Dr. Bennett is one of the founding members of Isis Pharmaceuticals, where he is responsible for pre-clinical antisense drug discovery and antisense technology research. He has been involved in the development of antisense oligonucleotides as therapeutic agents, including research on the application of oligonucleotides for inflammatory, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer targets, oligonucleotide delivery and pharmacokinetics. He also runs the company's antisense mechanism program focused on the development of oligonucleotides that modulate expression of genes based on RNase H, RNAi, micro-RNA and splicing.

Dr. Bennett has published more than 130 papers in the field of antisense research and development and has more than 120 issued U.S. patents. 

Prior to joining Isis , Dr. Bennett was Associate Senior Investigator in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology at Smith Kline and French Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline (currently, GlaxoSmithKline).
He received his BS degree in pharmacy from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico and his PhD in pharmacology from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. He performed postdoctoral research in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology at Smith Kline and French Laboratories. Dr. Bennett serves on the Board of Directors of Altair Therapeutics, Inc., the scientific advisory board for the Keystone Symposia, and the Advisory Board for the Experimental Therapeutics Centre in Singapore.