2021 - now       Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Health, Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation，Chinese Academy of Sciences/Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Drug Discovery & Regenerative Medicine

2019 - now       Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory/Principal Investigator focused on developing small molecule oncology based drugs

2009 - 2021     Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences/Chief Technology Officer of the Drug Discovery Pipeline

2003 - 2009     Pfizer Corp., St Louis Missouri, Senior Principal Scientist (Department of Inflammatory Diseases)

2001 - 2003     Pharmacia Corp., Chicago, Illinois/Senior Principal Scientist (Division of Inflammation Research)

1999 - 2001     Imperial College School of Medicine, Hammersmith, London/Graduate studies in the area of proteases and extracellular matrix turnover

1992 - 1999     DuPont Pharmaceuticals, Wilmington, Delaware, Senior Research Scientist (Department of Inflammation)

1990 - 1992     Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland/Research associate in the Department of Oncology

1985 - 1990    University of Delaware, USA/Undergraduate studies in biochemistry (Bachelors of Science)

Micky Tortorella is a former Senior Principal Investigator at Pfizer and Pharmacia with over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and translational medicine. His previous work has focused on understanding the biochemical mechanisms involved in the turnover and degradation of the extracellular matrix, which led to the discovery of ADAMTS-4 and -5, two enzymes responsible for pathological matrix catabolism in arthritic diseases and certain types of cancer. Micky has led and provided direction to multiple discovery teams applying basic biology to the drug discovery process, including identification of novel targets, innovation in assay development and the advancement of small molecule drugs into clinical trials. He is regarded as a key opinion leader in drug development, inflammatory and muscular skeletal diseases and has over 75 publications in high impact journals and over 30 granted US and international patents.

1.        Y Wang and M Tortorella. Molecular design of dual inhibitors of PI3K and potential molecular target of cancer for its treatment: A review. European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 2022 January, Volume 228, 114039.

2.        Malfait AM and Tortorella MD. The "elusive DMOAD": Aggrecanase inhibition from laboratory to clinic. Clin Exp Rheumatol. 2019 Sep-Oct;37 Suppl 120(5):130-134.

3.        Meyers MJ, Liu J, Liu Z, Ma H, Dai L, Adah D, Zhao S, Li X, Liu X, Lu Y, Huang Y, Tu Z, Chen X and Tortorella MD. 4-Aryl Pyrrolidines as Novel Orally Efficacious Antimalarial Agents. Part 2: 2-Aryl-N-(4-arylpyrrolidin-3-yl)acetamides. ACS Med Chem Lett. 2019 May 28;10(6):966-971.

4.        Meyers MJ, Liu J, Xu J, Leng F, Guan J, Liu Z, McNitt SA, Qin L, Dai L, Ma H, Adah D, Zhao S, Li X, Polino AJ, Nasamu AS, Goldberg DE, Liu X, Lu Y, Tu Z, Chen X and Tortorella MD. 4-Aryl Pyrrolidines as a Novel Class of Orally Efficacious Antimalarial Agents. Part 1: Evaluation of 4-Aryl- N-benzylpyrrolidine -3-carboxamides. J Med Chem. 2019 Apr 11;62(7):3503-3512.

5.        Siddiqi FH, Menzies FM, Lopez A, Stamatakou E, Karabiyik C, Ureshino R, Ricketts T, Jimenez-Sanchez M, Esteban MA, Lai L, Tortorella MD, Luo Z, Liu H, Metzakopian E, Fernandes HJR, Bassett A, Karran E, Miller BL, Fleming A, Rubinsztein DC. Author Correction: Felodipine induces autophagy in mouse brains with pharmacokinetics amenable to repurposing. Nat Commun. 2019 Jun 4;10(1):2530.