Dr. Jonathan Baell

Dr. Jonathan Baell is a highly experienced and well-credentialed medicinal chemist. Prior to Manas AI, he was Executive Director of Discovery Chemistry at Lyterian Therapeutics (San Francisco). Dr. Baell has more than 20 years of experience in medicinal chemistry-led drug discovery and development at the public-private interface. He was a research professor at Monash University and founding Director of the Australian Translational Medicinal Chemistry Facility 2012-2022, where he grew it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise that spun-out numerous companies. He holds more than 80 granted patents and numerous licensing deals. He made anticancer BCL2-family inhibitor discoveries with Abbvie and Genentech and antianxiety GPCR modulators with Bionomics, all of which led to clinical outcomes. His translational efforts are hallmarked by a great diversity of disease target types - from ion channels to enzymes to GPCRs to protein-protein interactions - and have garnered significant awards. A particular focus has been his efforts in drug discovery for neglected diseases in developing countries.

Dr Baell has significant experience in computer-aided drug design and chemoinformatics. Publicly he is most well-known as the architect of the field of PAINS - or Pan Assay Interference Compounds, developing electronic filters which drove the creation of new publication policies of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. With approximately 200 publications and over 15,000 citations, he has made substantial contributions to his field and holds prominent editorial and leadership roles. He serves as Senior Editor of Future Medicinal Chemistry and has held key positions with the International Chemical Biology Society, including President (2018–2021) and current Chair of the Board (2022–2025). Additionally, he is a member of the scientific and strategic advisory boards for several national and international biotechnology companies.He made key contributions that led to the founding of Phrenix Therapeutics for the developments of schizophrenia treatments, OmegaOne Therapeutics for the development of better treatments of inflammation, and xCystence Bio to find a cure for polycystic kidney disease.

Dr Baell obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne followed by several years at Australia’s Commonwealth and Scientific Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the Biomolecular Research Institute (BRI), the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), then Lyterian Therapeutics.