Phage Biotechnology Corp.

Key Personnel: John (Jack) William Jacobs Ph.D.

Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer

Drjacobs Dr. Jack Jacobs is the Chief Scientific Officer at Phage Biotechnology Corporation. He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Washington University School of Medicine in 1978. Prior to that he received a B.S. in biology from Davidson College, North Carolina. His doctoral training was in the area of protein chemistry, specifically, the isolation and characterization of protein growth factors. He continued his training at the Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where he learned recombinant DNA technologies resulting in the cloning of several peptide hormones, including calcitonin, a peptide currently marketed for the treatment of osteoporosis. He was recruited as a junior faculty member to the University of Texas, San Antonio, where he established his own laboratory and continued his work on the molecular biology of peptide hormones. While in Texas, Dr. Jacobs received numerous awards for his research, including a prestigious Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. He obtained several federal grants to support his work, and a 2-year contract from Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company to produce recombinant calcitonin in yeast.

Dr. Jacobs was recruited away from academia in 1984 by Merck, who asked him to set up a new department of Biological Chemistry at their West Point, PA facility. Dr. Jacobs established a department of 30 researchers who focused on the development of new drugs for heart attack and angina patients. His department also contributed to Merck's effort to develop new therapies for the treatment of AIDS and hepatitis B. Merck currently markets a drug in each one of these areas, with combined annual sales of the three drugs approaching $1 billion dollars. At Merck, Dr. Jacobs also supervised the protein isolation and sequencing core facility for the identification of novel protein drug candidates.

Before joining Phage, Dr. Jacobs was Director of Basic Research at the Hitachi Chemical Research Center in Irvine, California, a position he has held for 10 years. Hitachi built a 40,000 square foot biotechnology center on the campus of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and recruited Dr. Jacobs to run the research in the facility in 1990. Dr. Jacobs was also appointed as a full professor (without salary) in the Department of Biological Chemistry at UCI's College of Medicine. At Hitachi, Dr. Jacobs discovered and developed novel therapies for the treatment of prostate cancer. At this time, one of these compounds is set to begin Phase I/II clinical trials in men with hormone-refractory prostate cancer.

Dr. Jacobs is the author of more than sixty peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. In addition, he has written and filed numerous patent applications covering his work both at Merck and at Hitachi. At Hitachi, Dr. Jacobs was also centrally involved in the launching of a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company, centered around technology developed at UCI and incubated for several years in the Hitachi facility.

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