Anthony D. Keefe

Tony has over 20 years of experience with the use of encoded libraries and affinity-mediated discovery methods. He joined X-Chem in 2010 as senior director of lead discovery. From 2001 to 2009, he worked at Archemix Corp., where he developed the first-ever fully modified aptamers, thus improving the therapeutic potential of such candidate antagonists by making them highly resistant to biologically mediated degradation. From 1997 to 2001, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, developing mRNA display technology. Tony’s achievements in the Szostak lab include discovery of the first novel functional protein fold to have been discovered independent of biology and introduction of a novel protein affinity tag. He is an author of over 50 publications and is listed as an inventor on 13 granted U.S. patents and 30 patent applications. He is also a member of the editorial board of the journal Nucleic Acid Therapeutics. Tony received his B.Sc. in chemistry from Exeter University, U.K., in 1985, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Birmingham, U.K., in 1989.