Dr. Robert W. Marquis

Executive Director Medicinal Chemistry and Interim Head,
SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Bob has over 30 years in the global life sciences and biopharmaceuticals industry. At Syngene, he is Executive Director of Medicinal Chemistry and Interim Head of SynVent. Here, Bob and the SynVent teamwork with an array of clients spanning different modalities, therapeutic areas and stages of drug development (target ID to phase 1 development). In addition, Bob was also the 2019 Chair of the Medicinal Chemistry Gordon Research Conference, is co-author on 52 peer reviewed manuscripts and contributed to 64 patents.   

Prior to joining Syngene, he held leadership positions at Merck and GSK including his part in the ImmunoInflammation Virtual Discovery Performance Unit where he helped perform a wide variety of due diligence investigations leading to investment and collaborations with several biotechnology companies. Bob was also the Early Development Leader for several programs working to transition small molecule assets from preclinical development through Phase 1 clinical development. 

Bob received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1983 and obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry with Professor Larry E. Overman from the University of California. 

Dr. Miquel Salva

Executive Director DMPK, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Miquel has over 30 years experience in the global life sciences and biopharmaceuticals industry. At Syngene, he is Executive Director, DMPK and is responsible for an extensive portfolio, acting as a program leader and a core team member on several projects.

Prior to joining Syngene, he held leadership positions at Almirall including DMPK functional project representative, Head of DMPK and Director of Preclinical Development, also taking the lead of Safety Pharmacology and Toxicology. Throughout his long industrial experience, Miquel has contributed to two drugs approved in US/EU: Almogran®/Axert® for migraine and Eklira®/Tudorza® for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and to four drugs approved in EU: Linaclotide® for irritable bowel syndrome, Skilarence® and Ilumetri® for psoriasis and Klysiri® for actinic keratosis.

He completed his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry (1985) and PhD in Biochemistry (1991) from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain.

Dr Helen Josephine

Portfolio Management Lead, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Helen joined Syngene International in 2022, as part of the SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery team as Portfolio Management Lead. Helen supports an extensive portfolio, she manages a team of Program Managers who are responsible and accountable for managing several projects as PM (Project Managers), tracking scientific deliverables and their operational deliverables. Helen oversees the governance structure of projects, making sure deliverables are met by tracking timelines and milestones.

She completed her bachelor’s degree with honors in Chemistry and securing gold medal from Madras Christian College, in Chennai India. She obtained her master’s in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in Chennai India. She obtained her PhD in Bio-Organic Chemistry/Biochemistry from Wesleyan University, US in 2006. She did two postdocs, one in the field of Enzyme Mechanisms and Kinetics with Liz Hedstrom from Brandeis University in US and the second in the field of protein homeostasis, from Millennium Pharmaceuticals/Takeda pharmaceuticals, Boston US.

Chantal Alcouffe

Senior Director Medicinal Chemistry, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Chantal Alcouffe has over 30 years of experience in Drug Discovery. At Syngene, she is Senior Director Medicinal Chemistry and is responsible for leading integrated drug discovery projects. In this role, Chantal engages with clients as a leading scientific representative ensuring the translation of program and portfolio goals to specific proposals and research plans, providing functional expertise and tactical oversight.

Prior to joining Syngene, she held leadership positions at Sanofi and Evotec including Project Leader/Group Leader where she managed a group of organic and medicinal chemists and led multiple integrated drug discovery projects in Oncology, Immuno-Oncology, Metabolic and Kidney diseases area, from hit identification to preclinical candidates. She has led interdisciplinary scientific teams (Chemistry, Biology, Computational Chemistry, Structural Biology, Protein Science and DMPK) to support large Pharma, Biotech and Universities in the development of ion channels and GPCRs antagonists/agonists, kinases inhibitors and new modalities as molecular glue.

Dr Olivier Venier

Senior Director Medicinal Chemistry, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Olivier has over 25 years experience in the global life sciences and biopharmaceuticals industry. At Syngene, he is Senior Director, Medicinal Chemistry, where he oversees a broad portfolio, serving as program leader on numerous projects.

