Anabella Villalobos

As head of Biotherapeutics and Medicinal Sciences at Biogen, Dr. Villalobos is responsible for the delivery of high-quality, differentiated drug candidates that advance through the clinic to become transformative medicines. Additionally, she has built a new gene therapy unit, setting the initial direction of effort including hiring the first team.

Prior to Biogen, Dr. Villalobos was at Pfizer for 28 years where she most recently served as Vice President of Medicinal Synthesis Technologies and Neuroscience Medicinal Chemistry. As the leader of several medicinal chemistry groups throughout her tenure at Pfizer, Dr. Villalobos’ teams delivered more than 30 candidates which showed increased survival to the clinic. Noteworthy were clinical candidates to combat Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, depression, insomnia, and stroke. Among other accomplishments, she contributed to the design and discovery of CP-118,954 (icopezil), an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, which was advanced to Phase II clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease. This candidate became part of the agreement that led to the successful co-promotion of Aricept by Pfizer and Eisai. Dr. Villalobos has also championed new scientific directions that have improved design practices in medicinal chemistry including the Central Nervous System Multi-Parameter Optimization (CNS MPO) design tool and a novel PET ligand design and discovery approach.

Dr. Villalobos obtained her B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Panama and her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Kansas where she was a Fulbright-Hayes fellow. She was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University in synthetic organic chemistry for two years.