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Bharatt Chowrira Ph.D. J.D. joined the Company as Chief Operating Officer and Head of the PEGylation Business Unit in May 2008. His responsibilities include overseeing and managing all aspects of the PEGylation Business Unit including research and manufacturing as well as operations across the Company. He will also serve as Chairman of Nektar India Pvt. Ltd.
Dr. Chowrira had previously served as Executive Director Worldwide Licensing & External Research at Merck & Co. in San Francisco. He was responsible for identifying and evaluating R&D licensing and partnering opportunities across all therapeutics areas therapeutic modalities (including small molecules biologics vaccines and oligonucleotides) and technology platforms throughout Asia. Dr. Chowrira was a key member of the team that established collaboration agreements between Merck and leading pharmaceutical firms in India such as Nicholas Piramal and Ranbaxy Labs. Dr. Chowrira also served as Vice President of Sirna Therapeutics a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck where his responsibilities included strategic planning and licensing.
Prior to Merck Dr. Chowrira was a member of the executive management team at Sirna Therapeutics a development-stage biopharmaceutical firm focused on the discovery and development of RNAi-based drugs that selectively target disease-causing genes and viruses. As Vice President at Sirna he played a pivotal role in the restructuring and 2003 relaunch of the company the development of its pipeline and intellectual property portfolio and ultimately the sale of Sirna to Merck. He led the effort to identify research opportunities that resulted in corporate collaborations and licensing agreements with all of Sirna's partners which included industry leaders such as GlaxoSmithKline Allergan and Eli Lilly & Co.
Dr. Chowrira earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Vermont and his J.D. degree from the College of Law at the University of Denver. He earned his M.S. in Molecular Virology from Illinois State University and his B.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore India. | 