Over 100 Years of Experience Spearheading the Development of Our Treatments

Leadership Team

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Yacoub Habib, Ph.D, MBA

Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Dr. Yacoub Habib, Ph.D., MBA, is the chief executive officer and Chairman of the Board for Ophidion, Inc. He has more than 25 years of senior executive experience in the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Habib most recently served as senior vice president, business development and corporate planning at Trevena, where he was since July 2015. Previously, from 2009 to June 2015, he served as vice president of business development at Ikaria, Inc. and led the business development strategy for the company until its acquisition by Mallinckrodt.

From 2007 to 2009, he served as executive director of new business development for Pfizer Inc. Before joining Pfizer, Dr. Habib was executive director of global business development for Organon Pharmaceuticals, a division of Akzo Nobel, where he was responsible for the identification, evaluation, and negotiation of in-licensing, out-licensing, and divestiture opportunities in neuroscience, fertility, and women health.

He started his career at Bristol Myers Squibb where he spent eleven years in various research, corporate, and business development roles, including director of business development. Dr. Habib holds a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Maryland and an MBA with a major in finance and marketing from New York University, Stern School of Business.

Julie Miwa, Ph.D

Chief Scientific Officer

Julie Miwa, Ph.D, is Ophidion’s founder and chief scientific officer. Ophidion’s technology platform is based on Dr. Miwa’s science and understanding of complex neurobiological processes and how they are regulated through the cholinergic system. A key focus is on a class of modulators, lynx genes, which act as molecular brakes on the cholinergic system by binding to and inhibiting nicotinic acetylcholine receptors.

Dr. Miwa has identified that genetic animals lacking lynx1 have enhanced learning, plasticity, and many more pronounced phenotypes, and Ophidion is now actively commercializing these discoveries. Dr. Miwa earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience at the Rockefeller University. She did postdoctoral work at the Rockefeller University and was previously research faculty at Caltech. Dr. Miwa is currently an associate professor at Lehigh University’s Department of Biological Sciences.

Douglas Greene, MD

Chief Development Officer

Dr. Greene’s nearly 50 years of experience in biomedical research includes both a 30-year academic career in clinical and applied basic research as Director of the Clinical Research Center, Chairman of Endocrinology and Metabolism and Director of the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburg and University of Michigan, followed by a 20-year career in leadership positions in the pharmaceutical industry as Head of Clinical Science & Product Development, Head of Regulatory Development, and Head of Research & Development at Merck, Sanofi-Aventis and Ikaria.

Dr. Greene has focused more recently on assisting and advising academically-based biotechnology companies seeking to convert their intellectual insights into biomedical therapeutic products. Dr. Greene has over 200 scientific publications and served as Chairman of the Endocrinologic and Metabolic Advisory Committee of FDA. Dr. Greene received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Biology from Princeton University, and his Medical Doctorate Degree from Johns Hopkins University, and completed Fellowship Degrees in Medicine from both Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Greene holds an MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an AB from Princeton University.

Douglas J. MacNeil, Ph.D

VP of Preclinical Development

Dr. MacNeil has extensive experience in Early Drug Discovery and Development at major pharmaceutical companies. During his research career he rose from a bench level scientist to Director of In Vitro Sciences where he was responsible for in vitro assay support to over 40 research programs at Merck’s NJ research sites, many in the neurodegenerative space (including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson disease). He was a Team Lead or Biology Lead on multiple Drug Discovery and Development projects for obesity, hypertension, diabetes, NAFLD, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson disease.

He has a proven record of delivering development compounds, including expertise in target identification, target validation, project support, and discovery team leadership. Dr. MacNeil initiated seven programs that delivered compounds for development; four achieved clinical proof of concept. He has deep capability in G-protein coupled receptors, neuropeptides, energy homeostasis, neurodegeneration, and metabolic diseases. He is an expert at optimizing internal and external in vitro assays to support Lead Identification and Lead Optimization. He was responsible for 13 programs including agonist, antagonist, inverse agonist, allosteric modulators, and biased ligand projects. Dr. MacNeil is recognized as an expert in cell-based assay development, assay validation, and CRO selection.

Dr. MacNeil holds M. Sc. and Ph. D. degrees in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin, and two B. Sc. Degrees from MIT in Chemistry and Life Sciences published over 95 publications, and is an inventor of 15 issued US patents.

Joe Hulihan, MD, MSHP

VP of Clinical Development

Dr. Hulihan is an Advisor for clinical development at Ophidion, with responsibility for research and development for all products and indications. He has formulated clinical plans and provided guidance on overall program design, clinical protocol development, and regulatory requirements for Ophidion programs.

