John Jacobsen is the chief scientific officer of DICE Therapeutics. He joined DICE in November 2015, initially serving as vice president of chemistry, and has led the company’s drug discovery group since 2019. Prior to DICE, John was at Theravance Biopharma (formerly Theravance, Inc.) for 18 years, most recently serving as senior director of medicinal chemistry. At Theravance, he led three research programs in respiratory disease and helped transition six compounds into early development. As a member of the Theravance-GlaxoSmithKline Joint Project Committee (JPC), he helped advance collaboration assets through clinical trials to FDA approvals of Breo® and Anoro®. Within the medicinal chemistry department, he had line-management responsibility for several medicinal chemistry teams, as well as the high-throughput purification group and had a leadership role in the selection of new research projects.
John holds an A.B. in chemistry from Harvard College, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University.