I am indebted to:
Professor Dwight Weller who as Senior Vice President has headed the chemistry department at AVI BioPharma (as it was) since leaving Oregon State University. He has taught me all I know about the chemistry of oligomers and the fact that that is not much is no discredit to him. His review of this manuscript however has been as usual meticulous and constructive.
Professor Ryszard Kole, who worked alongside the Nobel Laureate Professor Sid Altman through the discovery of “alternative splicing” at Yale University. Ryszard was Senior Vice President of Research and Distinguished Scientist during my time at AVI BioPharma and kindly reviewed and provided input to this manuscript as well as teaching me more about exon skipping than I ever expected to grasp.
Dr. Patrick Iversen, was Senior Vice President of Research and Innovation when I was at AVI BioPharma, and my squash partner in Corvallis! Pat has been the tireless, driving force behind the anti-microbial research for the AVI stable of oligomers and found time to review and comment on the relevant sections of this book.
Mahesh Grossman and his colleagues at The Authors Team have helped me make the book more readable, and reduce sentence length, complexity and use of too much jargon! His support as the chapters have ebbed and flowed and each has been scrubbed and buffed over the last sixteen months has been welcome.
Merry Shiyu Wang has provided excellent illustrations and has been approachable, expeditious and efficient turning out diagrams to my design, while making them scientifically accurate and pleasing to the eye. Thank you!