Dr James W Janetka PhD

Dr. Janetka is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. He is an accomplished medicinal chemist with expertise in rational drug design. He has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications and holds 23 US patents. Dr. Janetka earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin. After postdoctoral work at the NIH, he joined Vertex working on Hepatitis C and cancer. Subsequently, at AstraZeneca he developed kinase inhibitors and hedgehog pathway antagonists for cancer. He co-founded the two startups Fimbrion and ProteXase Therapeutics. His project leadership has resulted in 5 candidate drugs to date, with one currently in clinical trials for cancer and another for bacterial infections. His research is focused on the structure-based drug design of lectin antagonists, kinase, and protease inhibitors as therapeutics for cancer and infectious disease.