Peptide Therapeutics Expert
Intellectual Property and Transactions Advisor
790 Memorial Drive Suite 300, Cambridge, MA 02139 | Wagistrasse 13, 8952 Schlieren, Switzerland
Peptide Therapeutics Expert
Tomi is Chief Drug Hunter & President of Maestro Therapeutics, a consulting/advisory enterprise supporting peptide drug discovery, which he founded in 2019. Recently, Tomi founded the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium which is committed to strengthening the interface of science and business for peptide drug discovery worldwide to support biotech, pharma, academia, contract R&D organizations, service providers and investors. Over the past 40+ years in pharma and biotech, Tomi’s career has included being a Distinguished Scientist at Merck, Chief Scientific Officer at Aileron, Senior Vice-President of Drug Discovery at Ariad (now Takeda), and Senior Director of Chemical Sciences at Pfizer (as well as scientific leadership positions at its legacy companies, Upjohn and Parke-Davis). He is credited with several molecules which have advanced into clinical development and/or achieved FDA approval. He has >660 scientific publications, patents, and presentations. Tomi also served as past-President of the American Peptide Society and was co-Chair of the Eighteenth American Peptide Symposium (Boston). Tomi holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Arizona, and a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Minnesota State University Moorhead.
Intellectual Property and Transactions Advisor
Dr. Ivor Elrifi is CEO of a publicly traded biotech company. Prior to that, he was the global chair of Cooley LLP’s patent counseling and prosecution practice group. His practice included patent prosecution, litigation, arbitration, licensing and transactional work with a focus on novel therapeutic treatments, biotechnology, genetics, diagnostics, biomarkers, drug formulations and medical devices. Dr. Elrifi counseled clients worldwide in developing and implementing patent strategies and in the prosecution, licensing and enforcement of patents. He has extensive experience in advising clients on transactional work and regularly counseled clients with respect to investments, mergers and acquisitions. He also advised plaintiffs and defendants in patent litigation and arbitration cases. Before joining Cooley, Dr. Elrifi was co-chair and section manager of Mintz Levin’s intellectual property practice and a member of the firm’s management committee. Earlier in his career, he served as patent counsel and then general counsel and vice president for CytoTherapeutics in Providence, Rhode Island, and as patent counsel to Modex Therapeutics in Lausanne, Switzerland. He has spoken at numerous international conferences, and he has written numerous articles for leading legal and scientific publications. Dr. Elrifi is an elected member of the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, a global honorary society of attorneys, judges, law faculty and legal scholars. He received his J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University in 1989 and Ph.D. from Queen’s University at Kingston, Biology in 1986, and is admitted to practice law in California, Massachusetts, New York, Ontario, Canada.