Andrew (Andy) Leon joined PhaseRx as Vice President, Intellectual Property in February, 2010. Andy provides strategic counseling and legal support focusing on the Company's intellectual property and related business strategies.

Andy's practice has focused primarily on patent aspects of intellectual property law, including freedom-to-operate, validity and non-infringement analyses in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Before joining PhaseRx, Andy was Associate General Counsel for the Global Health Program at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and prior to that was Senior Corporate Counsel at Pfizer where he was responsible for developing and executing the IP strategy for the Infammation/ Immunology Therapeutic Areas. He has also worked at 3M and at the Minneapolis based IP firm Merchant & Gould. Throughout his career, Andy has represented a variety of different entities including government and academic institutions, diagnostic and research tool companies, start-up companies and pharmaceutical companies. Recently, he has focused his practice on client counseling for pharmaceutical R&D and marketing teams along the entire development timeline, including post-launch product teams and teams in early development. Andy has extensive experience in global patent portfolio creation, legal opinions and product life-cycle planning. His experience also includes Hatch-Waxman strategy and support, transactional work, and International patent procurement and enforcement.

In addition to his law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School, Andy has an MS and PhD in Organic Chemistry from Northwestern University and a BS in Chemistry from Creighton University. He is also licensed to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.