Julen Oyarzabal

Dr. Julen Oyarzabal has spent more than 20 years working in the drug discovery and biopharmaceutical industry. He started his career as researcher at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and later he joined the University of Southampton. In 2001, Dr. Oyarzabal joined Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical R&D where he led several projects in the CNS therapeutic area. Five years later, he set up and led the Computational Medicinal Chemistry section at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). In 2010, Dr. Oyarzabal joined the Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA), at the University of Navarra, to set up the small molecule discovery platform and led the Molecular Therapeutics Program. From 2013 to 2018 he was also director of Translational Sciences leading scouting activities, from the University Hospital and CIMA.

He is co-inventor of more than 25 patents and published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles; he (co-)led publications in prestigious journals such as Nature Comm, Angew Chem, or J Med Chem. In addition, Dr. Oyarzabal is on the Board of Directors for the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium (ADDC) and, from 2012 to 2019, he was member of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). As partner of Columbus Venture Partners, he has served on the Board of Polypeptide Therapeutic Solutions.