William J. Dower, PhD

Co-founder and Scientific Advisor

William J. Dower, PhD, is a co-founder and Scientific Advisor of Medikine. Bill was a co-founder and Senior Vice President, Discovery Biology of XenoPort, Inc. (XNPT), where he led the company’s efforts to identify and characterize drug transport mechanisms. Prior to XenoPort, he was Senior Director of Molecular Biology at Affymax Research Institute, where his group pioneered the development of the recombinant peptide display methods that are now in use worldwide. This research culminated in the discovery of peptide mimetics of important growth factors such as erythropoietin, work for which Bill and Ron were awarded the 1997 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for Outstanding Paper of the Year in the journal Science. He received his BA and PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of California, San Diego.