Management
Frank Langley – President & CEO, Founder
Frank Langley is President & CEO of Addiction Therapeutix. He has over twenty five years of commercialization experience in the formation, management, and exits of life sciences companies. His experience ranges from founder of start-up biotechnology companies to management in a Fortune 500 medical device company. In his last successful exit, he served as President & CEO of Pel-Freez Clinical Systems, where he led and managed the development and marketing of a new molecular biology product line for solid organ and bone marrow transplantation through a successful strategic company sale.
He has undergraduate (BBA-University of Wisconsin) and graduate (MBA-College of St. Thomas) degrees in business administration and finance and is a graduate of Stanford University’s Advanced Technology Management Program. Mr. Langley is past President of the Wisconsin Biotechnology and Medical Device Association and has a number of past and current healthcare board appointments.
The company has a number of collaborators and advisers in the areas of organic chemistry, biochemistry, API synthesis, pharmacology, and substance abuse. Upon completion of raising appropriate capital, the company will prudently recruit and hire a limited number of key personnel when needed.
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Advisors
Jim Cook, Ph.D. – University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
James Cook, is University Distinguished Professor, in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, at which he served as Department Chair for several years. His research group initially worked on the total synthesis of biologically active indole alkaloids, terpenes and flavones which has now led the group into medicinal chemistry. This has resulted in the synthesis of benzodiazepine/GABA(A)ergic subtype selective ligands that are either subtype selective agonists, antagonists or inverse agonists. From this approach, they have developed a ligand that was already in phase I studies for GAD, but have recently expanded this work to anticonvulsant agents. In addition, they have developed ligands that reduce alcohol self-administration in genetically bred alcoholic rat lines, active also in baboons and rhesus monkeys, with no overt side effects even in primates. In the GABA area, they have also developed alpha 5 inverse agonists which enhance cognition in several paradigms in rhesus monkeys, related to Alzheimer's models in humans. His group also works on the synthesis of new antibacterial agents active against Gram positive bacteria including anthrax and drug resistant TB. In another medicinal chemistry area, they have targeted agents active in models of schizophrenia and neuropathic pain. The strength of this group rests on heterocyclic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, and molecular modeling in drug design. Another section of the group works on mechanism and development of new synthetic methods. His group works on milligram to kilogram scales in the laboratory.
Dr. Cook has published over 360 papers and has over 14 patents with many more submitted or in process at the patent office. He has given over 500 talks/posters/lectures at national and international meetings on heterocyclic and medicinal chemistry. He has received the Great Lakes ACS section award in Chemistry, a UW-System Innovator of the year award in 2006 and the UW-Milwaukee Innovator award in 2007, as well as a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) fellowship, among others. He has served on the editorial board of more than 8 journals, including the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry Research, and Current Trends in Medicinal Chemistry. He received his BS degree with honors in Chemistry from West Virginia University in 1967, his PhD degree in Organic chemistry from the University of Michigan in 1971 and carried out postdoctoral work on an NIH fellowship from 1971-1973 at the University of British Columbia. He began as Assistant Professor at UW-Milwaukee in 1973, rose through the ranks and was appointed as a University Distinguished Professor in 2006.
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William Dewey, Ph.D., Chairman and Professor
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Virginia Commonwealth University
Bill Dewey earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from Siena College, The College of Saint Rose and The University of Connecticut, respectively. He did postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Louis Harris at The University of North Carolina and later became an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at that institution. In 1972 he was recruited to the Department Pharmacology at the Medical College of Virginia as an Associate Professor. Since that time, Bill has served as Director of the Graduate Program in Pharmacology, Associate Dean and later Dean of the School of Basic Sciences, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School and as Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies. He currently directs a NIDA training grant that is in year 35. His research has concentrated on drug development and on the functional role of endogenous substances, including neurotransmitters, opioids, calcium, and CGRP in the mechanism of action of opioids. His discovery of increased endogenous opioids in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) led to the use of naltrexone for the treatment of SIDS and other diseases with centrally induced respiratory depression. In addition to his opioid work, he has contributed significantly to the pharmacology and our understanding of the mechanism of tolerance to cannabionids. Bill served as the President of The College on Problems of Drug Dependence, The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
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Quinn Hogan, M.D.
Professor, Director of Pain Research
Department of Anesthesiology
Medical College of Wisconsin
Quinn Hogan is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. He trained in surgery at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and in anesthesiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He subsequently trained in pain management at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he has also directed their pain clinic and pain fellowship training program. Dr. Hogan’s laboratories are supported by National Institutes of Health as well as Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research and Development funding. His research focus is on chronic pain associated with peripheral neuropathy, and on stem cell and gene therapy approaches targeting peripheral neurons. He is the section editor for pain mechanisms for Anesthesia and Analgesia, and an associate editor for Anesthesiology. He is the Chairman of the NIH Center for Scientific Review Somatosensory and Chemosensory Systems study section, and a recipient of the Gaston Labat Award from the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine.
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Chris-Ellyn Johanson, Ph.D., Director of Research – CRS Associates
Dr. Johanson received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1972 where she remained in the Department of Psychiatry until 1987 with a primary focus on developing both animal and human models of substance abuse. She developed self-administration techniques that have become standards for assessing the abuse liability of drugs as well as the ability of medications to reduce drug-taking behavior in animals. She was one of the first to develop the drug discrimination technique in humans, which allows drugs to be pharmacologically classified at the behavioral level. In 1987 she joined the Department of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and in 1992; she became the Chief of Etiology at the intramural research program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Her focus while at NIDA was on devising strategies for the assessment of risk factors for the development of substance abuse problems using epidemiologically-based samples. In 1995, she was appointed as a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Wayne State University and Co-Director of the Clinical Research Division on Substance Abuse. Her research included assessing receptor mechanisms underlying the ability of buprenorphine to treat heroin addiction, the development of drug discrimination procedures for evaluating potential mechanisms for cocaine addiction, the behavioral pharmacology of MDMA, and the neurocognitive consequences of long-term methamphetamine abuse.
Currently Dr. Johanson works for CRS Associates and directs studies on the post-marketing surveillance of abuse and diversion of buprenorphine. Dr. Johanson has served on many federal government committees, has received several national awards for her research, and serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
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Michael Major, Ph.D., D.Sc. – President & CEO
Cambridge Major Laboratories
Michael Major is President & CEO of Cambridge Major Laboratories (CML), a leading global service-based chemistry outsourcing partner to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries through the production of pharmaceutical intermediates, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and other fine organic chemicals. The Company specializes in chemical process development and advanced multi-step organic synthesis, and operates from four facilities in the US and Europe. Prior to CML, Dr. Major founded Major Laboratories, a custom chemical company serving the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, which was merged in 1999 with Cambridge Chemical to form what is now CML.
Dr. Major is a past president of the Wisconsin Biotechnology and Medical Device Association and a past recipient of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Wisconsin Life Sciences Award. He began his career at the University of Lodz in Poland where he was a tenured professor of Organic Chemistry and the youngest to achieve this title in school history. He spent time as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and received a Humboldt Fellowship at the University of Stuttgart and was a Research Associate at McMaster University in Canada. While in academia, he published over 40 papers.
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