for routine laboratory, electrocardiogram (ECG), imaging, and specimen banking support for global clinical development, and novel clinical biomarker discovery, validation, and application in the Division of Translational Medicine and Pharmacogenomics. Dr. Bloom holds adjunct academic appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Purdue University.
Daniel M. Bloomfield, MD, MPhil, FACC, currently works at Merck Research Laboratories as an executive director in clinical cardiovascular research and is responsible for drug development for hypertension, arrhythmias, and heart failure. After receiving a BA in chemistry at Haverford College, he studied social anthropology at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Upon returning to the United States, he attended Harvard Medical School, and then received
training in internal medicine and cardiology at Columbia before joining the faculty. As an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, Dr. Bloomfield received grants supporting his academic research career from NIH, foundations, and industry, and developed expertise in syncope (fainting spells) and in identifying patients at risk for sudden cardiac death. His laboratory was also involved in studies related to T wave alternans, the autonomic modulation of cardiac repolarization, and characterization of U wave behavior in diverse autonomic states. Dr. Bloomfield joined Merck Research Laboratories in 2003 working in clinical pharmacology, and was involved in and co-chaired a number of early development teams. He has chaired the QT Task Force (a multifunctional group of more than 20 individuals involved in all aspects of Merck’s response to the E14 guidance), and created the Integrated Preclinical and Clinical Cardiovascular Safety Team (CVST) and the Cardiac Safety Board. Dr. Bloomfield is currently co-chair of the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium, a public–private partnership among the FDA, academia, and industry devoted to advancing scientific knowledge on cardiac safety for new and existing medical products by building a collaborative environment based on the principles of the FDA’s Critical Path Initiative, as well as other public health priorities.
Joseph Bonventre, MD, PhD, is Robert H. Ebert Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of health sciences and technology (HST) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also chief of the Renal Division of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH); director of the BWH-HST Center for Biomedical Engineering at the BWH; co-director of the Brigham Research Institute Stem Cell, Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering Center; and a faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI). Dr. Bonventre received his BS with distinction from Cornell University in 1970 in engineering physics and MD and PhD degrees in biophysics from Harvard University in 1976 and 1979, respectively. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from Mount Saint Mary’s College and from the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology in Norway. His research focuses primarily on the study of kidney injury and repair and signal transduction, with a special emphasis on the role of inflammation, biomarkers, and stem cells. His work on biomarkers led to the discovery of a marker that is appropriate for identification of early kidney injury and kidney cancer in preclinical as well as clinical studies. Dr. Bonventre received a MERIT award from NIDDK. He has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. Bonventre is a member of the Council of the American Society of Nephrology and future president of that organization. He chairs the Kidney Group of the Harvard Stem Cell Initiative
and is co-chair of the Technology in Medicine Initiative at the BWH. In addition, he is a member of the board of directors of the National Space Biology Research Institute and the board of advisors of the Norwegian Institute for Science and Technology.
Robert Califf, MD (Forum member), is currently vice chancellor for clinical research, director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute, and professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. For 10 years he was director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), the largest academic research organization in the world. He is editor-in-chief of Elsevier’s American Heart Journal. He is the author or co-author of more than 650 peer-reviewed journal articles and is a contributing editor for www.theheart.org. Dr. Califf led DCRI for many of the best-known clinical trials in cardiovascular disease. In cooperation with his colleagues from the Duke Databank for Cardiovascular Disease, he has written extensively about the clinical and economic outcomes of chronic heart disease. He is considered an international leader in the fields of health outcomes, quality of care, and medical economics. He has served on the FDA’s Cardiorenal Advisory Panel and the IOM’s Pharmaceutical Roundtable. He served on the IOM committees that recommended Medicare coverage of clinical trials and the banning of ephedra, and he is currently serving on the IOM’s Committee on Identifying and Preventing Medication Errors. He is director of the coordinating center for the Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics, a public–private partnership among the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the FDA, academia, the medical products industry, and consumer groups. Dr. Califf graduated from Duke University (summa cum laude) in 1973 and from Duke University Medical School in 1978. He performed his internship and residency at the University of California, San Francisco, and his fellowship in cardiology at Duke University. He is board certified in internal medicine and cardiology and is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology.
