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Management Team

Impax Pharmaceuticals’ management team is rich in experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including experience with some of the world’s largest and most successful drug manufacturers. Combined, they possess decades of experience in pharmaceutical research and product development and in the development, growth and commercialization of new therapeutic products and treatments.

Michael J. Nestor

President, Impax Pharmaceuticals

Michael J. Nestor joined in March 2008 as the President of our branded products division, Impax Pharmaceuticals Division. Before joining Impax he was Chief Operating Officer of Piedmont Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharmaceutical company. Prior to Piedmont, Mr. Nestor was CEO of NanoBio, a start-up biopharmaceutical company where the company raised $30 million in financing. Prior to NanoBio, Mr. Nestor was at Alpharma, initially as President of the pharmaceutical business and later as President of the branded specialty pharmaceutical business where he established Alpharma's pain franchise. Before this he was President, International Business at Banner Inc., a global contract manufacturing organization. Mr. Nestor also spent 16 years at Lederle Laboratories / Wyeth holding increasing positions of responsibility including Vice President, Cardiovascular business, Vice President / General Manager of Lederle-Praxis Biologics, and Vice President/ General Manager of Wyeth-Lederle Vaccines and Pediatrics. Mr. Nestor has experience in a number of pharmaceutical therapeutic areas including vaccines, anti-infectives, dermatologics, CNS, generics and analgesics. Mr. Nestor has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Middle Tennessee State University and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Suneel Gupta

Chief Scientific Officer, Impax Pharmaceuticals

Dr. Gupta joined Impax Pharmaceuticals in Feb 2008 from ALZA/Johnson & Johnson, where he was most recently Sr. Vice President. Dr. Gupta held several leadership positions with increasing responsibilities over almost 20 years at ALZA/JnJ. Dr. Gupta made significant contributions to development of several drug delivery based products, such as Duragesic®, Durotap®, Nicoderm®, Testoderm®, Effidac®, Covera-HS®, Ditropan-XL®, Concerta®, Ionsys®, Jurnista®, Invega® and Priligy®. Dr. Gupta has worked across several therapeutic areas. His research interest focuses on the influence of rate and route of drug delivery to discover new indications, maximize clinical utility and/or effectiveness. He is often credited as the co-inventor of several drug delivery products such as for Concerta®, Ditropan-XL® and Invega® products. Before ALZA, Dr Gupta worked for about four years at Ciba Geigy (India) in scale-up and manufacturing of several products.

Dr. Gupta did his Ph.D. from Univ. of Manchester and Post-Doc from University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Gupta is a coauthor on more than 200 research publications and co-inventor on more than 40 patents.

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Shawn Fatholahi

Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Impax Pharmaceuticals

Mr. Fatholahi has been responsible for the strategic development and launch of Impax Pharmaceuticals' commercial division since March of 2006. Mr. Fatholahi's background spans over 22 years of in-depth experience in commercial operations roles of increasing responsibility across multiple therapeutic areas at SmithKline Beecham, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Muro ASTA/Medica, and Cephalon. Mr. Fatholahi has been directly responsible for the successful commercialization and launch of new products, line extensions or indication expansions of several blockbuster and specialty niche products including Glucophage®, Provigil®, Dynabac®, Optivar®, Tri-Nasal®, Bactroban Nasal®, Bactroban® and Timentin®.

Mr. Fatholahi received a B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Akron and a Master of Business Administration degree from Baldwin-Wallace College, Kamm School of Management.

David Paterson, Ph.D.

Vice President, Business Development, Impax Pharmaceuticals

David Paterson has served as Vice President of Business Development since July, 2008. He is responsible for supervising the Impax brand business development function, identifying and sourcing strategic business opportunities, mergers, acquisitions, alliances and/or joint ventures. Prior to Impax, David was Senior Director of Business Development at Sepracor Inc. where his primary responsibilities included CNS and drug discovery in-licensing. Prior to Sepracor, David was the Director for US Academic Liaison in the Worldwide Business Development Group at GlaxoSmithKline. Before joining GSK he was a VP of Business Development at SkyePharma, Inc. and helped establish a business development presence for SkyePharma in the US. Before that he was Director of Technology Transfer at the Penn State University School of Medicine in Hershey, PA. David earned his B.Sc.(Hons.) in Botany from the University of Glasgow, UK, and received his Ph.D. (Plant Biology) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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