Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CBST)

[cfoofme]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals Announces Members of Scientific Advisory Board
7:45a ET November 27, 2007 (Business Wire)
Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBST) named three members to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), which was established earlier this year under the leadership of Associate Dean for Research at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine Dr. Gordon Archer.

The SAB will be an ongoing resource to provide Cubist management with additional scientific and medical perspective as the company approaches Go/No Go decision points on its preclinical anti-infective programs, as well as on in-licensing or acquisition drug candidates, and review of clinical development plans. The company also engages experts with specific therapeutic expertise as needed for assessment of certain acute care areas.

Dr. Archer became the Chairman of the SAB in October 2007 which required him to leave Cubist's Board of Directors. In addition to his current position at VCU, he is the director of the school's M.D./Ph.D. program. Dr. Archer has served as professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology at VCU since 1985 and, from 1992 to 2005, served as chairman of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the school. Since 1975, he has held various faculty roles at VCU and began his career as an instructor of medicine in 1974 at the University of Michigan Medical School. He is a previous member and chair of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study Section on Bacteriology and Mycology and the NIH Study Section on Drug Discovery and Mechanisms of Resistance to Antimicrobials. Additionally, Dr. Archer was a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Antiinfective Advisory Board and he is currently on the Scientific Advisory Board of MicuRx Pharmaceuticals. He received a B.A. in Pre-med and German from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, and his M.D. from the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

The new members joining Dr. Archer are Dr. Bonnie Bassler, Professor Eric Jacobsen and Dr. Richard White.

Dr. Bonnie Bassler, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and the Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. She received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California at Davis, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University. The research in her laboratory is focused on the molecular mechanisms of bacterial intercellular communication. This process is known as quorum sensing. Dr. Bassler was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2002. She is the 2006 recipient of the American Society for Microbiology's Eli Lilly Investigator Award for fundamental contributions to microbiological research.

Professor Eric Jacobsen is the Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, a position he has held since 2001. He received a B.S. in Chemistry from New York University, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986 to 1988 he was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. Professor Jacobson has been a professor at Harvard University since 1993. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he provides consulting services to a number of pharmaceutical companies. Professor Jacobsen serves on the Editorial Board of Advanced Synthesis and Catalysis, and Science of Synthesis, and on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Synthesis, Synlett, Organic Letters, the Journal of Combinatorial Chemistry, the Journal of Molecular Catalysis, Current Opinion in Drug Discovery & Development, and Chemistry: An Asian Journal. Professor Jacobsen's research interests are in organic chemistry, and particularly on the discovery and application of new methods for organic synthesis.

Dr. Richard White provides consulting services to the biotechnology sector, offering special expertise in antimicrobial drug discovery and development. He received his B.Sc. in biochemistry from the University of Manchester and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Oxford. After a post-doctoral fellowship on microbial biochemistry at Oxford, he began a career in infectious disease drug discovery in 1969. The first 25 years were spent in the pharmaceutical industry in positions of increasing responsibility at Lepetit (in Italy), Glaxo (in England), Lederle (in the USA), and finally at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Connecticut, where he was Vice President in charge of Infectious Disease Drug Discovery for 12 years. In 1997 he moved to biotech, taking a position at Versicor in California as Chief Scientific Officer. In the ensuing eight years he played an important role in licensing in Dalbavancin and Anidulafungin, taking Versicor public and merging with Biosearch Italia. The merged entities became Vicuron Pharmaceuticals, which was sold for $1.9 billion to Pfizer in 2005. Dr. White's research interests are on the mechanism of action of and resistance to antibacterial drugs, and the special role that natural products have played in treating infectious diseases.