Board Member
H. Peter Nestler, PhD
Peter Nestler has over 30 years of experience in academic research and pharmaceutical lead discovery focused on the interplay of disciplines and technologies in the context of understanding and modulating biological processes.
He has served in leadership roles since 1995, starting with leading an academic research group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and leading project teams, medicinal chemistry groups, and various initiatives. At the global level, he was heavily engaged in the Aventis Chemical Biology Initiative as the leader of the Chemical Biology Proteases platform.
Throughout the years, Peter has been contributing to a multitude of therapeutic area projects, such as anti-thrombotics, diabetes, degenerative and inflammatory joint diseases, oncology, and most recently cystic fibrosis. During this period, he discovered and delivered various novel lead and drug compounds to the Sanofi pipeline, such as a Factor Xa inhibitor and a dF508-CFTR corrector. At Icagen, he served by managing two major Icagen alliances and leading the research project addressing premature stop-codon mutations in the CFTR-gene.
In the process, Peter was involved in key disciplines of Lead Generation, including automated chemistry and high throughput purification, computational chemistry, and cheminformatics, as well as data management and database design and programming for LIMS, portfolio tracking, and compound registration processes. he designed and built the cheminformatics and drug discovery data environment.
Over the past decade, he has been deeply engaged in the southern Arizona start-up community as a dedicated member of the Desert Angels, the University of Arizona Center for Innovation (“UACI”), and TechLaunch Arizona (“TLA”).