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Rémi Brouard, Vice President External Innovation, Sanofi-Aventis R&D
Dr. Rémi Brouard earned a Medical Degree from Paris Rene Descartes University, and hold a speciality in Nephrology from the Pierre & Marie Curie University of Paris V. He has been practicing Nephrology/kidney transplantation during 10 years in Hospital La Pitié-Salpétrière, Paris. He received his Postdoctoral Research Clinical Pharmacology training at the University of California in San Francisco in 1987-88 directed by Pr Tom Tozer/ Pr Neil Benowitz. Then, he moved to Paris and started collaboration with Pharmaceutical industry.

He first began his pharma carrier in Servier & Bioprojet, and then joined 18 years ago the Sanofi Group as Clinical Pharmacologist within the "Exploratory" Clinical Pharmacology department in 1992. He became Deputy Director of Clinical Development Internal Medicine in 1996, Director of Licensing for Japan in Business Development, and then joined the Health Economics group and became Vice President of Global Health Economics & Reimbursment Argumentation (Health Technology Appraisal) in 2001.

He then, in Oct 2008, was appointed Vice President External Innovation, and open the first office of Sanofi-aventis R&D on the US West Coast in La Jolla, CA, where he then was at the origin of the alliance between research centers and Sanofi-aventis (Salk, Caltech, Scripps Genomics) and few biotechs within US West Coast

David Kabakoff, Executive Partner, Sofinnova Ventures
David Kabakoff, Ph.D., joined Sofinnova Ventures as an Executive Partner in 2007. David has 30 years of experience leading technology and product development programs in the pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, and drug delivery fields. He currently serves as Chairman of Trius Therapeutics and Chairman of Amplimmune, Inc. He is also a Director of InterMune, Inc.; Avalon Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and Alylix, Inc. Dr. Kabakoff also serves as a Board Observer at Intellikine.

David co-founded Salmedix, Inc., a developer of cancer drug treatments, and served as the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In June 2005, David negotiated the acquisition of Salmedix by Cephalon, Inc. David also held the positions of Executive Vice President, President and Chief Executive Officer of Spiros Development Corp. while at Dura Pharmaceuticals, a specialty respiratory pharmaceutical and pulmonary drug delivery company. Earlier, David was also employed as Chief Executive Officer of Corvas International and held senior executive positions with Hybritech, Inc.

James Schaeffer, Executive Director of Licensing & External Research, Merck Research Laboratories
Dr. Jim Schaeffer joined Merck Research Laboratories in 1986. During his first 16 years at MRL, he directed research groups focusing primarily on neuroendocrine-related projects. Jim joined the Department of External Scientific Affairs in 2003 with primary responsibility for all neuroscience licensing opportunities and during the next 18 months, he was directly involved in the signing of four major agreements including one with Lundbeck for co-development of gaboxadol for the treatment of sleeping disorders. Jim moved to San Diego in 2004 to assume the role of Merck's "Science Scout" on the West Coast with the responsibility to identify new opportunities across all therapeutic areas at all stages of development including enabling technologies.

Dr. Schaeffer received his PhD at Baylor College of Medicine and was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr Julius Axelrod at the National Institute of Mental Health. He is the author of more than 110 articles in peer reviewed journals.

Keith P. Wilson, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer, Takeda San Diego, Inc.
Dr. Wilson is President and Chief Scientific Officer of Takeda San Diego, Inc., a US-based IND engine for Takeda Pharmaceuticals of Japan. The San Diego site also supports Takeda's global structural biology needs, and is actively expanding Takeda's US science, business, and intellectual property presence. Dr. Wilson joined Syrrx, a privately held structure-based drug discovery company, in 2002 as Vice President of Structural Biology. He was promoted to Vice President of Business Development in 2003 while retaining his structural biology leadership role. He continued to direct both groups prior to being promoted to President and CSO of Takeda San Diego.

From 2002 - 2007, Dr. Wilson was instrumental in reshaping the company from a platform to a drug discovery focused company, and in building its pipeline. He also played an essential role in establishing, negotiating, and/or managing strategic Syrrx partnerships with Roche, Pharmacia, and Biogen-IDEC, and in the acquisition and integration of Paradigm Therapeutics in the U.K. by Takeda (now Takeda Cambridge). Prior to joining Syrrx, Dr. Wilson gained 10 years of structure-based drug discovery experience at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where his scientific efforts supported multiple IND filings across 7 consecutive projects. He also served as the co-project leader for the 165 person Vertex-Novartis kinase alliance. Dr. Wilson received his formal education at the University of Oregon (Ph.D., physics, 1989) and Colby College (B.A., physics, 1984), where he graduated magna cum laude and was awarded the William A. Rogers prize in physics. Dr. Wilson is an author on over 30 peer-reviewed publications, and co-inventor of multiple compounds including telaprevir for the potential treatment of Hepatitis C.