Prasad Devarajan, MD, is Williams Endowed Chair, professor of pediatrics and developmental biology, director of nephrology and hypertension, director of clinical laboratories, and CEO of the Dialysis Unit at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati. He serves on the editorial and review boards for more than 20 journals and on multiple NIH study sections. He has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles. His work has been continuously funded by NIH and several other foundations for 20 years. Dr. Devarajan’s major research interests lie in the pathogenetic pathways, diagnostic biomarkers, and novel therapies of acute kidney injury.
Frank Dieterle, PhD, is head of External Affairs iTox in Novartis Pharma. He is responsible for safety biomarker strategies within Novartis from early development, to implementation, to clinical trials. This work includes the qualification of biomarkers for regulatory decision making together with health authorities and in cooperation with consortia. Dr. Dieterle is co-chair of the Nephrotoxicity Working Group of the Critical Path Institute’s Predictive Safety Consortium, which performed the first qualification of safety biomarkers together with the European Medicines Evaluation Agency (EMEA) and the FDA. Before joining Novartis, he was responsible for the implementation of metabonomics at Roche. Dr. Dieterle holds a PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Tübingen.
Michael J. Domanski, MD, is chief of the Atherothrombosis and Coronary Artery Disease Branch, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. He received his bachelor of aerospace engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his MD degree from the University of Maryland. He has more than 15 years of experience in the performance of large randomized trials, related mainly to coronary disease, heart failure, and sudden cardiac death. Dr. Domanski serves on the FDA’s Circulatory Devices Panel, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Cooperative Studies Scientific Merit Review Board, the Engineering Advisory Committee of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the board of directors of the Society of Geriatric Cardiology, and as a professor of internal medicine (cardiology) at the Uniformed Services Medical School. Dr. Domanski is American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular diseases, and interventional cardiology and actively practices a wide range of invasive, noninvasive, and interventional cardiology. He has authored more than 200 publications, including textbooks on transesophageal echocardiography and randomized clinical trials (in press).
Paul Eisenberg, MD, MPH (Forum member), is senior vice president of global regulatory affairs and safety at Amgen, effective February 2008, after serving as vice president of global regulatory affairs and safety since January 2007 and vice president of global safety since December 2005. Prior to joining Amgen, he was vice president of Lilly Global Product Safety. At Lilly he also led clinical development teams in the cardiovascular, critical care, and inflammation therapeutic areas as vice president, internal medicine, and in discovery as executive director of cardiovascular research and clinical investigation. Dr. Eisenberg received his MD from New York Medical College and his MPH in tropical medicine from Tulane University School of Public Health. He was a professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, where his academic career, over 18 years, was focused on basic and clinical research in cardiovascular disease and thrombosis. This
work led to more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and books. Dr. Eisenberg has been involved in the discovery and development of numerous new molecular entities (NMEs) in both his academic and industry careers. He has led the development and registration of multiple NMEs in cardiovascular and critical care. In addition, he has extensive experience in global safety and risk management for drug development programs and post-marketing in multiple therapeutic classes.
