Healthcare >> CEO Interviews >> September 13, 2002
WILLIAM G. RICE is Chief Executive Officer of Achillion Pharmaceuticals,
Inc. Since co-founding Achillion in 1998, Dr. Rice raised $65 million in
venture financing and assembled a skilled management team, a domain-
experienced scientific staff and an experienced drug development team.
Under his leadership Achillion has advanced its lead product candidate
into human clinical trials, procured license and collaborative research
and development agreement (CRADA) relationships with the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) and developed its Zinc Finger Targeting (ZFT)
discovery engine. Dr. Rice has also received numerous entrepreneurial
awards, has been named to the Governor's Council for Economic
Competitiveness and Technology and is the Co-Chairman of CURE,
Connecticut's bioscience industry organization. Prior to founding
Achillion, Dr. Rice served as Head of the Laboratory of Antiviral Drug
Mechanisms and Manager of the HIV Clinical Interface Laboratory for the
National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health from 1992
to 1998. In this position, Dr. Rice directed the activities of several
projects targeting new ways to treat HIV and other infectious diseases.
From 1989 to 1992, he was professor of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology
at Emory University School of Medicine, where he built a program to
identify new molecular structures as antiviral targets. Dr. Rice holds a
PhD in biochemistry from Emory University School of Medicine and was a
Post-doctoral Trainee in the Department of Internal Medicine at the
University of Michigan Medical Center. Profile
Mr. Rice: Achillion is an anti-infective pharmaceutical company that
discovers and develops small molecules to treat viral,
