Daniel A. Erlanson

Dr. Daniel A. Erlanson is the VP of Chemistry at Frontier Medicines. Prior to that he was the co-founder and President of Carmot Therapeutics, Inc. (http://www.carmot.us). Using a proprietary technology called Chemotype Evolution, Carmot is addressing unmet chemical needs in drug discovery to tackle challenging therapeutic targets. Prior to Carmot, Dr. Erlanson spent a decade practicing medicinal chemistry and advancing techniques for fragment-based drug discovery at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, which he joined at the company’s inception.

Before Sunesis, he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with James A. Wells at Genentech. Dr. Erlanson earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University in the laboratory of Gregory L. Verdine, where he used chemical, biochemical, and biophysical methods to characterize the interactions between proteins and DNA. He earned his BA in chemistry from Carleton College.

As well as co-editing the first book on fragment-based drug discovery, Dr. Erlanson is an author or inventor on more than forty scientific publications and issued patents. Since 2008 he has been an advisor to the SPARK Translational Research Program at Stanford University. Dr. Erlanson also edits a blog devoted to fragment-based drug discovery, Practical Fragments. He has been a satisfied user of CDD since 2010.