James Freston, MD, PhD, is professor of medicine emeritus and past Boehringer Ingelheim Chair of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He served as chair of the Department of Medicine there for 17 years, a position he relinquished to direct the Health Center’s clinical research programs, which include an NIH-sponsored General Clinical Research Center, a Clinical Trials Office, and investigator training and education services. Previously he was professor of medicine and pharmacology in the College of Medicine and professor of biochemical toxicology in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Utah, where he won the Outstanding Professor Award six times and directed the Gastroenterology and Clinical Pharmacology Divisions. He was founding chairman of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Foundation and President of the AGA. He is past chairman of the American Digestive Health Foundation. He was consultant to the surgeon general for the gastrointestinal section of The Health Consequences of Smoking and a member of two FDA gastrointestinal Advisory Panels, as well as numerous NIH panels and committees. He currently serves on the NIH Council for NIDDK and as a co-investigator in the NIH-sponsored Drug Induced Liver Injury Network. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in the clinical pharmacology of gastrointestinal drugs and diseases, particularly drug safety aspects. He was founding Editor of the AGA’s acclaimed Digestive Diseases Self-Education Program (DDSEP), a popular multimedia continuing medical education program that is in its fifth edition. He lectures worldwide and is the author of more than 140 journal articles and 40 books and chapters. Dr. Freston received the AGA’s Mentor Honoree award in 2005; the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Utah in 2006; and the AGA’s Julius Freidenwald Medal in 2007, awarded for outstanding contributions to gastroenterology. In 2008 the AGA endowed an annual scientific conference in his name. Dr. Freston received his MD degree from the University of Utah and his PhD degree from the University of London. He is trained in clinical pharmacology, gastroenterology, hepatology, and aerospace medicine.
Mikhail Gishizky, PhD (Forum member), is chief scientific officer for Entelos, Inc. He has more than 25 years of experience in applied disease-
related research. Prior to joining Entelos, Dr. Gishizky held positions of increasing scientific and management responsibility at Sugen-Pharmacia-Pfizer. His most recent position was research zone head, vice president of target discovery. Throughout his career, Dr. Gishizky has been responsible for implementing a broad range of discovery technology efforts in areas ranging from human genetics to bioinformatics. In addition, he has led discovery efforts in oncology, immunology, inflammation, and central nervous system (CNS) and metabolic diseases, establishing the critical link between preclinical/clinical research and early discovery. Dr. Gishizky received his doctorate training in endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, where his research focused on defining the molecular mechanisms responsible for the development and progression of diabetes mellitus. His postdoctoral training at the University of California, Los Angeles, focused on cancer biology and hematopoietic cell development. His research there was instrumental in demonstrating the causative role of the bcr/abl oncogene in the development of human chronic myeloid leukemia.
Christine M. Hunt, MD, FACP, is board certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology/hepatology, and is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Liver Disease and the American Gastroenterological Association. She pursued basic and clinical hepatology-based research on the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia (1987–1988) and Duke University (1988–1996). In 1996, Dr. Hunt was recruited to join the global hepatitis and GI drug development team at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). In 2005, she transitioned to chair the GSK Hepatotoxicity Board and co-chair the GSK Safety Biomarker Strategy Team. Dr. Hunt is vice president, GSK Clinical Safety Systems, building proactive safety systems to address the key toxicities affecting drug development. She represents GSK on the FDA Hepatotoxicity Special Interest Group and the Critical Path Translation Team on Predictive Biomarkers.
Thomas R. Insel, MD, is director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health charged with generating the knowledge needed to understand, treat, and prevent mental disorders. Immediately prior to his appointment as director, which marks his return to NIMH after an 8-year hiatus, Dr. Insel was professor of psychiatry at Emory University. There he was founding director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, one of the largest science and technology centers funded by the National Science Foundation, and, concurrently, director of an NIH-funded Center for Autism Research. From 1994 to 1999, he was director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta. While at Emory, Dr. Insel continued the line of research he had
initiated at NIMH studying the neurobiology of complex social behaviors in animals. Early in his NIMH research career, which extended from 1979 to 1994, he conducted clinical research on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), carrying out some of the first treatment trials for OCD using the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class of medications. Dr. Insel has published more than 200 scientific articles and four books, including The Neurobiology of Parental Care (with Michael Numan) in 2003. He has served on numerous academic, scientific, and professional committees, including 10 editorial boards. He is a member of the IOM, a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and a recipient of several awards (the A. E. Bennett Award from the Society for Biological Psychiatry, the Curt Richter Prize from the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology, the Outstanding Service Award from the U.S. Public Health Service, and a Distinguished Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression). Dr. Insel graduated from the combined BA–MD program at Boston University in 1974. He performed his internship at Berkshire Medical Center, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and his residency at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.
