Board of Directors

Vaughn M. Kailian, Chairman

Mr. Kailian has served as our Chairman since February 2004. Mr. Kailian is currently a General Partner of MPM Capital. From 2002 to 2004, he was the vice chairperson of the Board of Directors of Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mr. Kailian served from 1990 to 2002 as Chief Executive Officer, President and director of COR Therapeutics, Inc. until its acquisition by Millennium. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of ViaCell, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAC) and Cerimon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and as a director of Cephalon, Inc. (NASDAQ:CEPH), Memory Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:MEMY), NicOx, S.A and Windhover Information, Inc. He is a member of the board of BioVentures for Global Health and the New England Healthcare Institute. Mr. Kailian holds a B.A. from Tufts University.

Vernon Cassin

Mr. Cassin has served as a director since December 2003. Mr. Cassin was trained as a lawyer, has practiced financial and corporate law in New York, Singapore and Saudi Arabia and served as a partner in a major U.S. and international law firm for approximately thirteen years. He continues to counsel privately a small number of clients on legal matters relating to Saudi Arabia. In addition, Mr. Cassin has been active in venture capital projects and has put together investors for a number of projects in biotechnology, internet, media and oil and gas. Mr. Cassin serves as a director or observer on several boards of directors of privately held companies, including two biotechnology companies based in the Boston area. He has also served as an advisor to a San Francisco-based hedge fund and serves as a senior advisor to a Saudi Arabian based venture capital fund. Mr. Cassin currently also serves as Chairman of a Bermuda-based oil and gas exploration company. Mr. Cassin received his A.B. from Princeton University in Near Eastern Studies and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Jonathan Fleming

Mr. Fleming has served as a director since December 2000. Mr.  Fleming has been a General Partner at Oxford Bioscience Partners, an international venture capital firm specializing in life science technology based investments, since 1996, and has served as its Managing Partner since 2001. Prior to joining Oxford Bioscience Partners, he was a Founding General Partner of MVP Ventures in Boston, MA. Mr. Fleming has also co-founded Medica Venture Partners, a venture capital investment firm specializing in early-stage healthcare and biotechnology companies in Israel. Mr. Fleming is a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Memory Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:MEMY). He is also Chairman of the Board of BioProcessors Corporation and is a director of several other private companies including Leerink Swann, a Boston based investment bank specializing in healthcare companies. Mr. Fleming holds a M.P.A. from Princeton University and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ansbert Gadicke, M.D.

Dr. Gadicke has served as a director since February 2003. Dr. Gadicke is the founder and a General Partner of the MPM Group. He led MPM’s effort to build its Advisory and Investment Banking business from 1992 to 1996 and started its Asset Management business in 1996. Prior to founding MPM, Dr. Gadicke was employed by The Boston Consulting Group. He has held research positions in biochemistry and molecular biology at the Whitehead Institute at MIT, Harvard University and the German Cancer Research Center. Dr.Gadicke is currently a director of Pharmasset, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRUS). He previously served as a director of BioMarin (NASDAQ:BMRN), Biovitrum (Stockholm:BVT), Idenix (NASDAQ:IDIX), MediGene (Frankfurt:MDG), Omrix Biopharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:OMRI), PharmAthene (AMEX:PIP) and Viacell (NASDAQ:VIAC). He is a member of the Advisory Council for Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gadicke holds an M.D. from J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt.

William K. Heiden, CEO

Mr. Heiden has served as our President, Chief Executive Officer and as a director since September 2004. Prior to joining Elixir, Mr. Heiden served as President and Chief Operating Officer from May 2002 responsible for corporate strategy and overseeing all operations of PRAECIS, a public biopharmaceutical company which was subsequently purchased by GlaxoSmithKline. Mr. Heiden was recruited to PRAECIS from the Schering Plough Corporation which he joined in 1987 in their executive development program, and held positions of increasing responsibility for a variety of businesses in the U.S. and abroad.  Mr. Heiden is a member of the board of directors of LFB, S.A., a French biotechnology company and is a member of the Duke University Healthcare Advisory Council.  Mr. Heiden holds an M.B.A. from Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, an M.A. from the University of Louvain and a B.S. from the University of Florida.

Cynthia Kenyon, Ph.D.

Dr. Kenyon is a founder of Elixir, and has served as a director since April 2004. She is currently an American Cancer Society Research Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1993, Dr. Kenyon's discovery that a single mutation can double the lifespan of the roundworm C. elegans sparked an intensive study of the biology of aging. She and others have now shown that the aging process is not haphazard, but instead is controlled by hormones and transcription factors that coordinately affect age-related disease. Dr. Kenyon has received many awards for her discoveries, and she is a past president of the Genetic Society of America and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. She is the director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging at UCSF.
Dr. Kenyon holds a B.S. in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Robert I. Kriebel

Mr. Kriebel has served as a director since November 2007.  Mr. Kriebel was Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Neose Technologies, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company from 2002 until he retired in 2005.  From 1991 through 2000, he held various positions at U.S. Bioscience, Inc., most recently as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Director.  From 1974 to 1990, Mr. Kriebel held various positions with Rorer Group, Inc.  He is currently a director of Memory Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:MEMY).  Mr. Kriebel holds a B.S. in Economics from Roanoke College.

Dion Madsen

Mr. Madsen has served as a director since September 2007. Mr. Madsen has served as a Managing Director of Physic Ventures since its inception in March 2007, and was previously the Managing Director and leader of the investment practice of Unilever Technology Ventures, a predecessor of Physic Ventures. Prior to joining Unilever Technology Ventures, Mr. Madsen was head of Investor Relations at Chiron Corporation. Mr. Madsen served from March 1998 to September 2003 as a Partner of RBC Capital Partners, the private equity arm of the Royal Bank of Canada. Mr. Madsen holds a bachelors degree in commerce specializing in finance from the University of Saskatchewan and is a CFA Charterholder.

Bennett Shapiro, M.D.

Dr. Shapiro has served as director since April 2003. Prior to this, he was Executive Vice President, Worldwide Licensing and External Research at Merck & Co, Inc. where he was responsible for all the basic and preclinical research activities at Merck, then of Worldwide Licensing and External Research, where he directed all of Merck’s research relationships with the academic and industrial biomedical research community. Earlier, he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. He is the author of over 120 papers on the molecular regulation of cellular behavior and has served on many institutional advisory boards and review panels. He is currently a director of PureTech Ventures, Momenta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MNTA), Protein Forest, and Vascular Biogenics, and a trustee of Dickinson College. Dr. Shapiro has a B.S. in Chemistry from Dickinson College and an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College.

David Stack

Mr. Stack has served as director since September 2007. Mr. Stack has served as an Executive Partner of MPM Capital since June 2005. Mr. Stack has been the President and General Partner of Stack Pharmaceuticals, Inc. since November 2004. Prior to this, Mr. Stack was President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of The Medicines Company. He is a director of Bio-Imaging Technologies, Inc (NASDAQ: BITI), Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIPI) and PepTx, Inc.  Mr. Stack holds a B.S. from Siena College and a B.S. from Albany College of Pharmacy.

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