About

John H. Van Drie is a multi-faceted, innovative, 20-year veteran of drug discovery, experienced as an entrepreneur, scientist and an executive. He has exceptional expertise in introducing novel approaches and advanced technology into drug discovery/development. He is a passionate drug-hunter who has contributed to the teams which discovered three marketed drugs. He is an articulate, persuasive bridge-builder excelling in helping to build new organizations in the wake of mergers. He is an internationally-recognized leader in Computer-Aided Drug Discovery (CADD), and a pioneer in of virtual screening.

Prior to launching Van Drie Research in 2007, he held posts at:

• The Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Cambridge, MA
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA
• Pharmacia, Kalamazoo, MI

John was also a founding member of BioCAD (a Silicon Valley startup acquired by Accelrys, which still markets BioCAD's Catalyst software).

John is an internationally-recognized expert in the area of computer-aided drug design (CADD), and was the Chair of the first Gordon Conference on CADD. He is one of the pioneers of virtual screening, and pharmacophore-based methods.

He studied theoretical chemistry as an NSF Fellow with W. A. Goddard III at Caltech; his PhD thesis, "Information Theory and Quantum Mechanics", was the first-ever exploration of that topic. He also studied with I. Prigogine as a BAEF Fellow at the Univ. Libre de Bruxelles.

John has been active in drug discovery since the mid-1980's. Here are his publications in the biomedical arena that have been indexed in PubMed.

Here he is on LinkedIn.