Management Team

Prabhavathi Fernandes, PhD, President and CEO
Prabha Fernandes has more than 25 years of experience in drug discovery and development at major biopharma companies (Squibb, Abbott, BMS). She has been directly involved in the development of numerous drugs, four of which have been approved by the FDA and one with sales of over a billion dollars. She has served as CEO of DarPharma, and CEO of Ricerca Biosciences LLC, a contract R&D company. Dr. Fernandes was a founder and CEO/CSO of Small Molecule Therapeutics (SMT), where she managed the discovery of three lead compounds. She served on the U.S. Congressional Panel for Assessment of Impact of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria and on the American Society for Microbiology Advisory Panel on Antibiotic Resistance. She was the President of the Society for Biomolecular Screening and has served on NCI grant review panels. Her industrial career was preceded by various academic and scientific posts at Temple University, the University of Ghent, Belgium, and the Fox Chase Cancer Center. Dr. Fernandes has authored numerous publications, edited four books, and is an editor of several journals. She received her Ph.D., Microbiology from Thomas Jefferson University.

J. Gordon Still, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer
J. Gordon Still is a board-certified pediatrician and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.    His 29 year career in medicine has spanned clinical practice, academic appointments, and clinical research positions in the pharmaceutical industry and in contract research organizations. Dr. Still served as attending physician and director of an urban pediatric group practice while maintaining a part-time academic position at The University of North Carolina School of Medicine.  Subsequently, he held scientific and management roles at Glaxo, Inc. as director of dermatological and antiinfective clinical research programs and subsequently as a research physician providing leadership for development for a wide variety of new pharmaceutical agents.  Dr. Still left Glaxo to join the pediatric faculty at Duke University Medical Center, where he developed a clinical trials network linking community practices with a university medical center clinical research program for evaluation of new pharmaceuticals and vaccines in pediatric patients.  As a full-time academician, he was an ongoing consultant to the pharmaceutical industry contributing to development of a wide variety of agents, including immune modulators and other products for treatment of infectious diseases.  Throughout the remainder of the 1990s, Dr. Still served in the following positions: Global Director of Medical Affairs for ClinTrials Research while continuing academic activities at Duke University Medical Center; Vice President of Medical Affairs and Clinical Quality for MedTrust Inc., and Vice President of Pediatric Drug Development for Parexel International. Next, Dr. Still served as Chief Medical Officer for Nobex Corporation, where he was responsible for all product research & development.  Prior to joining Cempra, he was Vice President and Global Head of Respiratory and Infectious Diseases for i3 Research. Dr. Still received his M.D.-Ph.D. degrees from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University, and he completed post-graduate training in basic physiology and pharmacology followed by internship and residency at The University of Virginia Medical Center.

David Periera, PhD, Vice President of Chemistry
David Pereira has more than 18 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Before joining Cempra he was a Director in the Synthesis Group of Cardinal Healthcare where he was responsible for the process development of numerous drug candidates. Previous to Cardinal, he was employed by Baxter Healthcare in their IV Systems Division, Hemoglobin therapeutics Group and the Corporate Research and Technical Division. He worked in parenteral drug development, medical product development and hemoglobin-based oxygen carrying solutions. Dr. Pereira earned a B.S degree in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech followed by a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University. He continued his training as a Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Illinois.

Thorsten P. Degenhardt, PhD, Vice President of Drug Development
Thorsten Degenhardt has over 10 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Most recently he was Project Director at BioStratum, Inc., and was responsible for moving its lead drug candidate from early preclinical development through the completion of Phase 2 studies. He was instrumental in establishing a second-generation program and assisted with the creation and implementation of development plans for the companies' other drug candidates. Prior to joining BioStratum, he worked with Dr. John Baynes at the University of South Carolina as a Research Assistant Professor on the identification and analysis of Advanced Glycation Endproducts that are implicated in the pathogenesis of diabetic complications. He received a M.S in Biochemistry from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the area of diabetes and diabetic complications from the School of Pharmacy at the University of Heidelberg, Germany in a collaboration with Boehringer Mannheim.

E. Cali Downs, PhD, Director of Operations
Cali Downs has been in the biotechnology industry for the past five years. Prior to joining Cempra, she was the Senior Scientific Investigator at DarPharma, and was involved in setting up an IND and managing clinical development work at CRO's and academic settings. She has over 10 years of experience in receptor molecular biology and pharmacology, and has authored several publications. She received her M.S and Ph.D. degrees from a Rutgers University/University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey joint program for work which identified key residues involved in the binding of interferons to the Type I interferon receptor.