Michael Kamarck, PhD, is Chief Technology Officer at Vir. Vir integrates recent innovations in science, technology and medicine to transform the care of people with serious infectious diseases. Vir is taking a multi-modality approach to applying these breakthroughs, including the development of treatments that induce protective and therapeutic immune responses.
Vir鈥檚 initial focus is in three areas of significant unmet need: chronic infectious diseases including hepatitis B, tuberculosis and HIV; respiratory disease, including influenza, RSV, MPV; and the identification of host-derived treatments. The company was founded by Robert Nelsen and ARCH Venture Partners and seeded by ARCH, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Soft Bank, Temasek and others.
Before joining Vir, Dr. Kamarck was senior vice president of Global Vaccines and Biologics Manufacturing and president of Merck BioVentures where he was responsible for the establishment of Merck鈥檚 global biosimilars business.
Prior to joining Merck, Dr. Kamarck held 4 positions of increasing responsibility in Biotechnology and Vaccines Operations at Wyeth, including the establishment and staffing of a global biotechnology network with $3.5 billion of capital investment. In 2008, he was promoted to President of Technical Operations & Product Supply and became a member of the Wyeth Management Committee.
Dr. Kamarck graduated from Oberlin College where he currently serves as a Trustee. He received his PhD in biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a Leukemia Society Fellow at Yale University, and is the author of more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and 20 issued patents. He also received an Honorary Doctorate from University College Dublin.