The Divincell team
Dr Gilles Divita
Institut Max Planck, Scripps Research Institute, CNRS
Dr. Divita has over 25 years of experience in drug delivery systems, peptide-drugs and oligonucleotide therapeutics. Dr Divita’s work focuses on strategies to probe and perturb the behavior of biomolecules in physiological and pathological settings. He is the pioneer of the “non covalent cell penetrating peptide-based strategy” for therapeutic delivery and inventor of the peptide-based platform that is used by AANASTRA and DIVINCELL for its RNA therapeutic strategy. Dr. Divita is author of over 200 articles in peer reviewed scientific journals and of 30 patents.
Dr. Divita holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry/Biophysics from the University in Lyon, France. He worked as a Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg-Germany and then as Associate Professor at the SCRIPPS Research Institute, La Jolla, USA. In 1996, Dr. Divita joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and was Research Director, Head of Chemical Biology and Nanotechnology for the Therapeutics Team at the CNRS in Montpellier-France from 1999 to 2016.
Dr Neil Desai
Abraxis, Celgene, Aadi Bioscience
Neil Desai, PhD, is the Founder, CEO and Chairman of Aanastra, Inc., and cofounder of Divincell SAS, companies that are pioneering novel peptide-based RNA therapeutic drug delivery for the treatment of cancer and genetic diseases.
Dr. Desai is also the founder, Executive Chairman and former CEO (2014-Dec 2022) of Aadi Bioscience, which he steered to the public market (AADI: Nasdaq) in August 2021, and to the approval as well as commercialization of its flagship drug FYARRO, the first FDA approved therapy for advanced malignant perivascular epithelioid cell tumor (PEComa).
He is the inventor of the foundational nab technology (nab-sirolimus (FYARRO) and nab-paclitaxel (ABRAXANE)). Dr. Desai was previously the SVP of global R&D at Abraxis Bioscience, where he invented the nab technology and grew and led the Abraxane team through all drug development stages and approvals in Breast, Lung and Pancreatic cancer. He was part of the team that was responsible for the acquisition of Abraxis by Celgene Corp and was subsequently VP of Strategic Platforms at Celgene until 2016. Prior roles during his 25+ year career include senior positions at American BioScience, Inc., VivoRx, Inc. and VivoRx Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Dr. Desai has over 100 issued patents, over 40 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and over 200 presentations at scientific meetings. He was an active participant in FDA and EU Nanotechnology initiatives and a member of the Steering Committee for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer.
Dr. Desai received a M.S and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, India.
Our team