James Neef

James joined Auron in February 2022 as Director of Chemistry. Prior to joining Auron, James worked in the global discovery chemistry group within Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). James has supported multiple disease areas throughout his tenure at Novartis, most recently supporting the Neuroscience disease area where he was project leader for a program focused on identifying new treatments for psychiatric diseases. He successfully led this program through hit finding, optimization, IND enabling studies and successful clinical development. He was responsible for supporting the early psychiatry portfolio and contributed to the success of several other NS programs now in clinical studies. With 19+ years of experience within the pharma industry, James has worked on multiple target classes (GPCRs, kinases, ion channels, proteases & PPIs) in multiple disease areas including; Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Neuroscience, Immunology, and Gastrointestinal Diseases. James started his career with Novartis in the UK as an undergraduate, and attended the University of Greenwich on a part-time basis to obtain his BSc in Chemistry.