Members

Dr. Dugar is the President and CEO of Aayam Therapeutics. He has more than 30 years of experience in drug discovery and development in a range of therapeutic areas, including oncology, inflammation, central nervous system, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. He held roles of increasing responsibility at Schering-Plough, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Scios and Johnson & Johnson, where he was also involved as part of a global team responsible for manufacturing operations at Cilag, Schaffhausen. At Scios, he helped establish the small molecule drug discovery program acquired by Johnson & Johnson, in 2002, valuing the asset at >$900 M as a part of a total acquisition price of $2.4 B. He also led the CMC diligence for the licensing of Xeralto by Johnson & Johnson from Bayer. In 2005, he founded Advantium Pharma, a full service CRO based out of Pune, India and 18 months later exited through an equity sale to Sequoia Capital. In 2008, he founded Sphaera Pharma Pte. Ltd, an integrated drug discovery and development organization. He is a co-inventor of Zetia® (ezetimibe) and Vytorin® (ezetimibe/simvastatin). He is the recipient of the 2005 National Inventor of the Year Award and the American Chemical Society’s 2004 Heroes of Chemistry Award.

He is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California, Davis, a member of the Advisory Board to the Dean of Graduate Studies at University of California, Davis, a member of the BioInnovation and Design Board at Santa Clara University, and a Trustee Emeriti of the UC Davis Foundation Board. He is a co-author of more than 70 publications and presentations, and a co-inventor of over 100 issued and applied patents. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and Cornell University.