Alan Rigby

Alan Rigby is a passionate and innovative oncology leader with over 20 years of academic and industry experience in the area of data driven oncology drug discovery from concept to clinical candidate to genetically enabled first-in-man studies. Dr. Rigby is committed to leveraging patient material and data for use in the identification, stratification and development of ‘next generation’ cancer therapeutics for use in responder populations. This ‘commitment’ has resulted in clinically validated large and small molecule therapeutics for several cancer indications. Most recently, Alan led a prioritized and focused effort to translate ‘Natures Intracellular Biologic’ into transformative medicines for oncology and antibiotic resistance while chief scientific officer of Warp Drive Bio., a Cambridge based biotechnology company that was recently acquired. Alan joined Warp Drive Bio following a tenure as senior vice president and chief scientific officer at Synta Pharmaceuticals. While at Synta Alan led research and development efforts for Synta’s HSP90 clinical candidate, Ganetespib, as well as restructuring the preclinical small molecule drug conjugate platform. Prior to joining Synta, Dr. Rigby was vice president, global antibody drug conjugate biology, and head of external innovation for oncology research at the New York site for Eli Lilly and Company. Before launching his biotech/ pharmaceutical career Dr. Rigby was a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded assistant professor and principal investigator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. While at Harvard Medical School, he founded and directed the Drug Discovery and Target Validation Program within the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. As a mentor and advisor Alan continues to work with numerous organizations to assemble and chair scientific conferences with a focus on translating innovative science and oncology-centric platforms into robust and durable clinically validated strategies. Alan Rigby is on the Editorial Advisory Board for Future Medicinal Chemistry, was North American Editor for Current Computer Aided Drug Discovery and has published more than 55 scientific papers, a book chapter and has 12 patents that have published or are pending. Alan holds an Honors BSc. in Biochemistry from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the same University.