John Maxwell, PhDChemistry

John Maxwell, Senior Vice President of Chemistry, has more than 23 years of experience in the drug discovery industry. At Tango, John has led the building of the drug discovery organization and oversees Chemistry, Computational Chemistry, and Research Informatics. He served as project leader for the flagship MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitor program and early project leader and chemist for early programs, with delivery of 7 development candidates across 5 drug discovery programs, leading to 5 INDs and 3 molecules currently in clinical studies. John established and chairs Tango’s Drug Discovery Advisory Board and established the internal strategy and operations team responsible for determining and enabling best-suited modalities to screen targets and identify starting chemical matter for hit-to-lead activities. Prior to Tango, he spent 15 years at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in roles of increasing responsibility as he and his teams delivered six clinical candidates across virology, oncology, and respiratory disease programs. Additionally, he managed departmental training programs for the medicinal chemistry group, lead the global corporate “people and culture” working group, and led cross-site scientific lead optimization projects. John received his doctorate in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University and obtained a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from St. Joseph’s University.