Doctor Ramin Najafi is an Iranian-American chemist. Having emigrated from Iran to study in 1978, Ramin Najafi’s future plans were thrown into disarray by the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Under the guidance of Professor John Soderquist at University of San Francisco, he earned a B.S. and M.S. in chemistry, and then received his Ph.D. at University of California at Davis under the tutelage of Prof. Emeritus George Zweifel. He worked at Sigma-Aldrich, Rhone Poulenc, and PerkinElmer before leaving to found Calpac Labs (now CP Lab Safety) and NovaCal Pharmaceuticals (now NovaBay Pharmaceuticals).
Najafi was recognized by PharmaVoice 100 as one of 100 most influential leaders of 2008. He is an inventor on more than 50 patents & pending patent applications, including a class of non-antibiotic, antimicrobial compounds named Aganocides. The lead molecule, Auriclosene has broad spectrum of activity against bacteria (Wang 2011), viruses (Yoon 2011), and fungi (Ghannoum 2013), is chemically stable (Wang 2008), and has extremely low probability of developing resistance (D’Lima 2012). Currently, auriclosene is in four clinical trials for treatment of adenoviral conjunctivitis, bacterial conjunctivitis, impetigo and urinary catheter blockage and encrustation (Gottardi 2013).
