Dr. Sawyer is a Key Opinion Leader in the field of peptide drug discovery and renowned for the discovery of two FDA-approved drugs, including Scenesse®️ (marketed by Clinuvel) and Iclusig®️ (marketed by Takeda) as well as scientific contribution to the design of macrocyclic peptides, including ALRN-6924 (currently in Phase II clinical trials by Aileron Therapeutics).

Tomi has also been credited with ~600 scientific publications, patents, and presentations and holds several Adjunct Professorships and special appointments at the University of Massachusetts, Northeastern University Center for Drug Discovery, the University of Arizona, and Minnesota State University Moorhead. He has recently retired from a forty-year career in pharma/biotech, including Tomi’s last position at Merck Research Laboratories as Distinguished Scientist, Global Chemistry, and leading the charge for the Peptide Drug Hunter network within R&D.

Dr. Richard Soll is presently Senior Advisor, Strategic Initiatives at WuXi AppTec and Head of the WuXi office in Boston, Massachusetts. At WuXi AppTec he served as Senior Vice President including head of the medicinal chemistry in the International Discovery Service Unit, business development, and corporate alliances.
Dr. Soll’s contributions led to the discovery of the HCV NS5A inhibitor in the Merck-WuXi partnership, the JAK2 inhibitor fedratinib at TargeGen (partnered with Celgene/BMS), and more than 10 other clinical stage drugs throughout his career.
Dr. Soll is a board observer for Magnolia and Proniras and is an advisory board member with the Blavatnik Center for Drug Discovery at Tel Aviv University, the Children’s Tumor Foundation, and the Pistoia Alliance.
Dr. Soll was CSO/VP at TargeGen and VP Chemistry at 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry at Dartmouth College and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard.

Neely Ivgy-May, Ph.D. is a Pharmaceutical Drug Development Leader specializing in CNS, Women’s Health, and Uro-Oncology. Dr. Ivgy-May provides scientific and clinical expertise to Commercial Development and Business Development. She has a vast experience in interacting with the FDA and other regulatory authorities (EMA, PMDA) as clinical lead during pre-IND, End of Phase II, and pre- NDA meetings; Advisory Committee planning and participation. Dr. Ivgy-May is the founder and CEO of Ivgy-May Consulting Services. She worked close to 20 years in leading companies of the pharmaceutical industry: Schering Plough, Organon International and Merck Inc. Dr. Ivgy-May holds Masters and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University College of Physician & Surgeons New York, NY.

David S. Siegel, M.D., Ph.D., specializes in Hematology & Oncology and is Chief of Division for Multiple Myeloma (MM) at John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center (UMC). Dr. Siegel is one of the foremost authorities on Multiple Myeloma in the U.S.; he serves as a lead investigator in multi-center clinical trials for MM and led to the FDA’s fast-track approval of Kyprolis (carfilzomib) for relapsed Multiple Myeloma patients. Dr. Siegel’s research has been published in many leading medical journals, including Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Blood and Journal of Clinical Oncology. He is a member of the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC) Steering Committee.

Jonathan E. Cohen M.D., Ph.D. specializes in Cancer Research and Neuroscience at Hadassah – Hebrew University Medical Center. In his clinical work, Dr. Cohen focuses on General Oncology, while establishing his unique clinic of Malignant Melanoma and Cancer Immunotherapy with the objective of leveraging and extending novel therapies based on the Immune system for Melanoma, as well as for other solid tumors. Dr. Cohen is a co-investigator on several multi-center clinical trials and presented his work at international conferences and in peer reviewed journals.

Professor Anwar Rayan is a co-Founder of Pepticom. Prof. Rayan is an expert in the field of Bioinformatics, Chemoinformatics, drug design and discovery. During his work at the School of Pharmacy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at FMP in Berlin, Prof. Rayan gained vast experience in the field of drug discovery and the development of algorithms. He contributed to the development of novel tools for protein/peptide structure prediction, protein-protein docking, drug- likeness and Molecular Bioactivity Indexing. Dr. Rayan is a Research Associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Researcher at the QRC – Qasemi Research Center, Alkasemi College. He holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry with distinction and earned a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr. Rivière has over 25 years of biopharmaceutical industry experience with R&D leadership roles in target and drug discovery, nonclinical and early-stage clinical development. He is a recognized expert in peptide therapeutics with both established peptide modalities and emerging novel peptide technologies. Dr. Rivière is Founder and CEO of Peptide Logic, a San Diego-based biotech company developing novel peptide therapeutic modalities. He previously was CSO at CovX, a leading peptide-antibody conjugates company; a SVP of Pfizer worldwide R&D and member of the Pfizer Leadership Team; and SVP Research at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a leading peptide therapeutics company. He is also a co-founder of Cara Therapeutics and of the Peptide Therapeutics Foundation and the Annual Peptide Therapeutics Symposium. Dr. Rivière received a PhD in animal physiology and biology from the Institut National Polytechnique, Toulouse, and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson.