About Dr. Barbosa

Dr. Tony Barbosa has greater than twenty years of experience in drug discovery and development. He is the recipient of two NIH grants: 1R43AI100499 (2013) - Medicinal Chemistry Based Optimization of Lead Compounds Against Multiple Sclerosis ($600,000) and NIH Niche Assessment Program NIH1063TN (2014) for 1R43AI100499 (~$150,000). He is also the recipient of an Ed and Ethel Moore Alzheimer's Disease Research Program grant through the Florida State Department of Health 8AZ01 ($100,000). His focus has been in the fields of oncology and immunology & inflammation targeting diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, kidney disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease.

Dr. Barbosa is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry and past Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Ave Maria University. At AMU, he works collaboratively with fellow faculty and students to design new treatments for Alzheimer's disease. He is also the Vice President of Research for 149 Bio, Inc. where he oversees all discovery efforts to develop breakthrough medicines, both small molecule and biologics, to treat kidney and inflammatory bowel diseases.

Prior to his time at 149 Bio, Dr. Barbosa was Director of Chemistry at Adhaere Pharmaceuticals where he led efforts which moved their immuno-oncology lead CD11b/CD18 (Mac-1) agonist up to clinical trials for solid tumors. Adhaere Pharmaceuticals was then purchased by Gossamer Bio, Inc. which has taken the drug into clinical trials for pancreatic, esophageal, gastric, triple negative breast, castration-resistant prostate, and microsatellite stable colorectal cancers. Dr. Barbosa has extensive experience with medicinal chemistry efforts to balance optimization of potency, pharmacokinetics (PK) and ADME-T (adsorption, dissolution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity) properties.

Dr. Barbosa obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Providence College, Providence, RI in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Rochester, Rochester, NY in 2001. He then worked at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals on several classes of protein targets such as cell surface adhesion molecules, GPCRs and kinases where he is responsible for a SoPD (start of pre-development) for the CD11a/CD18 (LFA-1) project. Dr. Barbosa then moved to a small pharmaceutical company, CGI Pharmaceuticals, where in addition to his in house medicinal chemistry efforts, he was also responsible for designing efforts for and communicating with outsourced partners internationally.

Dr. Barbosa holds numerous patents across the fields of oncology and immunology & inflammation.