Who We Are - Founders
Sydney and Philip have known each other since 1979, when Philip came to work with Dr. Jonathan Karn at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, of the University of Cambridge. Before founding Acidophil, Sydney and Philip independently founded Combichem, Lynx Therapeutics, Molecular Tool, and Ribotargets. Together, with Sam Eletr, they founded Population Genetics Technologies. As Acidophil LLC, Sydney and Philip have co-founded Arginetix and ZuvaChem.
Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board
Sydney Brenner MD PhD, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award, 1971. He participated in the discovery of messenger RNA and, with Francis Crick, showed that the genetic code was composed of triplets. He is the principal investigator of the massively parallel DNA analysis technologies of Lynx Therapeutics and was a member of the board of directors from 1993 to 2001. He began his career in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, and became the Director of its successor, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in 1979. He became the Director of the MRC Unit of Molecular Genetics in 1987, retiring in 1992. He is a founder of Combichem, Inc. and served on its Scientific Advisory Board. He founded the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkley and retired as Director of Research in February 2001. He is now a Distinguished Research Professor of The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2002 for his pioneering work in genetics and molecular biology. He has received numerous awards and prizes and is a member of several national scientific academies.
President and CEO
Philip Goelet, PhD, received his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, studying with Drs. Jonathan Karn and Sydney Brenner and at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He then worked as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow between 1984 and 1987 at Columbia University in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Kandel. In 1990 he founded Molecular Tool, Inc., where he co-invented SNP (“single nucleotide polymorphism”) analysis technology. As its CEO, he completed Molecular Tool’s merger with GeneScreen as a Director in its subsequent acquisition by Orchid Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: ORCH), where he served as a Scientific Advisor. In 1997, he co-founded RiboTargets, Plc., UK (an RNA structure-based drug discovery company), on whose board he served until 2000. Between 1995 and 2001, he served as an officer and director of the Rhode Island Corporation, a private investment company, and its successor, NORIC, which was acquired by Pogo Producing Company (NASDAQ: PPP) in 2001. In 2004, he co-founded Compass Genetics LLC with Sydney Brenner and Sam Eletr which led to the formation of Population Genetics Technologies. He co-founded Red Abbey Venture Partners, LLC, a life sciences private equity partnership, with Frank Bonsal and Matt Zuga. His on-going roles in the companies co-founded by Acidophil, Arginetix and ZuvaChem, are described on this website under “What we’ve done”.