Wayne Childers, Ph.D.
Dr. Wayne Childers is a medicinal chemist whose experience encompasses small
molecules, peptides, molecular glues and protein degraders. He is currently a
Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Temple University School of Pharmacy and
Associate Director of the Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research, an academic
drug discovery center founded in 2010. Wayne’s research interests include structure-
and ligand-based drug design in a variety of therapeutic areas, including cancer,
diseases of the CNS, metabolic disorders and microbial infection. Wayne received his b
achelor’s degree in chemistry from Vanderbilt University in 1979 and his Ph.D. in
organic chemistry from University of Georgia in 1984. He trained as a postdoctoral
fellow at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine before accepting a position
with Wyeth Research in 1987. While at Wyeth, teams under Wayne’s leadership
advanced five compounds to development .
In 2010 Wayne joined Temple University and was promoted to Full Professor in 2023.
Intellectual property generated in his labs has been licensed to three companies for
development, and Wayne is a co-founder of one of those companies. Wayne is an
author on over 50 peer-reviewed research publications as well as a number of reviews,
perspectives, book chapters. He is an inventor on over 60 patents and patent
applications. Wayne is co-editor of the Wiley book series Successful Drug Discovery as
well as the upcoming Wiley book series Trends in Drug Discovery. He serves as a
scientific advisor for a number of companies, including Rapafusyn Pharmaceuticals,
NatPro Pharmaceuticals and Recombination Therapeutics.