Alexander Hillisch

Alexander Hillisch is Executive Director and Head of “Digital Molecule Discovery” at UCB overseeing sections in Brussels, London and Boston. His teams are working on small molecules, macrocyclic peptides, targeted protein degraders and antibody drug discovery in disease areas such as inflammation and neurology. From 2019-2022 he headed the department for “Computational Molecular Design” at Bayer AG, Wuppertal, Germany. Between 2003 and 2019 he was head of Computational Chemistry as part of Medicinal Chemistry Wuppertal at Bayer. His team was involved in computer-aided drug design of small molecules in the areas of cardiology, oncology and ophthalmology. From 1998 to 2003 he led a research group at EnTec GmbH, Jena, Germany, a subsidiary of Schering AG, Berlin.
He conducted his Ph.D. thesis at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMB), Jena in the area of biophysics (NMR, FRET) and molecular modeling. Alexander Hillisch received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry with Prof. Peter Schuster in 1998 and his diploma in Pharmacy in 1995 from the University of Vienna, Austria.

He is co-author of ~60 research papers, 2 books and ~65 pharmaceutical compound patents. He contributed to the discovery of one marketed product (Finerenone, Kerendia®) and 7 clinical development candidates, amongst those Asundexian, a novel oral FXIa inhibitor currently in Phase III clinical trials. Alexander teaches “From basic research to industrial products: Modern Drug Design” as part of the “Master of Science in Chemistry” study program at the University of Cologne, from which he received a honorary professorship in 2010.