Michael Lajiness

Dr. Michael Lajiness has extensive expertise in driving innovative change in small molecule drug discovery across several large pharmaceutical companies that included Upjohn, Pharmacia, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly. He led the efforts at Upjohn/Pharmacia to acquire compounds to augment the compound collection with drug-like, diverse molecules. He also co-led the development of novel, in-house developed integrative compound information systems at Upjohn, Pharmacia, and Eli Lilly, used by the research teams to exploit internal and external drug discovery data. These key systems, Cousin, Chemlink, and Mobius have been recognized as industry leading by the user community. Lajiness also had a long history in developing novel techniques to identify and exploit SAR information, such as Structure/Activity Landscapes (the initial concept being SARI); integrative prioritization of compounds for testing (based on efficacy, counter screens, safety, and developability ratings); and measures of compound promiscuity.