Dr. Karpeisky earned his Doctorate degree in Organic Chemistry from the N. D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. He most recently served as Senior Scientist at Transgenomic, Inc., where he was responsible for scale-up, process development and technology transfer to outside manufacturing facilities of standard and highly modified monomers for oligonucleotide synthesis. From 1993 to 2002 Dr. Karpeisky held various positions from Scientist to a Senior Group Leader at Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals, Inc (now Sirna Therapeutics) where he made a substantial contribution to therapeutic ribozymes design, mechanism of action and structure-activity relationships. Prior to 1993 he was a Research Scientist and a Group Leader at the Laboratory of Biotechnology, Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, working on novel nucleoside analogs with antiviral/anticancer activity. He also was one of the founders of ChimTech, Ltd, Moscow, Russia, one of the first Russian biopharmaceuticals private enterprises, where he also served as a Senior Scientist. Dr. Karpeisky has authored and coauthored 58 papers and more than 40 patents

Dr. Zinnen graduated with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Genetics from Duke University and conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Colorado at Boulder as an NIH Fellow. Dr. Zinnen was previously Associate Director of Biochemistry at Sirna Therapeutics Inc. where he served in various critical roles driving compounds from discovery stage and into human clinical trials and was a key decision maker on the path to four Investigational New Drug filings with the FDA. He invented Sirna Therapeutic Inc.'s (previously Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc.) clinical stage compound Herzyme, an anti-Her-2 targeted ribozyme, that was evaluated in human breast cancer trials. Dr. Zinnen has managed interdisciplinary teams of industry and academic scientists solving pharmacology related problems for diseases ranging from cancer to asthma to macular degeneration. He has authored or coathored 17 papers and 25 patents.