Merry
R. Sherman, CEO and President, received a B.A.
in Chemistry from Wellesley College (1961), where she was elected to Phi
Beta Kappa, and an M.A. in
Biochemistry (1963) and Ph.D.
in Biophysics (1966) from the University of California at Berkeley.
Following post-doctoral training in Polymer Research and Biochemistry at the
Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and at the U.S. National Institutes of
Health, she directed research in Endocrine Biochemistry at Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (1970-1986).
She later served as a Professor of Biochemistry at Rutgers University in
New Jersey (1986-1993) before entering the pharmaceutical industry.
Her publications are in the fields of physical biochemistry, molecular
endocrinology, cancer research and neuroscience.
Her research since 1993 has been in collaboration with Drs. Saifer and
Williams.
Mark
G.P. Saifer, Vice
President and Scientific Director, received an A.B. in Natural Science from the
University of Pennsylvania (1960) and a Ph.D.
in Biophysics from the University of California at Berkeley (1966).
Following post-doctoral training in Bacteriology and Immunology at Berkeley, he
was a Senior Research Scientist at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo,
NY. From 1970 to 1995, he held
positions of increasing responsibility at DDI Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of Mountain
View, CA (which was renamed Oxis International, Inc., in 1994).
He served as Corporate Vice President and Scientific Director of DDI
Pharmaceuticals for more than twelve years and has received 16 U.S. patents and
24 corresponding international patents on the chemistry and production of
proteins, synthetic polymers, and polymer-linked
proteins.
L.
David Williams, Vice President and Laboratory Director,
received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago (1966) and a Ph.D.
in Organic Chemistry from Harvard University (1971). Following post-doctoral
training at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA, and at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture in Albany, CA, he joined DDI Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in 1973, where
he served as Laboratory Director for 15 years.
Dr. Williams and Dr. Saifer are co-inventors on 15 U.S. patents and
have been collaborating for more than 25 years. Dr. Williams made his first presentation on PEGylation of a
therapeutic protein at the Annual Meeting of the American Chemical Society in
1976.
