Jerry De Zutter, PhD

jerry-de-zutter

Jerry De Zutter, PhD

Consultant

Jerry De Zutter, PhD (CONSULTANT)

BIOGRAPHY:

Jerry De Zutter, PhD, brings a breadth and depth of scientific expertise to the McGurk Group. The bulk of his career has been focused on discovering and developing treatments for therapeutic areas including neurodegenerative disease, immuno-oncology, autoimmunity and inflammation. He will leverage 20+ years of experience in academic, startup, mid-size biotech, and large pharma research environments to guide organizations in their scientific, strategic, operational, and partnering decision making. Jerry spent a decade building a startup biotech into an established company, gaining the spectrum of skills which foster collaboration and licensing, enabling company growth. Vetting and establishing scientific, alliance and CRO relationships for mutual benefit and competitive advantage can be critical activities for a growing company. Jerry has direct experience in this area; engaging his extensive network, executing NDAs, CAs, MTAs, and licensing agreements to open up lines of communication with confidence and create opportunities for clients. Regarding his extensive, network; Jerry’s been fortunate to establish viable relationships with many C-Suite executives, venture capitalists, biotech, pharma and academic scientists, patent attorneys, entrepreneurs and principals of technology transfer at several major academic institutions. These professional and personal connections extend across several therapeutic areas, positioning him extremely well to survey the landscape of innovations and opportunities and connect stakeholders to a client’s benefit. Also critical to the success of a growing company, Dr. De Zutter has been principal to the construction and guidance of a research pipeline traversing drug discovery through development into clinical trials. Critical research and development activities, due diligence, competitive intelligence, program and project management, drug production and scaleup, as well as oversight entity engagement are included in the array of diverse activities that need to be anticipated and meshed to avoid costly pitfalls and delays bottlenecks. With direct experience performing or negotiating these facets Jerry can guide and inform clients to allow smooth navigation of the drug development path to the clinic. Through his work in the laboratory Dr. De Zutter has developed subject matter expert-level knowledge in whole genome profiling technologies, RNA interference, in vivo study design, gene editing, automation, robotics, cell-based assay development, iPS cell biology, molecular and biochemical assays, among others. Additionally, he has excellent knowledge of and skills in, large data set assembly and visualization (Tableau and Spotfire®), manuscript and report preparation, grant writing, LIMS specifications, scheduling software, text mining, open source software tools and databases for analyses. Jerry has worked in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries for the ALS Therapy Development Institute, Wyeth and Genzyme, A Sanofi Company, in positions of increasing responsibility. Prior to that Dr. De Zutter earned his Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Worcester, MA, studying molecular mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration.

EDUCATION

University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Worcester, MA, Ph.D., 2004 University of Massachusetts Lowell, Department of Biological Sciences, Lowell, MA, B.S. 1992

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

  • Vieira FG, Ping Q, Moreno AJ, Kidd JD, Thompson K, Jiang B, Lincecum JM, Wang MZ, De Zutter GS, Tassinari VR, Levine B, Hatzipetros T, Gill A, Perrin S. 2015 Guanabenz Treatment Accelerates Disease in a Mutant SOD1 Mouse Model of ALS PLoS One.
  • Lincecum JM, Vieira FG, Wang MZ, Thompson K, De Zutter GS, Kidd J, Moreno A, Sanchez R, Carrion IJ, Levine BA, Al-Nakhala BM, Sullivan SM, Gill A, Perrin S. 2010 From transcriptome analysis to therapeutic anti-CD40L treatment in the SOD1 model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Nature Genetics.
  • Li J1, Tomkinson KN, Tan XY, Wu P, Yan G, Spaulding V, Deng B, Annis-Freeman B, Heveron K, Zollner R, De Zutter GS, Wright JF, Crawford TK, Liu W, Jacobs KA, Wolfman NM, Ling V, Pittman DD, Veldman GM, Fouser LA. 2004 Temporal associations between interleukin 22 and the extracellular domains of IL-22R and IL-10R2. International Immunopharmacology.
  • De Zutter GS, Davis RJ. 2001 Pro-apoptotic gene expression mediated by the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase signal transduction pathway Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • Hirschman JE, De Zutter GS, Simonds WF, Jenness DD. 1997 The G beta gamma complex of the yeast pheromone response pathway. Subcellular fractionation and protein-protein interactions. Journal of Biological Chemistry.