ICARE - Key Persons
Dr. Francois Lebreton is a group leader in bioinformatics within the Multidrug-resistant organism Repository & Surveillance Network (MRSN) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. His team uses next generation sequencing and comparative genomics to provide real-time surveillance and detection of MDR bacterial outbreaks in a large network of military treatment facilities in continental USA and overseas. His research focuses on conducting retrospective and prospective outbreak analyses to identify the factors that influence the emergence of MDR populations, their distinguishing characteristics, and the evolutionary drivers that shape them.
Erin Duffy, Ph. D., is the R&D chief of CARB-X, a global partnership led by Boston University that is accelerating innovation in the discovery and early development of therapeutics, preventatives and diagnostics to combat drug-resistant bacteria. She has 17+ years of drug-discovery and problem-solving experience in the antibiotic arena, having led the research efforts at Melinta Therapeutics (fka Rib-X Pharmaceuticals) , ultimately as the Chief Scientific Officer. Erin began her scientific career as a computational chemist with Pfizer Central Research. She was trained formally as a physical-organic chemist and structural biologist at Yale University.
Dr. Rex is a physician and drug developer with more than 30 years of development and policy experience focused on antimicrobial agents. He is currently CMO for F2G, Ltd. (an antifungal biotech), is an operating partner with a venture capital group (Advent Life Sciences), and was (2015-2019) a voting member on the US Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB). He also blogs regularly at http://amr.solutions/blog.html.
His experience includes moving compounds from early preclinical development through all development phases via academic positions (NIH, Bethesda, MD; Univ. of Texas Medical School-Houston) and VP-level roles at a multinational pharmaceutical firm (AstraZeneca). Other past activities include advancing novel regulatory paradigms for antibacterial agents, publications on novel reimbursement models for antibiotics, co-founding of a public-private partnership (CARB-X), co-founding of the New Drugs for Bad Bugs (ND4BB) program of Europe's Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), and a 4-year term as Industry Representative on the FDA Anti-Infective Drugs Advisory Committee (AIDAC, 2007-2011).