Michael Palovich BS, PhD

Dr Michael Palovich received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Allegheny College; a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh under the guidance of Professor Dennis Curran; and did postdoctoral research studies in James Marshall’s group at the University of Virginia as a National Institutes of Health research fellow.

Michael has been at GSK for about 20 years; joining SmithKline Beecham in 1997. He has spent much of his career in the drug discovery part of the organization performing medicinal chemistry and small molecule lead discovery and lead optimization activities across several therapeutic and disease areas.

Some examples include the Cathepsin C inhibitor lead optimization program in which they discovered and advanced into human trails a targeted covalent irreversible inhibitor, and the muscarinic M3 antagonist lead optimization program which resulted in the discovery of the drug umeclidinium which is found in the medicines; Anoro, Incruse and Trelegy.

In addition to the discovery roles mentioned above, he was the head of the Neuronal Targets unit and the Neuro Virtual Proof of Concept Discovery Performance Unit (Neuro VPoC DPU). Michael is currently part of the recently formed in silico drug discovery unit at GSK in which he is interested in identifying and using artificial intelligence, in silico, etc techniques to identify novel small molecule therapeutics.