Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Angel

Juan has been engaged in all aspects of drug discovery and development for more than 30 years. In 2015, he co-founded Arcus Biosciences together with Terry Rosen. Prior to that, he was co-founder and President/Head of R&D at Flexus Biosciences, until its acquisition by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $1.25 billion. Previously, he was Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at ChemoCentryx. During his tenure there of just under 7 years, Juan led the discovery and progression into the clinic of 8 novel drug candidates in the immunology space. At ChemoCentryx, Juan led the discovery efforts for the multi-year collaboration with GSK, which generated over $100M in non-dilutive milestones and fees. From 1996 to 2006, Juan held various scientific management positions at Tularik (responsible for about 100 scientists in Medicinal and Computational Chemistry, as well as Structural Biology) and then Amgen Inc. (after its acquisition of Tularik in 2004), most recently as Vice President of Chemistry.

From 1983 to 1996, Juan held various scientific leadership positions at Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert. Juan holds a Visiting Scholar appointment (ChEM-H) at Stanford University and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Cleave Biosciences. Juan obtained a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Universidad Complutense in Madrid (Spain) and a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Michigan. He has co-authored over 100 scientific papers and is an inventor on 50 issued U.S. patents. Juan has been responsible for the advancement of over 20 novel molecules into clinical development for diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s, RA, diabetes and diabetic nephropathy, psoriasis, asthma, and vasculitis, among others.