Dr. Simon L. Goodman consults for the Antibody Society as Science and Technology program manager. ORCID: 0000-0002-3480-1346. He has spent most of his career working on molecules regulating cell-adhesion.
Dr. Goodman was with Merck KGaA in Darmstadt, Germany from 1993 to 2013, most recently leading the immunohistology group in the Translational and Biomarkers research section of Oncology preclinical pharmaceutical research, developing and validating antibodies for clinical biomarker analysis. Prior to that, as principal scientist, he was preclinical leader on the Cilengitide drug development team, where he supported the anti-adhesion drug through Phase 1, 2 and 3 trials, including presenting the drug to the NCI as an IND. This followed 15 years as head of a cell-biology laboratory in Merck, where he was involved in drug discovery.
Beside the clinical development candidates, his research at Merck on the integrin family of adhesion molecules developed technologies for bulk integrin production for drug screening. Collaboration with Prof. Amin Arnaout’s group in MGH, Cambridge, resulted in the watershed X-ray structures of integrin extracellular domains, both alone, in the presence of peptidic drug Cilengitide, the antibody-inhibitor Abituzumab, and bound to a fragment of extracellular matrix molecule fibronectin.
Before Merck, he studied cell adhesion processes at various Max-Planck institutes. Dr. Goodman was at the MPI for Biochemistry, Martinsried, discovering the primary cell adhesion site on laminin, at the MPI for rheumatology, in Erlangen, discovering integrin a7b1, and at the MPI Friedrich-Miescher laboratory in Tübingen, working on function-blocking antibodies.
He has published over 100 highly cited research papers (h-index: 62; i-index: 100. 16,400 citations. Source Google Scholar August 2019) and has some 100 patents granted or applied for. He was a leading witness in the “Research Safe-harbour” case, positively adjudicated in the US Supreme Court (545 U.S. 193; June 13th 2005).
In the UK Dr. Goodman worked at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund developing the colloidal gold system for immuno-scanning electron microscopy, and on cytokeratins. He graduated from the University of Sussex where he also gained his DPhil., in membrane biochemistry, in 1977. He is a Londoner.
