Nobel Laureate Roger Kornberg to Chair New ChromaDex Scientific Advisory Board
09 Jul 2014 --- ChromaDex Corp., an innovative natural products company that provides proprietary ingredients and science-based solutions to the dietary supplement, food and beverage, animal health, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, announced that it has appointed Nobel Laureate Roger Kornberg to Chair the Company's newly formed Scientific Advisory Board.
The SAB will be comprised of leading researchers, chemists, biochemists and nutritionists, with an emphasis on those having expertise in nicotinamide riboside. The SAB's mission is to assist the Company's management team in maximizing the value of the Company's portfolio of patented ingredients by advising on such matters as scientific and research focus, clinical studies, safety and regulatory, commercialization opportunities, and assessing new potential ingredient technologies.
The ChromaDex SAB will be chaired by Kornberg, a Professor at Stanford Medical School, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 for his research on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription. Dr. Kornberg earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in chemical physics from Stanford in 1972. He became a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England and then an Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School in 1976, before moving to his present position as Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford Medical School in 1978.
Kornberg's father, the late Arthur Kornberg, was a professor of biochemistry at Stanford and was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1959. He was among the first to investigate nicotinamide riboside more than 60 years while at the NIH.
Kornberg commented, "Given my father's noteworthy early research of nicotinamide riboside, I have been following ChromaDex's progress on developing its NIAGEN™ nicotinamide riboside as well as the enormous amount of published research that speaks to the health benefits of NR. I look forward to working with the other members of the SAB as well as the Company's management."
Dr. Phillip Frost, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Opko Health, Inc. commented, "As both Opko Health and I are substantial investors in ChromaDex, I am very pleased to see Roger Kornberg become the Chair of ChromaDex's new SAB."
Frank Jaksch, Jr., founder and CEO of ChromaDex, commented, "We are honored to have Roger Kornberg Chair our recently formed SAB. His outstanding scientific achievements and extensive experience serving on the Boards of other pharma and biotech companies will be valuable as we progress with the development and commercialization of our novel ingredient pipeline, including NR."