He also serves as the Chief Medical Officer at Marinus Pharmaceuticals as an advisor on other neuroscience drug development programs. Prior to that, he worked at Johnson & Johnson, where he held positions of increasing responsibility in medical affairs and clinical development from 1999-2014. He has been engaged in development programs for a range of neuropsychiatric disorders including epilepsy, headache, pain medicine, movement disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, schizophrenia, depression and ADHD, and has authored over 100 scientific papers and meeting presentations.

Dr. Hulihan graduated from Hahnemann (Drexel) University School of Medicine in 1986 and received a Master of Science degree in Health Policy from Thomas Jefferson University in 2015. He completed neurology residency at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia followed by a clinical neurophysiology fellowship at Mayo Clinic. Academic positions have included Associate Consultant in Neurology at Mayo Clinic and Associate Professor of Neurology at Temple University School of Medicine, where he also directed the EEG Laboratory and Clinical Neurophysiology fellowship program. He is a member of professional societies in neuroscience, mental health and public health. He is active in community organizations in Trenton, NJ and last year produced a documentary film about the city.

Brigitte Angenieux, Ph.D

Executive Director of Preclinical Development

Dr. Angenieux is an executive director of preclinical development and has over fifteen years of experience in project management and research. This includes work in stem cells and cancer research, sterility assurance, bioassay and drug development in both academia and industry. She is currently the Executive Director of Preclinical Research.

Prior to this position, she was the head of Ophidion’s small molecule program where she developed cell-based assays to screen compounds for a novel smoking cessation drug. During her career Brigitte has been involved in various early-stage start-ups working on both research and commercialization. As the Head of Microbiology at a company that developed a new rapid sterility assurance technology, she was responsible for the development of a biological indicator based on a revolutionary technology from Caltech and JPL. She was also involved at a startup developing assays to screen biomarkers in biological samples where she managed the research team and led business development for rapid and low-cost assays. Brigitte received her education in Switzerland starting with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Geneva and then a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from a conjoint program between the University of Geneva, University of Lausanne and EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne). She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology.

Board of Directors

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Yacoub Habib, Ph.D, MBA

Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board

Dr. Yacoub Habib, Ph.D, MBA, is the chief executive officer and Chairman of the Board for Ophidion, Inc. He has more than 25 years of senior executive experience in the pharmaceutical industry.

Scott Fishman

Founder and CEO, Ethos LifeScience Advisors - Envisage

Scott Fishman has over 30 years of experience as a life science strategist across all sectors of the industry focusing on healthcare marketing research and commercial analysis. As CEO of Research by Design, a firm he started in 1989, Scott directed the evolution of the company from a bedroom startup to one of the most successful and prominent firms in the healthcare research industry.

Under Scott’s guidance, RBD became a key consulting resource for virtually every major pharmaceutical company, as well as a wide spectrum of biotechnology and medical device manufacturers. Following the sale of his firm to a global holding company in 2006, Scott founded Ethos LifeScience Advisors, the parent to Envisage.

Fishman is co-author of Preserving the Promise: Improving the Culture of Biotech Investment, which proposes solutions to facilitate translation of important discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic; a Board member and active Angel investor with Robin Hood Ventures. He also serves as an advisor on the Therapeutics and Devices investment review committee for Ben Franklin Technology Partners, and previously created and ran the Commercialization Acceleration Program (CAP) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Julie Miwa, Ph.D

Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Miwa uses a highly multidisciplinary approach through the generation of genetically engineered mouse lines and the characterization of such lines by electrophysiological, behavioral, biochemical, and microscopic techniques. These investigations have been informative since the wide-spread cholinergic system is involved in many significant complex processes, but is suppressed under normal conditions by lynx proteins.

Dr. Miwa has identified that genetic animals lacking lynx1 have enhanced learning, critical period plasticity, and many more pronounced phenotypes, and Ophidion is now actively commercializing these discoveries. Dr. Miwa earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience at the Rockefeller University. She did postdoctoral work at the Rockefeller University and was previously research faculty at Caltech. Dr. Miwa is currently an associate professor at Lehigh University’s Department of Biological Sciences.

Michael Lark, Ph.D

Independent Board Member

Dr. Lark has more than 30 years of experience at leading and managing drug discovery and development teams at both large pharmaceutical and small biotech companies. Mike is CSO at Mirata Pharmaceuticals, a pain therapeutics company focused on neuropathic pain and is an Entrepreneur in Residence at BioAdvance, an early stage venture capital firm.

