Oscar Villacanas, PhD

After obtaining my BSc degree in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, I joined its Modeling of Biological Systems and Drug Design research group. There, I carried out my PhD in the computational design of CDK4 and CDK6 inhibitors, using structure-based techniques and molecular dynamics. After the PhD, I joined Clarivate Analytics, where I participated in the quality control team of the Integrity database. I intensively worked in the analysis of patent documents with cutting-edge information extraction techniques. Then, I had the opportunity to be the first employee of Intelligent Pharma, a CRO offering computational chemistry services. Most of my career has been developed there as the leader of the consultancy department. Together with a team of 5 great scientists, we carried out over 200 scientific projects, for over 30 international clients, including the Americas, Europe and Asia. In addition, I was the Product Owner in the development of computational tools with the Software Development team. Focusing on early drug development, we helped many clients which currently have their products in clinical trials. We applied a multitude of methodologies, particularly in the area of target identification, hit discovery, hit-to-lead and drug repurposing. In 2019, I established on myself as a freelance consultant, my current position. During this period, I have specialized in structure-based drug design, molecular dynamics, pharmacophore elucidation and GPCR modeling. In addition, thanks to my experience in information extraction and business development, I offer data mining services for target landscape analysis in order to help companies defining their strategic drug programs.