Julian Symons

Dr. Julian Symons obtained his D.Phil. from the University of York, UK. Following this he undertook 13 years of academic research in the areas of immunology and virology within the Departments of Medicine at the Univ. of Edinburgh, Univ. of Sheffield and the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Univ. of Oxford. In 1999 he joined the Pharmaceutical Division of Roche in the UK to work on antiviral drug development for chronic hepatitis C infection including the development of Pegasys and in 2001 became the Head of HCV Biology at the Roche Palo Alto research site in California, USA. At Roche Palo Alto, amongst other projects, Dr Symons lead the pharmacology activities for the mericitabine program, leading to the discovery of sofosbuvir (Sovaldi) and the danoprevir (Ganovo) HCV protease inhibitor program. In 2010 Dr. Symons joined Alios Biopharma, a company developing novel antiviral therapies for the treatment of viral diseases. During his tenure at Alios, Dr. Symons lead the company's virology activities and was the team leader of the RSV nucleoside development program (ALS-8176; lumicitabine). After the acquisition of Alios in 2014, Dr. Symons became VP at Alios BioPharma, a Janssen Pharmaceutical Company of J&J based in South San Francisco. From 2015 to 2018 Dr. Symons was the Global R&D Leader for the Respiratory Infections Disease Area within the Infectious Diseases Therapy Area of Janssen coordinating the strategy for the development of the company's influenza and RSV antiviral programs. Dr. Symons is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of Aligos Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing targeted, curative therapies for hepatologic diseases and viral infections. Dr. Symons has published more than 120 full papers, review articles and abstracts in the areas of cytokine / interferon research, autoimmune disease, viral immune evasion and antiviral drug discovery. Specialties: Immunology, Virology, Cytokine Biology, Drug Discovery and Development