Summary
Anthony W. Czarnik was born in Appleton, Wisconsin on November 21, 1957. He attended public schools in Appleton, Combined Locks, and Kimberly, Wisconsin, and received his B.S. (cum laude) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977. His undergraduate major was biochemistry, but he carried out undergraduate research during that time in two organic laboratories: at UW-Madison (with Prof. Vedejs) and at Argonne National Laboratory (with M. MacCoss). Dr. Czarnik received his graduate training at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, obtaining both an M.S. degree (1980) in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. (1981) in Organic Chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Nelson Leonard. From 1981-1983, he was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University working with Prof. Ronald Breslow on the design of artificial enzymes. He began his academic career in 1983 at The Ohio State University, on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry. Dr. Czarnik has received both DuPont and Merck awards for new faculty and an American Cyanamid award in recognition of excellence in the advancement of science and the art of chemical synthesis. He was named an Eli Lilly awardee in 1988, a Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1989, and a Teacher-Scholar Fellow of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation in 1990. He served as Founding Editor of the ACS' Journal of Combinatorial Chemistry and of Wiley's Solid-Phase Organic Syntheses book series. He is the author of over 150 scientific publications and an editor of seven books.
From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Czarnik served as Director of BioOrganic Chemistry at Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research. In 1996, he accepted the position of Vice President, Chemistry at IRORI Quantum Microchemistry in San Diego, CA. In 1998, Dr. Czarnik became a co-founder of Illumina, Inc. in San Diego, CA. Both IRORI (NASDAQ: DPII) and Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) completed their IPOs in July 2000. From 2001-2003, he served as Chief Scientific Officer at Sensors for Medicine and Science, Inc. - now Senseonics - which sells the Eversense continuous glucose monitor based on his research into fluorescent chemosensors. In late 2003, Dr. Czarnik founded Protia, LLC - an intellectual property holding company based in Reno, Nevada. Dr. Czarnik has filed over 250 patent applications and in 2009 was listed as one of the top 100 inventors in the United States. Protia started four companies based on the premise that deuterium-enrichment could improve the properties of some commercial chemicals. From one of these, Deuteria Pharmaceuticals, began DeuteRx LLC which has improved some medicines using deuterium-enrichment.
Research interests
Current research interests include chemical product improvement using deuterium substitution, combinatorial chemistry as a tool for drug discovery, nucleic acids as targets for small molecule intervention, and fluorescent chemosensors of ion and molecule recognition. In 2022, Dr. Czarnik founded the Nevada company Arsenica LLC that is developing new ways to remediate water arsenic contamination in Nevada and throughout the world.
Professional experience
- 2014-present Board Member, Deuteria Biomaterials, LLC
- 2014-present Founder and Board Member, Deuteria Agrochemicals, LLC
- 2010-present Founder & Manager, Deuteria Beverages, LLC
- 2011-present Board Member, DeuteRx, LLC
- 2008-2011 Founder & Manager, Deuteria Pharmaceuticals, LLC
- 2003-present Founder, Protia, LLC
- 2004-present Adjunct Visiting Professor of Chemistry, Univ. of Nevada at Reno
- 2001-2003 CSO, Sensors for Medicine and Science, Germantown, MD
- 1998-2000 Co-founder and CSO, Illumina, Inc., San Diego, CA (ILMN)
- 1996-1998 Vice-President Chemistry, IRORI, La Jolla, CA (DPII)
- 1993-1996 Director, BioOrganic Chemistry, Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research, Ann Arbor, MI
- 1983-1993 Assistant, Associate Professor of Chemistry, The Ohio State University
Education
- Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar (1990)
