Alan Johnson

Alan has been the Director of Chemistry at Hawaii Biotech Inc since 2013. Previously, he was the Director of Chemistry at PanThera Biopharma, a Hawaii Biotech spin-off. He has been the Principle Investigator for several NIH grants and contracts involved with the discovery and development of small molecule therapeutics to treat infectious diseases. He was a Group Leader at X-Ceptor Therapeutics, where he focused on the discovery of small molecule modulators of the nuclear receptor LXR to treat metabolic disease. He began his professional career at Allergan Inc. working in the area of the nuclear receptors. At Allergan, his work led to the identification of RAR subtype specific agonists and antagonists. He has coauthored numerous articles in the area of organic and medicinal chemistry and is a coauthor on multiple issued patents. He obtained his B.A. in chemistry at UC San Diego and his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Oregon State University, before completing an NIH post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Rochester.