Erleichda is the nom de plume of a guest blogger who contributes regularly to The Friday Fermentable columns. The act of contributing a column periodically on the topic of wine is consistent with the philosophy embodied in his pseudonym, i.e., to "lighten up" (from 'Jitterbug Perfume' by Tom Robbins).
Erleichda holds a PhD in microbiology following a baccalaureate in the same discipline. Post-doctoral training was received in tumor immunology and virology. While initial employment involved transplantation immunology research for a few years, a subsequent job at a research institute focused his attention on experimental chemotherapy and tumor biology. For the past nearly 30 years, Erleichda has worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a cancer drug developer. In that time, he has contributed substantially to the evaluation and development of scores of advanced compounds, culminating in the introduction of more than a dozen drug candidates to clinical trial, and continues to shepherd several of them toward satisfying unmet medical needs. With his colleagues, Erleichda has brought many of today's well known anticancer drugs to our armamentarium against this family of diseases.
The search for new anticancer therapeutics, and interest in natural products especially, led to the meeting of Abel Pharmboy and Erleichda, who, whenever the opportunity permits, continue to work together in this vein.
When not engaged in cancer drug development, Erleichda can be found hiking in Europe, "wherever grapes grow" he says, playing bridge on-line (listening to his personalized "Billie Holiday" station on Pandora.com) while glancing outside at the peafowl he keeps, playing a few games of racquetball, collecting medieval coins, and, of course, entertaining friends while sampling many wines.
