Michael Flavin, CEO

Michael T. Flavin is a Managing Director of Flavin Ventures, a venture incubator focused on starting, financing and developing biotechnology companies.  He has also been Chairman & CEO of Advanced Life Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new drugs to fight infection, inflammation and cancer.  Founded in 1999, Advanced Life Sciences completed a $35M IPO in 2005 and several follow-on financings to advance drugs through clinical trials, including Restanza     (cethromycin), a novel once-a-day oral antibiotic in NDA-stage development for the treatment of respiratory tract infections including pneumonia.  In 1987, Dr. Flavin founded MediChem Life Sciences.  He established MediChem as a premier drug discovery and development company for the pharmaceutical industry. 

Over 14 years, MediChem grew from a two-person operation to more than 240 employees, serving over 90 clients in drug discovery, including most of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies and many leading biotechnology firms.  In 2000, he oversaw the acquisition and integration of ThermoGen, a protein expression company, and Emerald Biostructures, a structural biology company, as MediChem subsidiaries.  In 2000, MediChem completed a $54M IPO.  MediChem was acquired in 2002 by deCODE genetics to build a complete “gene map to drug” business model. 

 

Dr. Flavin has 45 publications in scientific journals and 20 U.S. patents in the fields of organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry and biochemistry.  Dr. Flavin is a frequent lecturer on topics related to scientific entrepreneurship at universities such as Notre Dame, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Dr. Flavin received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Notre Dame and his Ph.D. degree in medicinal chemistry from University of Illinois at Chicago.  After completing his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Baxter prior to founding MediChem.