Ravi Iyengar, PhD, is Dorothy H. and Lewis Rosenstiel Professor and chair, Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. He received his PhD in biophysical sciences in 1977. He received his postdoctoral training at Baylor College of Medicine, and was a faculty member at Baylor before joining Mount Sinai in 1986. The Iyengar laboratory focuses on the systems biology of cellular regulatory networks, with special emphasis on signaling through G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and heterotrimeric G proteins. The research projects in his laboratory converge on understanding how signals are routed and processed through cellular signaling networks. The laboratory is developing systems pharmacology to understand how diseased genes relate to drug targets in integrated networks and whether such networks can be used to predict side effects. Dr. Iyengar is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and editor of the journal Systems Biology and serves on the editorial board of Science Signaling. He is director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)-funded Systems Biology Center of New York.
Jay W. Mason, MD, is an independent consultant in cardiac safety. He graduated from Princeton University and obtained his MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He trained in medicine and cardiovascular diseases at Stanford University, where he was a member of the faculty from 1975 to 1983 and served as director of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Service and
co-director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories. He became chief of cardiology at the University of Utah in 1983. In 1999 he was appointed chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Kentucky. He remains a professor of medicine and cardiology at the latter two institutions. From 2003 to 2007 he served as medical director and director of R&D at Covance Cardiac Safety Services. At present he is chief medical officer (in a consultant role) at Oxford Biosignals, Inc. and Spaulding Clinical Research, LLC. His clinical, teaching, and research emphasis is in cardiac arrhythmias, electrocardiography, and electrophysiology. Dr. Mason has chaired the American College of Cardiology’s electrocardiography educational committees for more than 20 years. He has been awarded more than $29 million in NIH support during his research career and is the author of more than 400 publications.
Leonard B. Seeff, MD, graduated in 1961 from the Medical School of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He came to the United States in 1964 to work with Dr. Hyman J. Zimmerman, then chief of medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago and one of the world’s leading authorities in hepatotoxicity. A year later, he moved with Dr. Zimmerman to the VA Medical Center in Washington, DC, to complete his training in general medicine and his fellowship in GI/hepatology. Thereafter, he initiated and coordinated the first of what were to be four large-scale VA cooperative studies on post-transfusion hepatitis B and C, funded by the VA, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and NCI. Dr. Seeff moved to the VA Medical Center in Boston in 1968. He returned to the Washington VA Medical Center in 1971 as assistant chief of medicine for 8 years, followed by an appointment as chief of gastroenterology and hepatology in 1979. He continued his research in viral hepatitis and in 1984 was appointed professor of medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine. In 1998, he joined NIDDK as senior scientist for hepatitis research, now senior scientific officer. He is a member of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD), where he served as councilor-at-large from 1997 to 2000. He is senior author of the AASLD guidelines for the treatment of hepatitis C, as well as other guidelines. Currently in the Liver Disease Research Branch of NIDDK, he helped design and oversee several large network studies, related mainly to viral hepatitis but also to the DILIN study. He has also coordinated several NIDDK meetings and workshops, including the Consensus Conference on Hepatitis C. His primary research interests are viral hepatitis and drug-induced liver injury. He has received numerous awards and has published more than 150 articles and 50 book chapters.