- Sloan Fellow (1989)
- NIH Postdoctoral Fellow (1981–1983) Columbia University (R. Breslow)
- M.S. (1980); Ph.D. (1981), University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (N. Leonard)
- B.S. (1977), University of Wisconsin at Madison
Selected publications
- DeWitt, S.; Czarnik, A. W.; Jacques, V. “Deuterium-Enabled Chiral Switching (DECS) Yields Chirally Pure Drugs from Chemically Interconverting Racemates” ACS Med. Chem. Lett. 2020, 11 (10), 1789–1792
- Jacques, V.; Czarnik, A.W.; Judge, T.M.; Van der Ploeg, L.H.T.; DeWitt, S.H. “Differentiation of anti-inflammatory and anti-tumorigenic properties of stabilized enantiomers of thalidomide analogs” PNAS 2015, 112, E1471-E1479
- Czarnik; A.W. Alcoholic compositions having a lowered risk of acetaldehydemia. U.S. Patent 9,044,423, June 2, 2015
- Chee, M.S.; Stuelpnagel, J.R.; Czarnik, A.W. Method of making and decoding of array sensors with microspheres. U.S. Patent 7,060,431, June 13, 2006
- Mei, H.-Y.; Cui, M.; Heldsinger, A.; Lemrow, S. M.; Loo, J. A.; Sannes-Lowery, K. A.; Sharmeen, L.; Czarnik, A. W. "Inhibitors of Protein-RNA Complexation That Target the RNA: Specific Recognition of HIV-1 TAR RNA by Small Organic Molecules" Biochemistry 1998, 37, 14204-14212
- Czarnik, A. W. “Guest Editorial on Combinatorial Chemistry” Acc. Chem. Res., 1996, 29, 112
- Czarnik, A. W. “Desperately Seeking Sensors” Chemistry & Biology 1995, 2, 423
- Czarnik, A. W. "Chemical Communication in Water Using Fluorescent Chemosensors" Accts. Chem. Res. 1994, 27, 302
Books
- Solid-Phase Organic Syntheses: Volume 1, Czarnik, A. W., Editor, Wiley Interscience, New York, 2001 Optimization of Solid-Phase Combinatorial Synthesis, Yan, B.; Czarnik, A. W., Editors, Wiley, New York, NY, 2002
- Integrated Drug Discovery Technologies, Mei, H-Y; Czarnik, A. W., Editors, Marcel Dekker, New York, NY, 2002 A Practical Guide to Combinatorial Chemistry, DeWitt, S. H.; Czarnik, A. W., Editors, ACS Books, Washington, 1997
- Combinatorial Chemistry: Synthesis and Application, Wilson, S. H.; Czarnik, A. W., Editors, Wiley & Sons, NY, NY, 1997
- Chemosensors of Ion and Molecular Recognition, Desvergne, J.-P., Czarnik, A. W., Editors, NATO Symposium Series, Kluwer Press, 1997
- Fluorescent Chemosensors for Ion and Molecule Recognition, Czarnik, A. W., Editor, ACS Books, Washington, 1993
Activities and awards
- Member, Board of Directors, Deuteria Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (2011-2012)
- The Authors Guild (2005-present)
- Visiting Adjunct Professor, University of Nevada, Reno (2003-present)
- Advisory Board, 2002 'Polymers and Organic Chemistry' International Symposium
- Scientific Advisory Board, Rubicon Genomics, Inc., Madison, WI (2002-2005)
- Member, Faculty of 1000 (2001-2010)
- Founding co-organizer, Gordon Research Conference on Combinatorial Chemistry (July 1999)
- Founding Editor, Journal of Combinatorial Chemistry (1998-2010)
- Founding Editor, Solid-Phase Organic Syntheses (1998-2008)
- Organizing committee, German-American Frontiers of Science Symposium (1997-1998)
- Co-organizer, Bioorganic Gordon conference (1997)
- Editorial Board, Current Opinion in Chemical Biology (1997-2006)
- Editorial Board, Combinatorial Chemistry (1997-1998)
- Organizer, NATO Workshop on 'Chemosensors of Ion and Molecule Recognition' (1996)
- Associate Editor, Journal of Molecular Recognition (1996-1998)
- Editorial Advisory Board, Accounts of Chemical Research (1996-1998)
- Editor, WWW Fluorosensor Database [http://BioMedNet.com/fluoro/] (1995-1999)
- Editorial Board, Organic Reactions (1994-1997)
- Visiting Professor, Université Bordeaux (1994)
- Adjunct Associate Professor of Chemistry, Ohio State University (1993-1997)
- Adjunct Professor of Chemistry: University of Michigan (1993-1997). Wayne State University (1994-1997), University of Toledo (1995-1997)
- Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar (1989-1994)
- Fellow of the A. P. Sloan Foundation (1989-1991)
- American Cyanamid award in recognition of excellence in the advancement of science and the art of chemical synthesis (1986)
- Merck and Co. Faculty grantee (1984)
- NIH Postdoctoral Fellow (1981-1983)
- Hodges Scholarship (University of Wisconsin)