Cambridge, Mass., USA - March 25, 2010, Cambridge, Mass., USA - Biogen Idec, a pharmaceutical company, announced that Eric K. Rowinsky and Stephen A. Sherwin have been appointed to its Board of Directors pursuant to an agreement with Icahn Partners.
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Dr. Rowinsky has served as a director at Adventrx Pharmaceuticals since February 2008. Dr. Rowinsky recently served as Executive Vice President Clinical Development and Regulatory at ImClone Systems Incorporated, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company.
Prior to joining ImClone Systems in 2005, Dr. Rowinsky focused his academic efforts in cancer drug development as the Director of Clinical Research and later Director of the Institute for Drug Development of the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio and the SBC Endowed Chair for Early Drug Development from 1996 to 2005.
He was also Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio from 1996 to 2006.
From 1987 to 1996, Dr. Rowinsky served as an Associate Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
He was a longstanding NCI principal investigator on U01 anticancer drug development grants and integrally involved in pivotal clinical and preclinical investigations which led to the development of paclitaxel, docetaxel, topotecan, irinotecan, erlotinib and gefitinib, among others.
Dr. Rowinsky's honors include receipt of the career development award of the American Cancer Society and the 6th Annual Emil J. Freireich Award for outstanding achievement of a young researcher in clinical cancer therapeutics.
Dr. Rowinsky received his B.A. degree from New York University and his M.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Following his residency in internal medicine at the University of California, he completed fellowship training in medical oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr. Sherwin has more than 30 years of experience in senior leadership positions at large and small publicly traded biotechnology companies.
He co-founded and is Chairman of Ceregene, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the treatment of major neurodegenerative disorders, and Abgenix, Inc., which specialized in the discovery, development and manufacture of human therapeutic antibodies (Abgenix was acquired by Amgen in 2006).
He also served as Chairman and CEO of Cell Genesys until its acquisition by BioSante Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in July 2009, and he worked at Genentech for seven years including as Vice President of Clinical Research.
Dr. Sherwin is currently Chairman of the Biotechnology Industry Organization and is a director of BioSante, Neurocrine BioSciences and Rigel Pharmaceuticals. ■