Board of Directors

Rod MacKinnon, M.D., is a biophysicist and neuroscientist, the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics at The Rockefeller University, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Peter Agre for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels. In 1998 his team determined the first three-dimensional structure of a potassium channel by X-ray crystallography, showing how these channels conduct potassium ions rapidly while excluding sodium. His laboratory has since solved structures of voltage-dependent and ligand-regulated channels and studies how voltage, cell signals and mechanical force open and close them. Dr. MacKinnon is a co-founder of Flex Pharma.

Dr. MacKinnon earned his B.A. in Biochemistry from Brandeis University (1978) and his M.D. from Tufts University School of Medicine (1982). He served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 1989 to 1996 before moving to Rockefeller, and his honors include the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1999).

Bruce Bean, Ph.D., is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where he joined the faculty in 1985. A physiologist, he is recognized for his work on how ion channels control the electrical excitability of neurons and heart cells. His laboratory studies how the many kinds of ion channels in a neuron work together to set its characteristic firing pattern, how drugs for epilepsy and pain act on those channels, and how new compounds that target them might be developed. Dr. Bean is a co-founder of Flex Pharma and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.

Dr. Bean received his B.A. in Biology from Harvard College (1973) and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Rochester (1979), followed by postdoctoral research with Richard W. Tsien at Yale University. Before joining Harvard he was on the faculty of the University of Iowa. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

William McVicar, Ph.D., is a pharmaceutical executive with approximately 30 years of clinical development experience. He joined Flex Pharma in April 2017 as President of Research & Development and was appointed CEO in July 2017. Before that, he served as Executive Vice President of Pharmaceutical Development, Chief Scientific Officer and President at Inotek. As Vice President of Development Operations at Sepracor, he oversaw the development, FDA review and approval of multiple NDAs and sNDAs, including BROVANA®, XOPENEX MDI® and XOPENEX’s pediatric approval, each approved in a single 10-month review cycle. Earlier, he held positions of increasing responsibility at Sandoz, Novartis and Rhone Poulenc Rorer.

Dr. McVicar earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the State University of New York College at Oneonta and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Vermont. He led Flex Pharma through its 2019 merger with Salarius Pharmaceuticals and currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Decoy Therapeutics.

Roger D. Tung, Ph.D., is the scientific founder of Concert Pharmaceuticals, where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer from 2006 until the company’s acquisition by Sun Pharma in 2023. Under his leadership Concert built its pipeline on deuterium-modified molecules. Before Concert, Dr. Tung was a founding scientist at Vertex (1989–2005), most recently as Vice President of Drug Discovery, and earlier held positions at Merck, Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories and The Squibb Institute for Medicinal Chemistry. He is now a Venture Partner at Longwood Fund.

Dr. Tung holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Reed College and a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.