Arnab Chatterjee, PhD
Vice President, Medicinal Chemistry
Arnab K. Chatterjee completed a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry and minor in Business from Northwestern University in 1997 and a brief period as an IT consultant, he proceeded on to the California Institute of Technology in October 1998 to conduct his doctoral thesis research in the laboratory of Professor Robert H. Grubbs in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. His doctoral research focused on understanding the reactivity and selectivity patterns of olefin cross-metathesis reactions using catalytic ruthenium alkylidenes. His research led to 12 publications and 2 issued patents and his doctoral thesis was subsequently awarded the Herbert Newby McCoy award for best doctoral thesis in 2002 from the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech. Two publications from this work have been noted as top 10 most cited research articles by the American Chemical Society, with his last article receiving greater than 1400+ citations to date. Subsequently, Professor Grubbs was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2005 for his work in the area olefin metathesis.
Upon completion of his doctoral research in September 2002, Arnab joined the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) as a Principal Investigator in the chemistry department. His work over of 9+ years has been focused on hit-to-lead and lead optimization in several medicinal chemistry projects ranging a variety of therapeutic areas (neuroscience, oncology, respiratory disease and infectious diseases). The project teams he has worked with have produced 8 preclinical candidates optimized for both inhaled and oral formulations with three novel first-in-class compounds in clinical trials currently in Phase 2b. Since May 2012 he has been responsible for setting up and leading the chemistry group at the new California Institute of Biomedical Research in La Jolla, CA working across a wide-variety of disease areas including three compounds in clinical trials and several in IND-enabling studies. His research interests include application of novel synthetic methods to expedite the structural diversification in medicinal chemistry, cell-based lead optimization and advanced formulation methods for delivery of small molecules. He has 60+ peer-review publications, 25+ patents and 2 book chapters.