In order to foster new commercialization, build relationships with pharmaceutical and biomedical device industries, and develop strong partnerships in therapeutics at all levels, the School of Medicine has hired Bill Harte, Ph.D. as Chief Translational Officer. Bill was brought on board to assess the research strengths and IP portfolio of the SOM. The goals of the office are to assess and advise supported projects, to educate junior faculty, fellows and graduate students in technology transfer and development of research ideas, and to move promising candidates quickly from discovery to development. The ROI of these efforts is in excess of $11 Million in additional licenses, grants, and industry sponsored research.

Offering Lead Discovery to IND consulting/project management to venture, academic, and foundation backed biotech companies. See hartediscoveryservices.com for case studies and testimonials from clients.Services include: Portfolio/Project prioritization and review Value creation for academic technology transfer of life science assets Virtual Scientific officer for foundation research (coordination and supervision of contract research) Board representation for start up companies and foundations

E3x Bio is the first company with exclusive focus on inhibitors and activators of E3 Ubiquitin (Ub) ligases for drug discovery and development.This class of medically relevant enzymes is considered an important target for diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegeneration, but has been inaccessible to high-throughput drug screening because the current assays are cumbersome, indirect, and rely on a complex reaction mixture than can be complicated by multiple protein activities. E3X Bio’s streamlined screening paradigm and direct cellular and animal model assays, allow a simplified, pragmatic drug discovery approach to identify first-in-class small molecules specifically directed towards Ub E3 HECT ligases.

Visum Therapeutics is an early stage pharmaceutical company seeking to exploit world class knowledge in vision research with mechanistically relevant preclinical disease models to discover therapeutics for grievous blinding diseases. Our most advanced programs target therapies for Stargardt's Disease, and Age-Related Macular Degeneration. This effort led to identification of a clinical candidate, VSM 20R which demostrated remarkable efficacy in preclinical models. Bill secured a commitment from the Foundation Fighting Blindness for co-funding of clinical development, and then sold the rights to the program Vision Medicines, Inc.

Coordination and scientific oversight of academic research on small molecule efforts. Transition of research from academic labs to CROs.Scientific leadership of HTS and Medicinal chemistry lead optimization efforts.

Recruited and managed team of 110 multidisciplinary scientists in areas of Structural Biology, Biophysics/Bioanalytical, Analytical Chemistry, Materials Management and Chemo/bioinformatics. Budget: $10 million Executive co-leadership and technical preclinical oversight of all small molecule efforts delivering in nine Investigational New Drugs (IND).  Built and directed world-class structural biology and modeling group with 50% of Med Chem. programs guided with structure. Built and directed biophysical screening group, utilizing NMR and FTMS to directly detect binding of complex mixtures including natural products broths. Department lead for all chemistry/technology licensing opportunities resulting in 2 drug candidates in-licensed and numerous technologies. Transitioned the sample bank into a scalable, global organization based on an archival/operational store model ($30MM project, capital and IT oversight).

Group leader of computational chemistry at Wallingford, CT.