Genentech: Matthew Wright | Executive Director, Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics, Drug Discovery

Scientists / Our Scientists

"Drug Discovery and Development is a truly multi-disciplinary exercise that continually challenges and strengthens our knowledge, abilities and assumptions."

Years at Genentech

Publications at Genentech

Awards & Honors

I joined Genentech in 2011 to lead the PK-Transport group in the DMPK Department of Small Molecule Drug Discovery. The mission of the DMPK department is to enable the discovery, selection, development, and commercialization of medicines for significant unmet medical needs by elucidating the absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic properties of small molecule drug candidates. Within that framework my group is responsible for the in vivo non-clinical support to aid project teams in selecting viable drug candidates, working with our partners in Development Sciences (e.g. Safety Assessment, Clinical Pharmacology, Small Molecule Pharmaceutical Sciences) to advance clinical candidates and to work with our colleagues in Research to help identify the next projects for Genentech drug discovery.

Drug discovery and development continues to be extremely challenging and success is only achievable by integrating the contributions of the excellent scientists here at Genentech. Having everyone on one campus is ideal, because you are in close proximity to multiple experts who are ready and willing to discuss any aspect of the science of drug discovery.

Featured Publication

Rational use of plasma protein and tissue binding data in drug design.

J Med Chem. 2014 Oct 23;57(20):8238-48.

Liu X, Wright M, Hop CE.

View Abstract

My focus is on how we can describe the time course of drugs in the body and how we can best select those compounds that will give us a desired extent of time-course of exposure in humans before we actually test the compound in humans. Doing this requires an integration of physiology, pharmacology, math, physical chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences that is continually challenging, humbling and instructive.

Filling a nick in NIK: Extending the half-life of a NIK inhibitor through structure-based drug design

Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, ISSN: 14643405 0960894X

James J. Crawford; Jianwen Feng; Hans D. Brightbill; Adam R. Johnson; Matthew Wright; Aleksandr Kolesnikov; Wendy Lee; Georgette M. Castanedo; Steven Do; Nicole Blaquiere; Steven T. Staben; Po-Chang Chiang; Peter W. Fan; Matthew Baumgardner; Susan C. Wong; Robert Godemann; Alice Grabbe; Catharina Wiegel; Swathi Sujatha-Bhaskar; Sarah G. Hymowitz; Nicholas P. D. Liau; Peter L. Hsu; Paul A. McEwan; Moulay Hicham Alaoui Ismaili; Matthew L. Landry

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Matthew Wright

Executive Director, Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics, Drug Discovery

Featured Publication

Rational use of plasma protein and tissue binding data in drug design.