Kerry Spear, CSO and Co-Founder, has extensive experience in structure-based drug design and is a pioneer in the (re)emerging area of phenotypic drug discovery. Kerry is skilled in applying high-content phenotypic data and artificial intelligence methods to focus and accelerate lead generation and lead optimization processes. He brings to Blue Oak over 40 years of experience in both large pharma and biotech where he led programs that cover a broad range of drug discovery research and which have resulted in 15 NCEs advancing into clinical development in CNS as well as oncology, hematology, urology, respiratory and cardiovascular therapeutic areas. He is an Adjunct Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Fudan University (Shanghai, China). He is co-inventor of over 60 patents and published patent applications and is co-author of 34 peer-reviewed publications.
Kerry earned a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.