Frank D. Sistare, PhD, has served since 2003 as executive director of the Department of Laboratory Sciences and Investigative Toxicology within Safety Assessment at Merck Research Laboratories. The department is responsible for genetic toxicology assessments and molecular carcinogenesis investigations; for bioanalytical toxicokinetic support; for the implementation of directed investigative toxicology research solutions and support for safety lead optimization; for the incorporation of new in vitro and in vivo model systems and technologies, including ion channel systems, genomics, proteomics, and metabonomics; and for the provision of clinical pathology, immunology, and biomarker development support to safety assessment. Dr. Sistare previously served for 15 years with the laboratory research component of the FDA’s CDER, where he also served on or chaired numerous regulatory committees and working groups. Dr. Sistare is a retired captain with the Public Health Service (PHS) Commissioned Corps and has received several PHS Unit Commendations; PHS Meritorious Service, Commendation, and Achievement Awards; and CDER and FDA awards for excellence in laboratory research. He earned his BS in pharmacy from the University of Rhode Island and his PhD in pharmacology at the University of Virginia, and was awarded a postdoctoral Pharmacology Research Associate (PRAT) Fellowship at NIH.
Robert A. Star, MD, is director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases at NIDDK. He is also a senior investigator and chief of the Renal Diagnostics and Therapeutics Unit at NIDDK. Dr. Star was a postdoctoral fellow at NIH in the mid-1980s before joining the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. In 1999, he returned to NIH to serve as a senior scientific advisor for kidney disease and to run a laboratory studying acute kidney injury. In 2002, he became senior advisor for clinical research in the NIH Office of Science Policy and Planning. There he worked on NIH Roadmap for Medical Research initiatives to reengineer the clinical research enterprise. The Roadmap aims to stimulate research and develop research resources for crosscutting, large, and complex projects with profound potential impact. Dr. Star also led training and career programs for clinical researchers and helped develop the clinical and translational science awards. Especially interested in translational research, Dr. Star’s laboratory focuses on the early identification, prevention, and preemption of sepsis and acute kidney injury. Dr. Star’s research has produced more than 100 published manuscripts, and he has written eight textbook chapters and holds several patents. He graduated summa cum laude in applied mathematics from Harvard College and cum laude from the Harvard Medical School–MIT Joint Program in Health Sciences and Technology. His internship and residency in internal medicine were performed at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. In addition, Dr. Star has
received honorary awards and research support from NIH, the FDA, and the biotech industry, and the prestigious Young Investigator Award recognizing excellence in nephrology research, awarded jointly by the American Society of Nephrology and the American Heart Association.
Norman Stockbridge, MD, PhD, received his MD and PhD (physiology) degrees from Duke University. He performed basic science research before joining the FDA as a medical officer in 1991. Dr. Stockbridge is currently director of the Division of Cardiovascular and Renal Products in the FDA/CDER.
David G. Warnock, MD, is director of the Office of Human Research and Marie K. Ingalls Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and received his MD degree from the University of California, San Francisco (USCF). His clinical training was completed at USCF, including a 1-year research fellowship with Isidore Edelman, MD, in the Cardiovascular Research Institute. Following a fellowship with Maurice Burg, MD, at NIH, Dr. Warnock returned to UCSF as a faculty member. He served as section chief at the San Francisco VA Medical Center during the last 5 years of his appointment at UCSF. Following a sabbatical with Bernard Rossier, MD, at the Institute of Pharmacology in Lausanne, Switzerland, Dr. Warnock was recruited to UAB as professor of medicine and director of nephrology in 1988, serving in that role until 2008. He was appointed director of the Office of Human Research at the University of Alabama in Birmingham in 2005. In 2006, he was named Marie S. Ingalls Professor of Medicine. During a sabbatical in 2008, he worked with Professor Frederic Jaisser at the College de France in Paris. Dr. Warnock’s research interests include acid-base physiology, sodium transport mechanisms, chronic kidney disease, acute kidney injury, and inherited renal diseases. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, the American Physiologic Society, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN), the National Kidney Foundation (NFK), and the International Society of Nephrology (ISN). He is currently immediate past president of the NKF and a founding member and member of the Executive Steering Committee of the Acute Kidney Injury Network.
