Vincent R. Zurawski

Biography

Vincent R. Zurawski, Jr., a pioneer in the biotechnology industry, is also the president and chief executive officer of Hepregen Corporation. He engineered a major expansion of Hepregen’s micropatterned co-culture liver platform products into the pharmaceutical drug testing and chemical industry marketplaces. He also developed a further expansion of Heprgen’s capabilities with the formation of Ascendance Biotechnology. Dr. Zurawski was a co-founder of Centocor, Inc. and was its chief scientific officer for 14 years. He was founder, president and chief executive officer of Apollon, Inc., and chief executive officer of Compugen, Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Compugen Ltd. He also completed a three-year term as a member of the board of directors of Ricerca Biosciences LLC, an Ohio-based contract research organization (“CRO”). Dr. Zurawski has also recently been a co-founder, past chief executive, chairman of the board of directors, and acting vice president of product development of Avraham Pharmaceuticals Ltd., an Israeli company focusing on development of the multifunctional drug, ladostigil, which entered proof-of-concept clinical trials for treatment of both Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition often seen as a precursor to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Zurawski received his Ph.D. in 1973 from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before embarking on his business career. He also held a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School during his time at Centocor.

Research Interest

  Molecular and Cell Biology