Keith Bostian, PhD

CEO

Biography

Dr. Bostian is an entrepreneur scientist with a distinguished career in industry and academia. He is the Chief Executive Officer of ILSE as well as the Associate Provost of Science and Technology at Kean University where he also oversees the Office of Technology Transfer and several programs.

Dr. Bostian has held senior executive positions in numerous life science companies. At Kemin Industries, he was President of a European pharma subsidiary, developing and launching a proprietary probiotic, Anaban™, in European markets. He also built one of India’s leading preclinical CROs, Vanta Bioscience. He was a founder of Mpex Pharmaceuticals, a development-stage pharmaceutical company with discovery, preclinical and late clinical stage programs in the infectious disease arena, founder and CEO of Iconix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a pioneer and leader in the emerging field of chemogenomics, and founder and COO of Microcide Pharmaceuticals, Inc. At Merck, he was Head of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, with responsibility for antimicrobial drug discovery as well as discovery of new leads from natural products for all of Merck’s worldwide drug discovery programs.

Dr. Bostian is an inventor on numerous patents in drug discovery and genomics and has led efforts resulting in numerous clinical candidates including a first-in-class new anti-fungal antibiotic CANCIDAS® and an aerosol fluoroquinolone Aeroquin® for cystic fibrosis infections, which is pending regulatory approval in the US and Europe.

Dr. Bostian earned a doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of London. He is a fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology and was a member of the faculty at Brown University, and an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow.