Dr. Willson is the Harold Kohn Distinguished Professor in Open Science Drug Discovery at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Chief Scientist of the SGC-UNC site. He has over 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical research with a track record in discovery of first in class clinical candidates. He led the Glaxo program on orphan nuclear receptors that used chemical biology to uncover their role in regulation of human metabolism. He was codiscoverer of the FXR agonist obeticholic acid, an FDA-approved breakthrough drug for liver diseases. His lab discovered the mechanism of action of the diabetes drug pioglitazone (PPARg agonist) and the psoriasis drug tapinarof (AhR agonist). He is widely recognized for scientific leadership in chemical biology and was named one of the world’s 400 most influential biomedical researchers. Dr. Willson has been a long-time supporter of precompetitive chemistry in early drug discovery and was an early advocate of the SGC Chemical Probes project. His current laboratory at UNC works closely with pharma companies and academic investigators to develop small molecule chemical probes for understudied (dark) proteins that are then openly shared with the scientific community. His lab has developed the Kinase Chemogenomic Set (KCGS) that contains selective inhibitors of more than 200 kinases. He is currently the co-PI of the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative AViDD Center (READDI-AC) that seeks to create drugs for viruses of pandemic potential.
