WALTHAM, Mass. & MONTREAL– Ventus Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company utilizing structural biology and a proprietary computational platform to identify and develop small molecule therapeutics across a broad range of diseases, announced today the appointment of Victor Lobanov, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President, Head of Computational Sciences.
Dr. Lobanov brings to Ventus more than 25 years of experience in developing and implementing leading-edge computational methods across the drug discovery continuum. He has unique expertise in machine-learning, artificial intelligence, and computational chemistry, all critical aspects of the ReSOLVE platform. At Ventus, Dr. Lobanov will oversee all scientific and operational aspects of computational sciences and information technology. He will focus on driving the rapid growth of Ventus’ internal computational capabilities and also help direct the strategy for extending the scope and application of Ventus’ ReSOLVE platform.
“ReSOLVE integrates unique capabilities in structural biology, physics-based in-silico modeling, and machine learning, and is embedded in our drug discovery organization. Victor has an extraordinary track record of growing and leading teams to build and scale up innovative technologies in these very areas. We believe his expertise is ideally suited to Ventus’ strategy and a wonderful complement to our renowned scientific advisors and internal computational leaders,” said Marcelo Bigal, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO of Ventus.
Michael Crackower, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Ventus added: “Victor brings a depth of valuable expertise developing computational and machine learning platforms across multiple scientific disciplines. He is a rare individual with expertise in physics-based drug design and compound library development, as well as cutting-edge machine learning. His leadership will be critical to further expanding the moat around ReSOLVE, to identify and develop complementary approaches to build the computational capabilities of Ventus, and to attract other field-leading scientists and engineers to our growing organization.”
Dr. Lobanov has deep expertise across chemistry, cheminformatics, computational chemistry, machine learning and clinical trial operations, leading the delivery of innovative solutions for drug discovery and development. After receiving his Ph.D. in computational chemistry from the University of Tartu in Estonia, he conducted post-doctoral research in cheminformatics at the University of Florida. Early in his career, Dr. Lobanov worked at 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals (acquired by J&J) where he developed computational programs for drug design and discovery, incorporating machine learning methods. Dr. Lobanov had a decade-long tenure at Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), where he played leadership roles in the Informatics Center of Excellence and in Pharma R&D IT; his accomplishments include the design, development, and implementation of an industry-first enterprise-wide discovery informatics platform utilized by the entire J&J/Janssen R&D organization. Dr. Lobanov joins Ventus from Labcorp Drug Development (NYSE: LH), where he served as Vice President, Informatics Solution Development, leading Xcellerate technology development focused on applying machine learning and data science for clinical trial optimization.
“I believe that Ventus has created something unique with the ReSOLVE platform, as I view it as a first-of-its-kind physics-based computational chemistry platform that utilizes advanced and unique solvation modeling tools to transform virtual screening. This advanced platform capability is fully integrated into a small molecule drug discovery organization with strong structural biology capabilities. I look forward to supporting Ventus in becoming a leading company in targeting difficult to drug proteins. It is a privilege to join an organization with the potential to create an unmatched pipeline of new medicines,” said Dr. Lobanov.
