Dr. Jagtap is a veteran medicinal chemist with 20 years of experience. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from University of Pune, India. He has played leading roles at several biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms resulting in the advancement of his patented technologies to the clinical stage of development. As a post-doctoral fellow at Virginia Tech, he discovered a series of new taxol derivatives, which showed greater potency than taxol and a semisynthetic analogue docetaxel.
At Harvard Medical School and Hoechst, he served on several medicinal chemistry projects that resulted in several highly potent sodium proton exchange inhibitors, fibrinogen receptor antagonists, and anti-necrosis agents. Necrostatin molecules he worked on during his tenure at Harvard have recently raised interest of researchers in possible treatment of cardiovascular diseases and various cancers. As PI or co-Investigator on several previous NIH-funded grants and as Director of Medicinal chemistry at Inotek Pharmaceuticals, he gained versatile experience in drug discovery and drug development. The projects under his supervision at Inotek generated two clinical candidates, one of which has advanced to Phase 3 trials for treatment of glaucoma. Dr. Jagtap holds more than 40 US and international patents in the fields of new chemical entities, investigational drug processes, pharmacology, and disease treatments. He is an author of several review articles and an invited speaker at the international meetings. As Senior Director of Chemistry at Radikal Therapeutics and Salzman Capital Ventures since 2011, Dr. Jagtap leads the small molecule drug discovery programs as well as custom organic synthesis for clients.