Prior to joining Syngene, he held leadership positions at Sanofi-Synthelabo and Sanofi including Combinatorial Chemist, Lab Head, Project Leader and Group Leader. He worked on different biological target families in several therapeutic areas, internal medicine, metabolism, oncology, neurodegenerative & rare diseases. This work led to the delivery of two preclinical candidates. Olivier is author of 34 publications and patents.

Olivier obtained his PhD in asymetric synthesis in Paris after an engineer degree at the “Ecole National Superieur de Chimie de Paris”. Following this, he completed a postdoctoral position in combinatorial chemistry in Tony Barrett’s group at Imperial College London.

Dr Jag Heer

Senior Director Medicinal Chemistry, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Jag has over 25 years experience in drug discovery. At Syngene he is responsible for leading and driving drug discovery programs from target identification and validation to preclinical evaluation across multiple therapeutic areas and modalities.

Prior to joining Syngene, Jag held leadership positions at SmithklineBeecham, Glaxo Wellcome and UCB (Belgium and Slough) including Director of Medicinal Chemistry. He completed his degree and PhD at the University of Liverpool and afterwards, he carried out postdoctoral research with Professor Steve Ley, FRS, working on the total synthesis of rapamycin. In 1997 he joined SmithklineBeecham as a medicinal chemist working primarily on CNS diseases.

Jag has a broad range of interests from hit identification to candidate selection, working at the interface of computational drug design, cheminformatics, and medicinal chemistry. He is associated with delivering clinical candidates in several therapeutic areas including CNS, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, and immunology. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Dr Gagan Kukreja

Associate Director Medicinal Chemistry, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Gagan has over 21 years experience in Drug Discovery. At Syngene, he is Senior Lead Investigator Medicinal Chemistry and is responsible for driving therapeutic discovery programs from the earliest stage of target identification and validation, through lead discovery and optimization, to preclinical evaluation and phase 1 demonstration of safety and proof of mechanism, across multiple therapeutic areas and modalities. In this role, Gagan supports Medicinal Chemistry programs, acting as a program leader and a core team member in the interdisciplinary team of seasoned drug hunters.

Prior to joining Syngene, he held positions at Ranbaxy Research Laboratories Ltd, Advinus Therapeutics, Lupin Ltd, PI Industries including Research Associate, Senior Research Investigator, Assistant Director and Group Leader. Gagan earned his PhD in Organic Chemistry from University of Delhi, India, in 2002. In 2004, he carried out his postdoctoral studies at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Siena, Italy. Gagan also obtained Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences – Drug Design and Synthesis during this tenure at the University of Siena, Italy.

Dr Claire Wilson

Senior Director DMPK, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Claire has over 25 years experience in drug discovery. At Syngene she is responsible for driving therapeutic discovery programs from the earliest stage of target identification and validation, through lead discovery and optimization, to preclinical evaluation and phase 1 demonstration of safety and proof of mechanism, across multiple therapeutic areas and modalities. In this role, Claire supports an extensive portfolio, acting as a program leader and a core team member on several projects.

Prior to joining Syngene, Claire held leadership positions at Evotec, Galderma and Syneos Health including Group Leader of DMPK and Executive Director Translational Sciences.

She completed her BSc in Biomedical Chemistry from Sheffield Hallam University (1999) and PhD in Pharmacokinetics from School of Pharmacy at the University of Manchester, UK (2004) where her research was focused on time-dependent inhibition of P450 enzymes.

Dr Kenneth Simon

Ph. D., Senior Director Biology, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Ken has over 25 years of experience focused on the development of biotherapeutics for neurology, oncology, autoimmunity, fibrosis, and infectious disease. He has over 25 publications in prestigious scientific journals and 14 patents/patent applications. At Syngene he is responsible for an extensive biologics portfolio, acting as a program leader and a core team member on several projects.

