Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. David Melnick is the Chief Medical Officer at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Melnick has 18 years of experience in anti-infective drug development. Prior to joining Spero Therapeutics, Dr. Melnick served as Vice President of Clinical Development for Anti-Infectives at Allergan since 2015. In that capacity, he oversaw the development and regulatory approval of Teflaro®, Avycaz®, and Dalvance® in the United States.  Prior to Allergan, Dr. Melnick served fifteen years at AstraZeneca in various levels of increasing responsibility, most recently as Vice President of Clinical Development for Anti-Infectives. In that capacity, he oversaw the late stage clinical development of Merrem®, Teflaro®, and Avycaz®. In addition, he served as the acting Vice President for early development at AstraZeneca. He received his medical training at Columbia University, followed by a Residency in Internal Medicine at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.  Following a Fellowship in Infectious Disease at Yale University, he held faculty positions at the Boston University School of Medicine and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  He subsequently joined Kaiser-Permanente as a practicing Infectious Diseases specialist and as the Director of HIV Clinical Research at Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic, with a faculty appointment at Georgetown University.

Gautam Sanyal received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Virginia. After spending a few years in academic research and teaching positions at University of Florida, Mayo Clinic and Hamilton College, Gautam moved in 1989 to Merck Research laboratories at WestPoint, PA. He was among the first group of scientists that built protein and vaccine formulation capabilities at Merck. Gautam played critical roles in delivering several candidate vaccine antigens and therapeutic proteins into clinical trials, some of which led to products such as Gardasil for prophylaxis against human papilloma virus. After nine productive and stimulating Merck years, Gautam joined Astra Research Center Boston as Head of Formulation and Analytical Research. Following the merger of Astra and Zeneca, he took on Head of Biochemistry and Protein Biophysics roles at AstraZeneca Infection, and was involved in discovery of novel antibacterials. Subsequently, at MedImmune, Gautam led analytics development for viruses and vaccines in pre-clinical and clinical phases. His CMC project responsibilities included an RSV vaccine through phase I and II clinical trials. In addition, Gautam led building of an analytical platform for development of oncolytic viruses for cancer immunotherapy. He has extensively published research papers and review articles on characterization, formulation and assay development for proteins and vaccines.

Gautam retired from industry in 2017 and founded Vaccine Analytics, LLC, to work as an independent consultant and is also a subject matter expert for Global Health Organizations. In addition, he is a member in the board of Directors of IABS, USA.

Dr. Margaret (Peg) Riley, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1991 and joined the faculty at Yale University, where she was granted tenure and remained for 15 years while developing an internationally renowned research program in antimicrobial drug discovery. She has published over 100 articles and edited four books in her research area. She is a well-known authority in the field of ‘bacteriocins’. Her early studies in microbial ecology and the evolution of antibiotic resistance suggested an alternative to the current paradigm of antibiotic drug discovery, one that recognizes the power of targeted approaches to therapeutic intervention, which result in lower levels of antibiotic resistance and reduced collateral damage to the healthy human microbiome.