John Cuozzo

Dr. Cuozzo is currently SVP, Drug Discovery at ZebiAI Therapeutics. Dr. Cuozzo has successfully led multiple drug discovery programs throughout his career in both large pharmaceutical and small biotech companies for over twenty years. Prior to joining ZebiAI, Dr. Cuozzo was VP of Biology at X-Chem Pharmaceuticals where he built the internal drug discovery team that drove therapeutic programs in oncology, inflammation and rare disease. While at X-Chem, Dr. Cuozzo worked with X-Rx Discovery to bring its flagship program, that he initiated at X-Chem, through late stage pharmacology and toxicology studies that led to an FDA approved IND application and Orphan Drug designation. His team at X-Chem also helped build the scientific foundation for two X-Chem spin-out companies in the antibacterial and immuno-oncology spaces. Before joining X-Chem, Dr. Cuozzo led efforts to develop novel biochemical and cell-based assay platforms for metabolic disease as Director of Biology at Syndexa Pharmaceuticals. Prior to his time at Syndexa, Dr. Cuozzo served as Director of Encoded Library Technology Lead Discovery at GSK and was responsible for successfully identifying and characterizing small molecule leads for challenging targets from multiple therapeutic areas using DNA-encoded libraries. Dr. Cuozzo came into GSK through the acquisition of Praecis Pharmaceutials in 2007, where Dr. Cuozzo led all DNA-encoded library discovery efforts. Prior to his time at Praecis, Dr. Cuozzo led a team that initiated and advanced multiple small molecule kinase inhibitor programs in the Inflammation Signaling Department at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Cuozzo received his Sc.B. in Biophysics from Brown University, his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Tufts University and completed his post-doctoral studies in the Department of Biology at MIT.