Jean Pierre Sommadossi Chairman and CEO Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Jean-Pierre Sommadossi, Ph.D. chairman and chief executive officer of Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. is the principal founder of Idenix, as well as the company's chairman of the board of directors and its chief executive officer. Under Dr. Sommadossi's leadership, the company has advanced its research pipeline into late-stage clinical development with a new drug application for telbivudine, its lead compound for the treatment of hepatitis B, submitted in 2005. Idenix has also raised more than $360 million in private financings, an IPO and a subsequent public follow on offering, and struck a landmark biotech-pharma deal with Novartis worth more than $1 billion . Prior to founding Idenix in 1998, Dr. Sommadossi served as a professor of pharmacology, toxicology and clinical pharmacology and associate director of both the Center for AIDS Research and the Liver Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.

Dr. Sommadossi has authored over 150 scientific publications and holds 27 US patents related to treatments in the area of infectious disease. Dr. Sommadossi holds a Pharm.D. and Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Marseilles in France.