Paul A. Barsanti

Paul brings over 20 years of drug discovery experience. He joined IDEAYA Biosciences as Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery in July 2019. Prior to that he was an Executive-in-Residence at 5AM Ventures where he was involved with several early seeded new companies. From 2014 to 2018 Paul served as Head of Chemistry at Nurix, Inc., where he built and led the Chemical Sciences department and helped develop first in class small molecules against novel E3 ligases for therapeutic use within the fields of oncology and immuno-oncology. This includes the advancement of Nurix’s small molecule Cbl-b inhibitor. He played a pivotal role in initiating Nurix’s entry into their DEL and PROTAC technology platforms, enabling a protein degradation therapeutic pipeline which includes Nurix’s BTK degrader currently in pre-clinical development. From 2006 to 2014, Paul worked at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) where he served in various leadership roles including, Oncology Group Leader, Medicinal Chemistry where he and his teams focused on delivering best in class clinical candidates to treat cancer patients, including the RAF kinase inhibitor LHX254. Prior to Novartis, Paul worked in the fields of oncology and infectious diseases at Chiron Corporation (acquired by Novartis).

Paul is an author on over 50 publications and patents. Paul obtained both his Chemistry B.Sc. (Hons) and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Bath. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Professor Scott E. Denmark.