Bob Molinari - MedStars

Bob Molinari is currently the founding CEO of Retrotope, Inc., a company focused on control of metabolic processes associated with diseases of degeneration and ageing. For the last dozen years, he has led Retrotope from the idea stage to a company pioneering a completely new treatment paradigm for intractable neurodegenerative diseases, oxidatively stabilized polyunsaturated fatty acid drugs. Under Dr. Molinari’s leadership, Retrotope raised some $50MM in funding, validated the drug target and first drug compound in a host of orphan diseases of degeneration, and demonstrated in controlled human trials disease-modifying treatment of fatal neurodegenerative diseases, Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy and Friedreich’s ataxia. Retrotope has dosed over 60 patients totaling over 500 patient-months, demonstrating overwhelming safety and striking early sign of efficacy in diseases as diverse as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Late Onset Tay Sachs, ALS, and Progressive Supranuclear Parkinsonism. Retrotope currently has pivotal trials underway in FA and INAD, with a first NDA expected in late 2020.  in addition to the formal trials. 

Prior to Retrotope, Dr. Molinari specialized in biotechnology reagents, genomics, proteomics, and biopharmaceutical research companies. He was the founding CEO of Coda Genomics/Verdezyne, a synthetic biology company using computational methods to optimize gene assembly in synthetic biology processes.  Bob was also the co-founding CEO and president of Protogene Laboratories, Inc., and, in the mid-nineties, led that company to become the world's largest supplier of custom DNA before it was acquired by Life Technologies, Inc.   He then ran a spin-off of Protogene which developed foundational products and technologies in the early DNA chip industry. Prior to Protogene, Bob served as a strategic advisor in the startup of Nanogen, Affymetrix, and Sequenom. Early in his career, Dr. Molinari was a consultant specializing in biotechnology at McKinsey & Co. Dr. Molinari has an A.B. and an MBA from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from Brown University.

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