Jonathan Baell

Since 2012, Dr Baell has been a research professor in the Medicinal Chemistry theme at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), Monash University, Australia, and co-director of the Australian Translational Medicinal Chemistry Facility (ATMCF). He obtained his PhD from the Victorian College of Pharmacy under the guidance of Professor Peter Andrews and Professor Paul Alewood, University of Melbourne in 1992, subsequently spent about 10 years in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and then became the head of Medicinal Chemistry at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). His research interests include HTS library design, medicinal chemistry hit-to-lead and lead optimisation, and computer-aided peptidomimetic design in order to generate compounds with potential therapeutic utility and value. He has over 26 separate and mostly licensed pharmaceutical patents and a number of compounds in various stages of development, from preclinical to one currently in phase I clinical trials for anxiolysis. He also consults for the Australian Biotechnology Industry. He is perhaps most widely known for his identification of PAINS (Pan Assay Interference Compounds), as published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry in 2010 (J. Med. Chem. 53 (2010) 2719-2740).