Prior to joining Syngene, Ken held leadership positions at Biogen and Abbvie including Associate Director of Translational Medicine, Project Director in Immunology. After leaving Abbvie, Ken joined several small biotechnology startup companies including: Oncorus, Tilos Therapeutics and Revitope Oncology.

Ken obtained his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of California at San Diego. Prior to attending graduate school, he worked for several years at the UCLA School of Medicine in the Department of Hematology/Oncology. He obtained his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry from the State University of New York at Stonybrook and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1997. Following his graduate training, he completed his postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biomedical Research in La Jolla California.

Dr. Donald Apanovitch

Senior Director Biology, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Don brings to the Synvent team over 30 years’ experience in supporting drug discovery programs across a broad range of therapeutic areas for major US pharmaceutical companies. As a Senior Director Biology at Syngene, he is responsible for applying his extensive biological assay knowledge and therapeutic experience for managing all stages of preclinical development drug development from early screening hit identification, to hit-optimization, and late-stage lead optimization for small-molecule therapeutic targets.

Prior to joining Syngene, Don held senior leadership positions at Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer pharmaceuticals that included US strategic project manager for all late-stage therapeutic projects transitioning to clinical development, Director of high-throughput and Lead Evaluation for multiple therapeutic areas as well as Director of the Oncology Functional Genomics and Target Identification group. Don received his Ph.D. in 1995 and completed his postdoctoral research in the Pharmacology department at Yale University medical school from 1995-1998.

Dr Bill Cairns

Senior Director Biology, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Bill has over 30 years experience in the global life sciences and biopharmaceuticals industry. At Syngene, he is Senior Director, Biology and is responsible for applying his extensive drug discovery and project leadership experience in support of lead discovery and optimization drug discovery projects.

Prior to joining Syngene, he held leadership positions at GSK including Senior Director in Target Sciences and Functional Genomics. After leaving GSK at the end of 2021, he spent a year with Entact Bio, working on the development of bifunctional molecules for targeted protein rescue.

He completed his BSc in Pharmacology from the University of Glasgow in 1987 and PhD in Biomedical Science from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm in 1993, where his doctoral research was focused on nuclear receptor signaling.

Dr Vasudeo Badarinarayana

Senior Director Biology, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Vasudeo has over 25 years experience in the global life sciences and biopharmaceuticals industry. At Syngene, he is Senior Director, Biology and supports an extensive portfolio, acting as a program leader and a core team member on several projects.

Prior to joining Syngene, he held leadership positions at Aventis, Sanofi, H3 Biomedicine and Eloxx Pharma (formerly Zikani) including Senior Research Investigator, Lead Generation Team Leader, Associate Director for Discovery Biology and Head of Biology. He has been part of teams involved in delivering two clinical candidates and over 15 lead series across multiple target classes and multiple therapeutic areas. He led a drug development program from screening to IND submission for a novel ribosome modulating agent to treat a rare genetic skin disease (RDEB) and positioned the same molecule for a second IND for treating a genetic precancerous condition (FAP).

Vasudeo obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Biochemistry from Bombay University, India. He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of New Hampshire in 1999. Following this he received a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School where he helped develop high throughput genomic technologies to characterize gene function (1999-2003).

Dr Mangai Asokan

Ph. D., Consultant Biology, SynVent Integrated Drug Discovery

Mangai has over 10 years of experience focused on the development of biotherapeutics for infectious diseases. She has over 30 publications in prestigious scientific journals and 3 patents/patent applications. At Syngene she is part of an extensive biologics portfolio, acting as a technical lead and a core team member on several projects.

Prior to joining Syngene, Mangai was an Assistant Professor and Programme Head for a COVID vaccine immunology consortium (VISION: Vaccine Immunology Studies Indian Outbreak-Response Network) across 11 academic and clinical institutes in India.

Mangai obtained her Engineering degree in Industrial Biotechnology from Anna University, India. She obtained her PhD in HIV and Immunology from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in 2012. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Vaccine Research Center, NIH, NIAID and continued for additional years as a Research Fellow.