Mike also consults on drug discovery for both academic groups and small biotech companies. Mike sits on the Scientific Advisor Board of Evol Sciences and on the Board of Advisors at the Moulder Center of Drug Discovery Research at Temple University. Prior to 2018, Mike was CSO at Trevena Inc., where he was responsible for drug discovery and non-clinical development. Under Mike’s leadership, Trevena discovered and developed OLINVYK, for the treatment of acute pain. Prior to Trevena, Mike was Vice President of Biology at Centocor R&D where he was responsible for the therapeutic discovery strategy and execution and Director of Musculoskeletal Diseases at GlaxoSmithKline. Mike started his career as a Senior Investigator at Merck Research Laboratories, where he was a drug discovery team leader. He has published over 130 peer reviewed papers, reviews and book chapters and is a co-inventor on 11 patents. Mike received his B.S. in Microbiology from the Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Microbiology from the Case Western Reserve University Medical School. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pathology at The University of Washington.

Claudine Buck, Ph.D

Independent Board Member

Dr Claudine Bruck is the CEO and co-founder of Prolifagen, a Start-Up company developing a microRNA-based drug for cardiac regeneration. She is also a course Director at University of Pennsylvania, at the
Institute of Translational Medicine and Applied Technology linked to the Perelman Medical School.
Dr Bruck serves on the Board of directors of 2 public Biotech companies.

Dr Bruck has a PhD from University of Brussels. She was a post-doctoral student at Harvard University Medical School and an Assistant Professor at Tufts Medical School, before joining GlaxoSmithKline to build GSK’s HIV Vaccine Program. In her role in Vaccines, she was instrumental in the development of GSK’s HPV vaccine (Cervarix) and headed the early stages of their cancer vaccine program, before joining the drug discovery group of GSK in King of Prussia.

She held different roles in that group, from Head of Clinical Immunology (2004-2006) to VP and Head of Biology for the Center of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (2006-2008), to VP and Head of a newly
formed Ophthalmology R&D group (2008-2015).

Scientific Advisory Board

X. William Yang, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. X. William Yang received his undergraduate education at Yale University, obtaining combined B.S./M.S. degrees from the Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry (MB&B) in 1991.

He did his master’s thesis research in the laboratory of Professor Joan A. Steitz. He then completed M.D./Ph.D. training at Rockefeller University (Ph.D., 1998) and Weill Medical College of Cornell University (M.D., 2000). During his Ph.D. thesis research under the mentorship of Dr. Nathaniel Heintz at Rockefeller University, William co-invented (with Nathaniel Heintz and Peter Model) a genetic technology to engineer Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes (BACs) and to generate transgenic animals.

William’s own laboratory, established at UCLA in 2002, has made significant contributions in the use of BAC transgenesis to model human neurodegenerative disorders including Huntington’s disease (HD), Huntington’s disease-like 2 (HDL2) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), and the use of such models to dissect disease mechanisms and identify therapeutic targets. The Yang lab has also developed novel tools to study neuronal cell-type-specific gene expression, and to decipher in vivo protein interaction networks. Finally, the Yang lab studies the role of basal ganglia circuitry in the generation of normal and pathological behaviors.

Dr. Yang is a recipient of Brain Disorder Award from the McKnight Foundation, a 2014 NIH BRAIN Initiative award, and serves on the scientific advisory board for the Hereditary Disease Foundation.

Andrew S. Feigin, M.D.

Dr. Feigin is the director of Experimental Therapeutics for Movement Disorders at the Feinstein Institute and director of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America Center of Excellence at North Shore University Hospital.

He has been involved in clinical research for 18 years and has been a site principal investigator on more than 30 National Institute of Health and industry-sponsored clinical trials of new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. Since 2002, Dr. Feigin’s laboratory has been one of two centers in the New York metropolitan area (out of 50 nationwide) participating in the NIH Exploratory Trials in Parkinson’s Disease (NET-PD; U10 NS044484), which is an ongoing series of clinical research studies to identify disease modifying therapies for PD. More than 50 PD subjects have been enrolled in these trials. Dr. Feigin is also the Clinical Core Leader and Team Leader (Project 3) of the Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.

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Steven Dowdy, PhD

Professor of Cellular & Molecular Medicine at UCSD School of Medicine

Dr. Christopher Ross is a neuropsychiatry specialist in Baltimore, caring for patients with Huntington’s disease, movement disorders and neuropsychiatric complications of movement disorders. Dr. Ross serves as the Director of the Division of Neurobiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Dr. Ross received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Princeton University. He earned his M.D. at Cornell University Medical College. He completed his residency at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and performed a fellowship in psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also earned a Ph.D. in neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University Graduate School. Dr. Ross joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1987.