Abstract
Alan Rigby is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Interim Director of the Drug Discovery and Target Validation Program in the Center for Vascular Biology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His laboratory is located in the Center for Vascular Biology Research, the Division of Molecular and Vascular Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Rigby is a structural and computational biologist with expertise in the application of structural biology, proteomics, and computational approaches to novel drug discovery initiatives. His lab is actively engaged in partnering these approaches for the exploration of novel target and chemical space in a search for novel therapeutics for the treatment of prostate and breast cancer, rheumatoid arthritis as well as other inflammatory diseases. His laboratory is actively funded by the NIH, Prostate Cancer Foundation, Center for D-receptor Activation Research, National Cancer Institute and the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center. Dr Rigby is a former member of the Heme SBIR/STTR study section at the National Institutes of Health, he has reviewed research programs for the French and Portuguese government and has presided over the Proteomics panel for Genome Quebec in 2007 and was member in a recent CFI competition (2009). Dr Rigby is also a member of the award committee for Genome Quebecs PRIVAC initiatives and a committee member for the Canadian Governments National Centers of Excellence (NCEs) Panel. As the Founder of a niche Biotechnology Company, Dr Rigby has commercialization and business experience that stems from his role as a panelist, moderator and scientific consultant for TiE Boston functioning as a liaison between academics and New England based venture capitalists. Dr Rigby holds a Honors BSc. in Biochemistry from the University of Western Ontario (1991) and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry (1995) from the same university. He is the North American Editor for Current Computer Aided Drug Discovery and is on the Editorial Advisory Board for Future Medicinal Chemistry. He has published more than 38 scientific papers, a book chapter and currently holds 6 patents with 4 additional patents pending.