Mark Varney, PhD has spent over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry. He joined Neurolixis from Cortex Pharmaceuticals, where he was president and CEO and formerly chief scientific officer. Prior to Cortex, Dr. Varney was vice president of drug discovery at Sepracor, Inc. (now Sunovion) and vice president of drug discovery at Bionomics. He held positions of increasing responsibilities at SIBIA Neurosciences and, upon its acquisition by Merck in 1999, was appointed a director at Merck’s San Diego facility.

Dr. Varney received his BSc in biochemistry with honors from Surrey University, United Kingdom and completed his PhD and postdoctoral training at Oxford University, United Kingdom. Dr. Varney’s career has focused on drug discovery and clinical development for treating Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, depression, cognitive disorders, anxiety, pain, epilepsy and insomnia. He has been successful in developing drug candidates in several of these disease areas, and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and filed numerous patents.