Robert J Devita

Robert J Devita, PhD

About Me

Dr. DeVita is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences and the Director of the Medicinal Chemistry Core of the Drug Discovery Institute (DDI).  Prior to joining Mt Sinai, Dr. DeVita gained expertise managing multi-disciplinary teams that delivered on key program objectives for complex molecular targets.  He has over 25 years working in biotech and the pharmaceutical industry, including at Merck Research Laboratories where he was a director of medicinal chemistry. His work has spanned the drug discovery paradigm from target ID to PII, including leadership of drug development teams. In collaboration with multi-disciplinary teams, he has identified multiple development candidates including two PII clinical compounds for CNS and CV targets.  Dr. DeVita has drug discovery experience within a broad range of therapeutic areas including: CNS, pain/inflammation, diabetes, cardiovascular, hypertension, obesity, endocrinology, urology and oncology.  He has developed, in collaboration with his teams, orally active, brain penetrant, peripheral and GI tract drug targeting strategies.   He also has experience in the discovery and development of PET imaging agents and translational biomarkers for CNS targets.

Dr. DeVita has been an active member of the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society serving on the Long Range Planning Committee and on the organizing committees for National and International Medicinal Chemistry Meetings. He has served as an Ad Hoc Reviewer for the National Institutes of Health Study Section for Synthetic and Biological Chemistry (Section B).

Language
English
Position
PROFESSOR | Pharmacological Sciences
Research Topics

Addiction, Brain Imaging, Cancer, Cardiovascular, Diabetes, Drug Design and Discovery, Infectious Disease, Inflammation, Neuroscience, Obesity, Positron Emission Tomography, Protein Structure/Function, Receptors, Transporters

Multi-Disciplinary Training Areas

Disease Mechanisms and Therapeutics (DMT)