Institute for International Research

Alan Sachs, Vice President, RNA Therapeutics, Merck Research Laboratories (MRL), assumed leadership of Sirna Therapeutics and established the global MRL RNA Therapeutics Department effective January 4, 2007. Prior to this, Dr. Sachs assumed responsibility for the scientific leadership at Rosetta Inpharmatics LLC effective July 2002, responsibility for the Rosetta site effective March, 2004, and overall responsibility for the Department of Molecular Profiling in 2006. Dr. Sachs joined Merck & Co., Inc. as Director of Clinical Genomics for MRL in July 2001.

More recently, the utility of synthetic RNA as a therapeutic modality has been recognized. Specifically, introduction of silencing RNA (siRNA) into animals can decrease the expression of specific proteins via silencing of their messenger RNA. The break-away potential of this approach prompted Merck and Co., Inc. to acquire Sirna Therapeutics in December, 2006 and subsequently build a significant internal effort with the goal of providing powerful clinical research tools to Merck investigators and ultimately RNA therapeutics to patients in need of safe and effective therapy.

Prior to joining Merck, Dr. Sachs was Associate Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology while at the University of California at Berkeley, and a Whitehead Institute Fellow at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge. Dr. Sachs is one of the leading figures in the field of mRNA translation and regulation, and has made landmark contributions, particularly to the understanding of the role of the poly(A) tail in translation and mRNA stability.

Dr. Sachs graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Biochemistry; received his Ph.D. in Cell Biology at Stanford University; his M.D. from Stanford Medical School; and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University.

Waleed Danho, a Distinguished Research Leader at Hoffmann-La Roche Inc, completed his Ph.D. in 1967 at the University of Aachen, Germany. He then did post-doctoral research at the Hormone Research Laboratory, University of California. His research interests are in drug discovery of peptide-based drugs, peptide mimetics, and synthesis methodology. He has authored nearly 250 publications and patents. He has presented and chaired sections of the American, European and International Peptide Symposia.