FOUNDING TEAM
We are a tight knit team of academia and drug discovery veterans who are passionate about findings drugs for incurable diseases.
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In 1989, Dr. Thomson joined Vertex Pharmaceuticals as the 3rd employee and helped to build the company from the ground up (today it is an international, publicly traded company employing over 3,000 employees and generating over $4 billion annually). John built or led larger research groups and chaired numerous multidisciplinary teams tasked with evaluating new targets, projects and technologies. From 1993 – 1998, he led Vertex’s successful HCV research program before taking over leadership of the company’s Cambridge (USA) based discovery research, with responsibility for 250 scientists. Dr. Thomson was directly involved with all of Vertex’s research programs, spanning areas of immunoregulation, inflammation, antivirals and anti-infectives, neurological dysfunction, cystic fibrosis, and oncology research, thus contributing to the discovery and selection of more than 40 clinical candidates – many first in class and 5 of which were eventually approved as drugs. In later years, John focused outwardly on building innovative external R & D partnerships, alliance networks, and virtual R & D models. Since retiring from Vertex, Dr. Thomson has served as a scientific consultant, emphasizing disease foundation, pro bono support work, while pursuing interests outside the mainstream of biotech/pharma. Prior to joining Vertex, between 1985-1987, Dr. Thomson was a Post-Doctoral Associate in the Department of Physics at MIT where he explored the physics of ultra-high concentration protein phase equilibria – studies that presaged current interests in condensates and protein phase separation phenomena by more than 2 decades. Dr. Thomson’s initial research training began in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Melbourne, Austrialia where he earned a B.Sc. (Honors) and a Ph.D. working on the structures and interactions of ocular lens proteins. |
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Dan has been leading an interdisciplinary and versatile academic research group since 2010, first at Hebrew University and afterwards at the University Medical Center in Goettingen. Dan’s lab has worked on the cellular pathophysiology of ALS, cellular aging, and on the adaptive functions of molecular condensates. One of the primary focuses of his research career has been on how self-organizing protein super-structures can exhibit complex functionality in cells. Some of this work has contributed to the scientific direction charted by 1Base. Dan has an A.B. from Harvard University in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Molecular Cell Biology. |
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Pat is a scientist and biotech executive that served for many years on the Global R&D Leadership Team responsible for management of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ research and development efforts. He founded, built, and for 10 years led the global Materials Discovery & Characterization business unit at Vertex where he and his staff co-invented three first-in-class medicines: INCIVEK® for hepatitis C and KALYDECO® and ORKAMBI® for cystic fibrosis, and co-authored the NDAs/CTDs leading to their regulatory approvals. Pat’s research and policy writings appear in Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Biotechnology and Xconomy. In 2014, Connelly co-founded Vertex’s Corporate Innovation unit where he managed the initial implementation of the company’s expansion into nucleic acid medicines including the strategy to pursue Sickle Cell Disease. He was a member of the Vertex-CRISPR Therapeutics Joint Research Committee, a team that brought forth one of the first experimental gene-editing medicines ever to be tested in humans, now in advanced stage clinical studies following its demonstration of efficacy in Sickle Cell and beta-thalassemia patients. Pat became a founding scientist at Vertex in 1990 following postdoctoral work in Chemistry at Yale University, graduate work in Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Colorado, and undergraduate work at the University of Oxford and St. Michael’s College. |
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Since, Fall 2016, Paul has served as an “Entrepreneur-in-Residence” at Ohio University’s College of Business and a Director of Ohio University’s Center For Entrepreneurship. Paul has benefited from a diverse career beginning as a corporate attorney in Atlanta, GA, and continuing on as a successful entrepreneur and business executive helping to create, fund, manage and lead companies in the cable television, radio, information service, biotech and e-commerce industries. Paul has served as a Partner, General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer, and President and CEO, respectively, at various times throughout his more than 40 year professional career. Two of the companies he helped start and manage still operate out of San Diego, CA: ClosingCorp, Inc. (www.closing.com) and GovX, Inc. (www.govx.com). Most recently, Paul is a founding shareholder of ExperienceNow, a GovX “offshoot” (San Diego) and 1Base Pharmaceuticals (Boston). Paul received his B.A. degree in Political Science from Duke University, magna cum laude, and his J.D. degree from the Emory University School of Law, Order of the Coif and Member of the Board, Emory Law Journal. |
Scientific Advisory Board
Robert H. Brown Jr, MD, DPhil – Professor, UMASS Medical, Neurology
https://www.umassmed.edu/umass-als-cellucci-fund/dr-robert-brown/ Lewis C. Cantley, PhD. Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College, Professor of Cancer Biology in Medicine https://cantleylab.weill.cornell.edu/labteam Brian Kennedy, PhD. Distinguished Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Physiology, NUS School of Medicine, Singapore; Director of National University Health System, Center for Healthy Ageing, Singapore https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/bch/faculty/brian-kennedy/ |
Tiago Outeiro, PhD – Director of the Department and Professor, Experimental Neurodegeneration, U. Göttingen Medical Center
https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/216914.html Kevin Kit Parker, PhD – Professor, Harvard University, School of Engineering & Applied Sciences https://hsci.harvard.edu/people/kevin-kit-parker-phd |