Daniel C. Pevear

Dr. Pevear is Founder and Senior Vice President of Biology and Grants Development at Venatorx Pharmaceuticals. He has over 25 years of experience in anti-infectives drug discovery and development, covering both anti-bacterials and anti-virals.

Prior to founding Venatorx, Dr. Pevear was the Director of Biology at Protez Pharmaceuticals (a subsidiary of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation) where he co-led the team who advanced a first-in-class beta-lactamase inhibitor into preclinical development. Prior to Protez, Dr. Pevear spent two years with Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, MA, where he directed the billion dollar collaboration with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals on ground-breaking “RNA interference” technology. He has also worked with Progenics Pharmaceuticals (Tarrytown, NY) where he directed research efforts in both Human immunodeficiency virus and Hepatitis C virus. In 1994 Dr. Pevear was a scientific team founding member of ViroPharma Inc. (Exton, PA). As the Director of Biology at ViroPharma, Dr. Pevear led a team of over 30 scientists working on a variety of anti-infective targets. He also served on the team that advanced a first-in-class inhibitor for the common cold viruses through NDA filing. This compound was discovered by Dr. Pevear’s laboratory during his time with Sterling Winthrop Research Institute (1988–1994).

Dr. Pevear has been involved in the advancement of more than a dozen compounds from the lab bench into clinical development. He has published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has written more than a half dozen reviews. Dr. Pevear has served as the Principal Investigator and/or written 6 SBIR-Advanced Technology awards and contributed to several others. He also served as an NIH Center for Scientific Review Special Emphasis Panel Member for AIDS SBIR applications in 2005.

Dr. Pevear received his Ph.D. in Viral Immunology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1984, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in the lab of Dr. Howard Lipton (Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, IL) from 1985–1988.