Xpharma Consulting LLC was founded in 2014 by Dr. Timothy Blizzard.  Dr. Blizzard has 35 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry (see Biography page for full details).  After earning his PhD in Organic Chemistry at MIT, Dr. Blizzard conducted post-doctoral research at Columbia University with Professor Koji Nakanishi then joined Merck where he worked as an individual contributor and a medicinal chemistry group leader for over 28 years.  During his tenure at Merck, Dr. Blizzard worked in multiple therapeutic areas, including antibacterials, antiparasitics, estrogen receptors, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, thrombosis and animal health.  He led internal chemistry programs that discovered 1 marketed drug (relebactam) and 6 preclinical candidates.  He also directed external chemistry teams of up to 25 chemists at CROs.  After leaving Merck, Dr. Blizzard founded Xpharma Consulting in January 2014.  In this role, he directed medicinal chemistry programs for some companies and advised others on their programs.  He has also served as an expert witness in four patent cases (one in the US and three in Canada).  He also two Innocentive.com challenges: # 9933600 “A Scalable Cost and Atom Efficient Synthesis of a Benzothiazepine” & #9933733 “Design of a Self-Cleaving Linker For Targeted Drug Delivery.”

From January 2018 through December 2020, Dr. Blizzard was Vice President of Chemistry at Expansion Therapeutics.  As head of chemistry, he led Expansion’s medicinal chemistry efforts on multiple drug discovery programs, overseeing internal and external chemistry teams of up to 23 chemists.  Dr. Blizzard also contributed to the development and execution of the company’s overall R&D strategy and participated in due diligence discussions with potential investors.  During this time, he was available only for very limited consulting.

On November 15, 2022, Dr. Blizzard assumed a full-time position as Vice President of Chemistry at a biotech startup (stealth mode).  Dr. Blizzard will not be accepting new consulting clients for the duration of that employment.