COMPANY MANAGEMENT

Chief Scientific Officer
Rodney Lappe, PhD, joined CovX in January 2004, bringing 23 years of drug discovery experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He has been responsible for the advancement of large portfolios of drug discovery projects and has promoted multiple therapeutic candidates through pre-clinical and clinical development. He brings a strong understanding of pharmacology, a clear strategic scientific vision and extensive experience in international drug discovery collaborations. Most recently, Dr. Lappe served as vice president for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases at Pharmacia where he contributed to the registration of Inspra^®, a novel aldosterone receptor antagonist. He was also the site leader for Pharmacia in St. Louis. Prior to joining Pharmacia, he held positions of increasing responsibility with Wyeth Laboratories, Rorer Central Researh, CIBA Geigy Pharmaceuticals and Searle Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Lappe received his PhD in Pharmacology from Indiana University and his BA from Blackburn College.

Director, Chemistry

Abhijit Bhat, PhD, joined CovX in Feb 2003 as one of the early employees and helped establish and build the chemistry group at CovX.  During his tenure at CovX and previously Ontogen, he has managed preclinical discovery programs in diverse disease areas such as Wound healing, Diabetes, Pain, HIV and Oncology and has a successful track record of advancing programs to deliver development candidates. He had the unique experience of managing a project from early discovery stage through clinical development as he was the project leader for both the preclinical and the clinical teams for CVX-060, an anti angiopoietin-2 targeting CovX-Body.  As a clinical team leader, he oversaw the successful completion of a Phase I dose escalation/expansion study of CVX-060 and its transition into a Phase II POC study.  His expertise spans the fields of medicinal, peptide and bioconjugation chemistry and his current work is focused on chemical strategies for generating multifunctional biotherapeutic agents.  He received a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from The Ohio State University and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona exploring therapeutic applications for carbohydrate chemistry. 

Director, Protein Science
Olivier Laurent, PhD, joined CovX in 2005. He has over twelve years of industrial experience designing and developing biopharmaceuticals. During his past tenures at Aventis-Sanofi, Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals and Genentech, Dr. Laurent worked on non-viral DNA delivery, liposome formulation and device development. However, his main area of expertise lies in early and late stage pharmaceutical development of recombinant proteins. Dr. Laurent has authored CMC sections for multiple regulatory dossiers and managed internationally outsourced drug manufacturing up to Phase III pivotal studies. Dr. Laurent holds a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Grenoble in France and is an alumnus from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon.

Director, Biology
Gary Woodnutt, PhD, joined CovX in March, 2006 as head of biology and brings more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Before joining CovX, Dr. Woodnutt was head of pharmaceutical research and development at Diversa where he oversaw all efforts related to the optimization of therapeutic proteins and small molecule discovery. Prior to Diversa, he was at GlaxoSmithKline where he was vice president of biology, microbial, musculoskeletal and proliferative disease CEDD and responsible for discovery and non-clinical development and market support activities in the anti-infective and host defense areas. During his time with GlaxoSmithKline, Dr. Woodnutt contributed to multiple IND and NDA filings for anti-infective drugs. He is on the editorial board of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and is a section editor for Drug Discovery Today: Therapeutic Strategies and Current Opinion in Biotechnology. He received his Bachelors degree in Biochemistry and Physiology from Leeds University, UK and his PhD from Reading University, UK.