Peter Grandsard

Philip Tagari is currently Vice President of Research (Therapeutic Discovery) at Amgen Inc, the world’s largest independent biotechnology company. His global laboratories (US, Canada, Germany, China, India)  are responsible for biologics discovery, scaffold engineering, optimization and early manufacturability assessment; medicinal, oligonucleotide and peptide chemistry; protein conjugates (Ab-RNAi, peptibodies) and reagents; assay development, screening, enzymological and pharmacological characterization and profiling (in vitro), as well as structural biology, biophysics, computational and analytical chemistry, materials logistics and automation. His teams have advanced over 30 innovative molecules into clinical development in recent years.

Prior to joining Amgen in 1998, Philip was a Research Fellow at Merck Frosst (Canada) Inc, where he contributed to several programs in eicosanoid and inflammatory  biology, culminating in the discovery of odanacatib and rofecoxib, as well as the clinically active leukotriene D4 receptor antagonist MK-571 and the leukotriene biosynthesis inhibitor MK-591. In addition to the elucidation of leukotriene metabolism in several species, Philip established one of the first robotic screening laboratories at Merck, building on work performed at McGill and Oxford Universities on automated image analysis, quantitative immunohistochemistry and neurotransmitter measurements in neurodegeneration and cerebrovascular research. Philip is a graduate of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University (UK).