BIO of David J. Augeri, PhD

I graduated from the University of Connecticut, Storrs with a BS in Chemistry and concentration in organic synthesis. A brief 16 months was spent at Pfizer Pharma before beginning the PhD program in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in the Dept. of Chemistry, University of California, Irvine with Professor A. R.  Chamberlin, PhD as my mentor. My studies focused on new synthetic methods for the preparation of deoxypolypropionate structural units of natural products. (Tett Lett. 1994). Upon completion I was awarded a NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Dept. of Chemistry, Princeton University with Professor Daniel Kahne. My studies here focused on the successful synthesis of the calicheamicin oligosaccharide (JACS, 1994). My first industry position landed me at Abbott Laboratories in the NMR Research Group of Dr. Steven Fesik (currently, Prof. Fesik, Vanderbilt Univ.) and my focus on the bcl-2 and bcl-xL were highly productive. From a key ternary NMR structure of the protein target, bcl-xL, and a site 1 ligand and a site 2 ligand, I designed the acylsulfonamide as both a linking agent and a scaffold that properly oriented the site 1and site 2 ligands with no steric clash with F97. This was a breakthrough and launched a team of 15 medicinal chemists to start working on the lead that I generated that, after nearly ten years of their talented effort, arrived at Venclexta (bcl-2, cancer, FDA2015). I moved on to BMS, Princeton where I worked on the diabetes DPP4 program and discovered saxagliptin (Onglyza, 2009, FDA, T2DM). At Lexicon for 10 years, I directed three full programs that led to 3 INDs in inflammation/immunology. I took an academic position at the State University of New Jersey at Piscataway in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and I ran a synthesis group to supply funded programs (with 5 R01 NIH grants) and 1 DoD grant.  I began consulting in the legal arena, first as a chemistry expert consultant, and later as consultant and witness and in 2016 I registered the DJ Augeri Pharma Consulting, LLC to begin consulting in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery science as well as serving as Expert Consultant--Testifying Witness.