Oscar Villacanas, PhD

Oscar Villacanas, PhD

Computational chemist with 20-year/200+ projects in CADD
Europe (EU)
Spanish, English
Academic affiliation

With a Bsc in chemistry and a PhD in computational chemistry, I have been offering services to the pharma industry for 20 years. I have led over 200 international scientific projects for over 30 international clients, in the areas of drug design and data mining for business development.

Individual
Company

Skills

Structure-based drug design
Data mining (ChEMBL, etc.)
GPCRs
Molecular dynamics
Virtual screening
Docking
Pharmacophore screening
Target assesment
Retrosynthesis design
Python programming
SMARTS

About

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.

Work experience

Chemistry consultant

Company:
Sole trader
Duration:
Feb 2019
-
present

Computational chemistry and data mining services for the drug discovery industry.

* Definition of computational chemistry strategy, teams, collaborations and workflows

* Execution of computational chemistry tasks

* Data mining for target and disease landscape; competition analysis

Head Computational Chemistry

Company:
Intelligent Pharma
Duration:
Nov 2007
-
Jan 2019
present

Project Manager of 200+ Computational Chemistry Projects for 30+ international clients. Leader of a team of 5 scientists.Software Development: Product Owner; In collaboration with Machine Learning experts, building of prediction models of small-molecule physico-chemical properties and target interaction.

Patent analyst

Company:
Clarivate Analytics
Duration:
Mar 2006
-
Oct 2007
present

Quality control of content in Integrity database.

Education

University of Barcelona

Degree:
PhD in Chemistry (Computational Drug Design)
Year of degree awarded:
2006

University of Barcelona

Degree:
BSc in Chemistry
Year of degree awarded:
2000

Publications

Case STUDIES

Homology modeling of GPCRs

Eur. J. Pharmacol., 833 (2018), pp. 116-123

Modeling of endogenous peptide-GPCR complexes.

Discovery of small molecule mode of action

Clin Cancer Res (2016) 22 (10): 2508–2519

Ligand-based computational analysis for the discovery of the mechanism of action of a small molecule potentially useful in cancer. The study outcomes were confirmed in vitro and in vivo and pave the way for IND filing. The compound is currently in Phase II clinical trials.