Scott Bembenek

Dr. Scott Bembenek earned his bachelor’s (Chemistry, Physics) from Carroll University, his PhD (Theoretical Chemical Physics) from University of Kansas, and was a National Research Council Fellow. He has 17 years of big pharma experience where he worked in numerous therapeutic areas (oncology, immunology, neuroscience, pain, cardiovascular & metabolic diseases, and infectious disease) and has expertise over all stages of pre-clinical drug discovery.

While at Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson), he chaired the global kinase initiative (to identify and leverage both internal and external technologies and expertise in chemistry, biology, and computation for the advancement of the internal kinase portfolio) for which he was honored with a J&J Leadership Award. There, he was a leader on multiple high-profile projects and a core member of the teams that discovered several clinical candidates. Moreover, he developed an innovative computational approach that drastically reduced the pre-clinical timeline for an oncology clinical candidate (currently entering Phase 2) to only two years. He has made substantial scientific contributions culminating in 33 peer-reviewed publications and 20 patents.

Currently, he is the Founder, CEO, CSO of Denovicon Therapeutics, which uses their AI–molecular modeling platform to accelerate and improve the development of small-molecule therapeutics for various indications (cancers, neurodegenerative conditions, and cardiovascular diseases) with particular focus on targets in the DNA damage response (DDR) pathways.