Gaetano T. Montelione, Ph.D. – Chief Executive Officer / President
Professor Montelione is a Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology and
Biochemistry at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and, an Adjunct
Professor of Biochemistry at UMDNJ- Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He
received a B.S. and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Cornell University. Dr.
Montelione is also the recipient of numerous awards recognizing his scientific
achievements including the Searle Scholar Award, the NSF Presidential Young
Investigator Award, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
He is an executive member of the International Structural Genomics Organization
and has been a consultant on NMR technology and structural biology at a number
of pharmaceutical companies including Chiron, Eli Lilly, Novartis and Wyeth-Ayerst.
He is the author of more than 190 publications covering research on triple resonance
NMR, protein structure analysis, computational methods for automated analysis of NMR
data, NMR methods for determining vicinal coupling constants in proteins, and the use
of NMR and structural bioinformatics and functional genomics.
Gregory Kornhaber, Ph.D. – Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Kornhaber is an expert in the biophysical characterization of proteins by NMR and Hydrogen-Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry. He is a Research Assistant Professor at Rutgers in the Center for Advanced Technology and Medicine and is also serving as the Director of Community Outreach at the Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium, a large-scale Protein Structure Initiative of the National Institutes of Health. From 2005-2007, as a New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology Post-Doctoral Fellow, Dr. Kornhaber led biophysical investigations into pharmacological chaperones for the treatment of lysosomal storage disorders. One of these compounds, EXR-202, is currently being developed by ExSAR for the treatment of Gaucher disease. At the completion of his postdoctoral fellowship, ExSAR retained Dr. Kornhaber and within one-year, promoted him from Senior Scientist to Associate Director of Business Development. Dr. Kornhaber received his doctorate in 2005 from the Joint Graduate Biological Sciences Program of Rutgers-UMDNJ.
Michael C. Baran, Ph.D., M.B.A. – Business Development
Dr. Baran brings broad experience from both the development and commercial
sides of the biopharmaceutical industry. At Pfizer, Dr. Baran has participated in the
development of numerous managed market contracting strategies used to
promote drug access . Previously, Dr. Baran served as the Protein Structure
Production Manager for the Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium (NESG).
The NESG is one of the National Institutes of Health’s large scale structural
genomics centers and is part of the Protein Structure Initiative. Prior to his
current position Dr. Baran held the role of VP of Operations at Nexomics Biosciences
where he was responsible for general management across the company in its seed phase.
He is a member of the American Chemical Society, The New Jersey Biotechnology Council,
and BioNJ. Dr. Baran has authored a number of publications covering research in structural
proteomics and scientific data management. He received both his doctorate in
Biochemistry and M.B.A. from Rutgers University.