J. Jeffry Howbert, Ph.D.

Head of Chemistry

J. Jeffry Howbert, Ph.D. serves as Head of Chemistry at VentiRx Pharmaceuticals. Over the past 13 years he has built and led small-molecule drug discovery programs at three Seattle-area biotech companies. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research and Development at CEPTYR, Inc., where his team developed inhibitors for PTP1B and other phosphatase enzymes as potential treatments for diabetes and cancer. Prior to joining CEPTYR, he was the Vice President of Chemistry and Computing at Celltech R&D, Inc. (formerly Chiroscience R&D and Darwin Molecular Corp.), where his responsibilities included bioinformatics, software development, and genomics, in addition to medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. Prior to Celltech, he served as Associate Director of Chemistry at Pathogenesis Corp., working on treatments for bacterial and viral diseases.

Before moving to Seattle, Dr. Howbert spent 10 years conducting drug discovery research at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, in the therapeutic areas of cancer, psychiatric disorders, and pain. While there, his personal lab brought four compounds forward into clinical development, three of which act on novel molecular targets.

Dr. Howbert received a B.A. in English Literature from Stanford University, a Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from Harvard University, and, most recently, completed a M.S. in Computer Science at University of Washington. He is an inventor on 40 issued U.S. patents.