John Park

Dr. Park leads the drug discovery, product development, and manufacturing process development activities in support of Allegro’s drug development platforms.

Dr. Park’s long history of bringing ophthalmic drugs from concept to market spans four decades and covers drug discovery, research, and development, as well as product development. In addition, he is a prolific inventor with more than 40 patents and peer-reviewed publications of which he is an author or co-author.

Dr. Park’s biotech development experience includes the co-founding of two additional biotech companies: SK Pharmaceuticals and Vitreoretinal Technologies, Inc. For more than 20 years, Dr. Park served in executive level positions at these two companies as well as at ISTA Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for product development, manufacturing and quality control. Before that, Dr. Park spent 16 years with Allergan Pharmaceuticals as principle research scientist.

At Allergan, Dr. Park conceived product ideas on potential anti-cataract drugs and novel concepts of making liposome drug delivery systems without the use of organic solvents. He initiated, executed and successfully developed commercially viable products. In addition, Dr. Park was responsible for the discovery of a novel oxidative disinfectant system employing a polymeric sustained drug delivery system, which was successfully developed into a number of commercial products generating over $1 billion in product sales and which led Allergan to present him with its “Patent of the Year” award.

Dr. Park was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology after receiving his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the University of Houston. He received his MS in organic chemistry from Louisiana Tech and his BS in chemistry and physics from Yon Sei University in Seoul, Korea.