Paul B. Watkins, MD, is Verne S. Caviness Distinguished Professor of Medicine, professor of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, and professor of toxicology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). He attended medical school at Cornell University and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. He received subspecialty training and
board certification in clinical gastroenterology and hepatology at the Medical College of Virginia. He was on the faculty at the University of Michigan from 1986 to 1999, when he moved to North Carolina. There he became director of the General Clinical Research Center and, more recently, director of the UNC Translational and Clinical Sciences (TraCS) Institute. In July 2008, Dr. Watkins became the director of a new Center for Drug Safety Sciences, a collaboration between UNC-CH and The Hamner Institutes. The Hamner Institutes is a not-for-profit organization based in Research Triangle Park (formerly called the Chemical Institute for Industrial Toxicology) and has a three-decades-long history of leading research on the health effects of environmental chemicals. Dr. Watkins is an accomplished basic and translational investigator in the fields of drug metabolism and hepatotoxicity. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Therapeutic Frontiers Award from the American College of Pharmacy and election to the Association of American Physicians (AAP). He is one of the most frequently cited authors in the field of pharmacology according to www.ISIhighlycited.com. He serves as chair of both the steering committee for DILIN and the scientific advisory board for the Liver Toxicity Biomarker Study, an FDA Critical Path Initiative. He has served on multiple national advisory committees, including the FDA Clinical Pharmacology Advisory Committee. For the past two decades he has been a frequent consultant for both industry and government agencies on issues involving drug metabolism and hepatotoxicity.
Alastair J. J. Wood, MB, ChB, is managing director of Symphony Capital, LLC, a New York–based private equity company managing more than $300 million in investments in the clinical development of novel bio-pharmaceutical products. He received his medical degree from St. Andrew’s University and Dundee Medical School in Scotland. He joined the Faculty at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1978, where he became tenured professor of both medicine and pharmacology and attending physician at Vanderbilt Medical School. Dr. Wood was assistant vice chancellor for clinical research (1999–2004) and associate dean, Vanderbilt Medical School (2004–2006), before being appointed emeritus professor of medicine and emeritus professor of pharmacology in 2006. His current academic appointments are as professor of medicine and professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. Dr. Wood is a member of many societies and has received numerous honors, notably election to membership in the IOM, the American Association of Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation; Honorary Fellow, American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society (AGOS); Fellowship of the American College of Physicians; Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of London; and Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
He was the 2005 recipient of the Rawls-Palmer Award in recognition of “Drug investigation that brings the effects of modern drug research to the care of patients” from the American Society for Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Dr. Wood was a member of The New England Journal of Medicine editorial board (2004–2006), drug therapy editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (1985–2004), and a member of the editorial board of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He previously served on the editorial boards of The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Biopharmaceutics and Drug Disposition. He authored the chapter in Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine on adverse drug reactions from the ninth through fifteenth editions. Dr. Wood was chair of the FDA’s Non-prescription Drugs Advisory Committee until 2006 and chaired the 2005 FDA Advisory Committee on Cox-2 inhibitors. He previously served as a member of the FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Advisory Committee and Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee. Dr. Wood has also been both a member and chair of NIH study sections, and has served in a similar capacity for various philanthropic grant-giving bodies. His research interests have been focused on understanding the mechanisms of interindividual variability in drug response, with a particular emphasis on the molecular genetics of adrenergic receptors, ethnic differences in drug response, vascular response, and the genetics of drug metabolism. His research has been continuously funded by NIH and has resulted in more than 300 articles, reviews, and editorials.
Janet Woodcock, MD (Forum member), is director of CDER at the FDA. She also served as CDER director from 1994 to 2005. Dr. Woodcock held various positions within the Office of the Commissioner, FDA, from October 2003 to April 2008. Prior to her 2008 reappointment to CDER, she served as deputy commissioner for operations and chief operating officer, responsible for overseeing agency operations and crosscutting regulatory and scientific processes. She previously served in other positions at the FDA, including director, Office of Therapeutics Research and Review, and acting deputy director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Dr. Woodcock received her MD from Northwestern Medical School, and completed further training and held teaching appointments at the Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, San Francisco. She joined the FDA in 1986.
