March 23, 2019

Alex Borchers PhD, April 16, 1961 – August 3, 2019

With great sadness the staff at CHDI announce the unexpected and untimely passing of our colleague Alex Borchers in a tragic accident. He was a well-respected and well-liked figure at CHDI, a true friend to many, and will be greatly missed by all.

After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Arizona Cancer Center, Alex joined Ionis Pharmaceuticals in Carlsbad, CA, where he was responsi­ble for database and application development to support a variety of programs, includ­ing rapid-throughput screening, functional genomics, antisense drug design, sample tracking, workflow management, and generation of patent applications. He then joined Biota Inc., where he was responsible for informatics supporting medici­nal chemistry, compound inventory, and the capture and distribution of biological assay data. Immediately prior to joining CHDI in July 2006, Alex was at the San Diego Supercomputer Center as part of a National Science Foundation incentive to create a computa­tional infrastructure to support computational phylogenetics.

At CHDI Alex oversaw the building and the management of all our informatics systems for preclinical data storage and retrieval. He was the steward of what is at the heart of any drug discovery and development initiative—the data and information. Alex’s contribution to CHDI will endure in these systems.

Alex was a kind, generous, principled, caring, gentle man who worked extensively to help others in his church and his community. He was deeply committed to his family, his faith, as well as to CHDI’s mission to alleviate the suffering of families affected by Huntington’s disease. He leaves behind his wife, Heather, and four children—Oliver, Erika, Aleandra, and Calvin. To them we extend our sincere condolences.