About Us

Alan is a medicinal chemist who has worked for over 30 years in the pharma industry. He has worked across a wide range of projects and disease areas, including roles such as Exploratory and Therapeutic Area Head of Chemistry (Sexual Health, Pain, and Sensory Disorders Research Units) with Pfizer and Head of Chemistry at Benevolent AI. Alan is vastly experienced across hit generation, lead optimisation and candidate identification and has been personally involved in 20 projects which have resulted in new medicines being tested in humans. He is author/ named inventor on >80 patents and peer reviewed publications.

Jeffrey D. Kennedy, Ph.D. spent over 3 decades in the pharmaceutical industry working for major pharma or serving as a pharmaceutical consultant and is internationally recognized as an expert in pain pathophysiology and neuroinflammation. Following training as an immunologist and early work in the pulmonary inflammation/asthma field, Dr. Kennedy adapted this knowledge base to the neuroscience field where, as part of a 16 year career at Wyeth Research, he led pain drug discovery for Wyeth Neuroscience. He then spent 5 years at Eli Lilly and Co., where he led a behavioral pharmacology group that provided broad support to the pain and larger neuroscience therapeutic area while also serving as company representative to the EF7 IMI public-private partnership and steering committee member for the Europain consortium in addition to helping facilitate broader company partnering efforts. Since leaving pharma, Dr. Kennedy, in addition to private consulting work, has held long-term roles as grant reviewer for NINDS and as member of both NIH and FDA committees tasked with helping improve the success of pain translational R&D efforts.

Dr. Vladimir (Vlad) Skljarevski brings more than 25 years of leadership and global neuroscience drug development experience across all phases of clinical research in academia, big pharma, and small biotech companies. As a global medical leader at Eli Lilly and Company, he designed and conducted over 20 large Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials which represented the basis for the worldwide registration of two products – Cymbalta for chronic pain, and Emgality for migraine prevention. He has an extensive regulatory, clinical operations, business development, and partnership building experience within the US, the EU, Japan, and China. More recently, he has been engaged full-time in providing consulting services for both big pharma and small biotech companies operating in the space of pain, neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegeneration. Dr. Skljarevski holds an MD degree from the University of Sarajevo in his native Bosnia and Herzegovina (former Yugoslavia). He is a fully trained neurosurgeon with a subspecialty training in stereotactic neurosurgery from Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. He also completed a neurology residency at the University of Vermont in Burlington, VT, as well as a clinical fellowship in cerebrovascular diseases at the University of Ottawa in Canada. Vlad holds an active medical license in the State of Indiana and serves as a member of the US NIH external oversight committee of the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) project.

Over 40 years activity in organic chemistry both in research and industry. Chief chemist of several companies. Independent adviser in organic chemistry, CMC and Medical chemistry since 2007 to companies in Israel, USA, Europe and Asia. Has played key roles in many projects for pharma, agrochemical, biotechnology, “Green chemistry” and “Biofuel” companies.