Company - Leadership Team

George Skip Shimer, PhD – President and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Shimer is a biotech industry veteran with an extensive track record of creating and leading successful drug discovery programs. Most recently, Dr. Shimer served as the CEO of Cellicon Technologies. Prior to founding Cellicon, Dr. Shimer was VP of Research at Cubist Pharmaceuticals, where he built a team of 70 scientists, successfully established several new drug discovery efforts, advanced novel antibacterials to pre-clinical testing, and guided daptomycin through Pharmacolgy and Clinical Microbiology to support the NDA filing. At Cubist, he also spearheaded multiple successful M&A and in-licensing transactions including the acquisition of TerraGen Discovery and completed several critical research collaborations. Prior to joining Cubist in 1999, Dr. Shimer was the Senior Director of Pathogen Genomics at Genome Therapeutics Corp., where he led the company’s effort in functional genomics to identify validated drug targets in multiple bacterial and fungal species, and established and managed research relationships with several Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Shimer received a BS from North Carolina State University and a PhD in biochemistry from Colorado State University. He is the author of numerous scientific publications and patent applications.

Krishna K. Murthi, PhD – Senior Director, Medicinal Chemistry . Dr. Murthi has over 10 years research experience in oncology small molecule drug discovery. Previously Dr. Murthi was the director of medicinal chemistry at GPC Biotech, where he was responsible for leading a number of programs involved in cell cycle research and various kinase targets. Dr. Murthi received his PhD in organic chemistry at the Case Western Reserve University and postdoctoral training at Florida State University, where he was involved in the first total synthesis of Taxol.