Dr. Anabella Villalobos brings over 30 years of biopharmaceutical leadership with Pfizer and Biogen along with a personal commitment to discovering and delivering medicinal solutions to patients. Her significant industry experience lies in delivery of development candidates, INDs,
and clinical study results, driving new scientific directions, and advancing partnership opportunities by building strong relationships and scientific credibility.
Dr. Villalobos is currently the Chief Scientific Officer at Metaphore Biotechnologies. Dr. Villalobos served as head of Biotherapeutics and Medicinal Sciences at Biogen from 2017-2025, where she was responsible for the delivery of high-quality, differentiated drug candidates for
neurological, rare, and auto-immune diseases across multiple modalities, including small molecules, biologics, oligonucleotides, and gene therapy.
Prior to Biogen, Dr. Villalobos was with Pfizer for 28 years where she most recently served as Vice President of Medicinal Synthesis Technologies and Neuroscience Medicinal Chemistry. As the leader of several medicinal chemistry groups throughout her tenure at Pfizer, Dr. Villalobos’ teams delivered more than 30 small molecule candidates to combat Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, depression, and insomnia. Noteworthy are Ogsiveo® (SpringWorks) and tavapadon (AbbVie) which reached the market and proof of concept in
Phase 3 studies, respectively. Dr. Villalobos also championed new scientific directions that have improved design practices in medicinal chemistry including the Central Nervous System Multi- Parameter Optimization (CNS MPO).
Dr. Villalobos obtained her B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Panama and her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Kansas where she was a Fulbright-Hayes fellow. She was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University in synthetic organic chemistry for two years.