William G. Rice

Biography

Dr. Rice serves as the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aptose. Through a blend of leadership roles in industry, government, and academic sectors, Dr. Rice has accrued more than 25 years of know-how and forged a diverse set of executive, operational, business development, financial, and product research and development skills. Prior to joining Aptose, Dr. Rice served as the President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Cylene Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In that role he led the strategic, financing, and business development activities resulting in the development and sale of small molecule therapeutic programs designed to exploit CK2-driven pathways and non-genotoxic mechanisms for activating p53 to kill cancer cells. Before Cylene, Dr. Rice was the Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He also served as Senior Scientist and Head of the Drug Mechanism Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute-Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, and served as a faculty member in the division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine....

Research Interest

Dr. Rice holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Emory University and was a post-doctoral trainee in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center. At the R&D level, Dr. Rice has identified multiple new molecular drug targets, delivered multiple first-in-class drugs to the clinic, and published peer-reviewed findings in Science, Nature, Cancer Cell, Nature Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other prestigious journals. Within the industry sector, he has built two biotech companies, received biotech achievement awards, negotiated various business development deals, and executed an array of corporate financings.