Daniel M. Skovronsky , M.D., Ph.D., Founder and CEO
Dr. Skovronsky founded Avid Radiopharmaceuticals in late 2004. Dr. Skovronsky has more than 20 peer-reviewed publications and two NIH-funded grants on Alzheimer’s disease research. Prior to establishing Avid, Dr. Skovronsky served as Scientific Director of High Throughput Screening and Drug Discovery at the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Skovronsky trained as a resident in Pathology and completed a fellowship in Neuropathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Skovronsky received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and did his undergraduate training in molecular biochemistry at Yale University. Dr. Skovronsky is the recipient of numerous scientific and business awards and was recently named by the Philadelphia Business Journal as one of their “Forty under Forty” business leaders in the region. Dr. Skovronsky recently received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2009 Award in the Emerging Company category in Greater Philadelphia, which recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses.
Alan P. Carpenter, Jr., Ph.D., J.D., Vice President, Business Development &
Regulatory Affairs
Dr. Carpenter has 25 years of experience in the medical imaging and pharmaceutical industry, including previous positions at Epix Pharmaceuticals, a developer of MRI imaging agents, and the medical imaging and radiopharmaceuticals divisions of E.I. DuPont, DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, and DuPont Pharmaceuticals. He has many years of management experience in leading R&D, clinical, project management, business development, strategic planning, and legal functions of medical imaging pharmaceutical businesses, including five years as Vice President of R&D for the Medical Imaging Division for DuPont Pharmaceuticals and a total of five years in Vice President roles for R&D and Legal Affairs & Government Affairs at Epix Pharmaceuticals. He has been a leader for several imaging agent business development transactions and R&D programs, including the development and approval of several imaging agents, including Cardiolite®, the leading myocardial perfusion imaging agent, Definity®, the leading ultrasound contrast imaging agent, Neurolite®, a radiopharmaceutical for imaging perfusion in the brain, and Vasovist®, an MRI contrast agent for magnetic resonance angiography. Dr. Carpenter is an inventor on several patents and patent applications relating to a variety of imaging agents. Dr. Carpenter received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1978 and his J.D. from the Massachusetts School of Law in 1995 and is a registered patent attorney with the USPTO.
Michael J. Pontecorvo, Ph.D., Vice President, Clinical Development
Dr. Pontecorvo is a recognized expert in Alzheimer's disease research and led the U.S. development of the Alzheimer's disease medication REMINYL® (now known as RAZADYNE®). Dr. Pontecorvo brings Avid almost 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in both CNS discovery research and clinical development. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Pontecorvo has held increasingly responsible positions in clinical development as a project leader at Janssen Pharmaceutica and as Vice President for Clinical Research at Mitsubishi Pharma America and Dov Pharmaceuticals. Author of more than 30 publications, numerous invited presentations, and six patents, Dr. Pontecorvo graduated from Indiana University with a Ph.D. in Psychology and Neuroscience.
Paul Kennedy, Ph.D., Vice President, Manufacturing
Dr. Kennedy has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical field in the areas of formulation development, clinical and commercial drug manufacture, API development and manufacture, analytical methods development, and validation and regulatory support. Dr. Kennedy has held positions in government, the biotechnology industry, large pharma, and in several contract organizations. He has played a key role in the approval of 15 BLAs and NDAs with many of these drugs also receiving approval in the EU, Canada, and Japan. Several of these approvals have been break through therapies – Tacrine® for Alzheimer’s, Zidovudine® for AIDS, Ethyol® for cancer, Xygris® for sepsis and Visudyne® for macular degeneration. Dr. Kennedy has authored over 20 publications and is an inventor on five patents. Dr. Kennedy has served as a reviewer for the Pharmaceutical Resources Branch of the NCI, served on the Board of Revision at USP and as a reviewer for Pharmaceutical Research, Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. Dr. Kennedy received his Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. This was followed by postdoctoral studies in Sickle Cell Anemia research at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Medicinal Chemistry sponsored by the Heart Blood Lung Institute of NIH. He undertook additional postdoctoral studies in the formulation of anticancer drugs at the University of Kansas’ Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry sponsored by the National Cancer Institute of the NIH.
Christopher M. Clark, M.D., Medical Director
Prior to joining Avid in July 2008, Dr. Clark, a board certified neurologist, was Associate Professor of Neurology and director of the recently initiated Center of Excellence for Research on Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute on Aging and has been a faculty member since 1989.
Dr. Clark has spent most of his career studying Alzheimer's disease. He is the current Principal Investigator of a National Institute of Aging grant and an investigator for numerous other studies including the landmark Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI).
His research interests focus on Alzheimer's disease and the development of diagnostically specific markers, the identification and evaluation of new treatments, the development of new instruments to measure rates of change, and studies of the relationship between Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
John Lister-James, Ph.D., Vice President, Chemical Development and Manufacturing
Dr. Lister-James brings to Avid over 20 years of experience in research and development in the pharmaceutical industry, principally in the area of radiopharmaceuticals, having held management and senior management positions at Centocor, Diatide, Berlex/Schering AG, CIS-US and Xanthus.
Dr. Lister-James directed CMC Development leading to the regulatory approval of three diagnostic radiopharmaceutical products and played a key role in the R&D activities leading to the discovery and early development of multiple radiodiagnostic and radiotherapeutic products.
Most recently Dr. Lister-James held the position of Vice President, Development at Xanthus Pharmaceuticals, a specialty company, and he was previously responsible for Corporate CMC Development, Radiopharmaceuticals in Schering AG.
Dr. Lister-James received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of London and did his post-doctoral work at MIT and Harvard Medical School on the chemistry of technetium and its application in medical imaging. He is a co-inventor of 60 U.S. patents and has co-authored over 35 peer-reviewed articles.
Mark A. Mintun, M.D., Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Mintun joined Avid from Washington University School of Medicine where he was Professor of Radiology at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, with joint appointments in Psychiatry, Bioengineering, and the Anatomy and Neurobiology Departments. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He received his medical degree in 1981 and completed a research fellowship in neurology and residency training in nuclear medicine at Washington University School of Medicine. Dr. Mintun has been extensively involved in investigating the nature of flow and metabolism changes in the human activated brain. His scientific contributions date back to seminal work in the development of functional imaging with PET. He developed the first compartment model analysis of PET radioligand data and defined terms, such as Binding Potential, that are still being used for describing in vivo PET radioligand binding. Other contributions include a method for measuring regional oxygen metabolism with PET and the first method to average functional brain images in a standard atlas coordinate system.
In addition to his own NIH-funded research projects in brain metabolism, he was Director of the Center for Clinical Imaging Research, Principal Investigator of the NINDS Center Core for Brain Imaging, and Director of the Neuroimaging Core of the Human Aging and Senile Dementia Program Project with Washington University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.