Daniel Ritz is Senior Director and Senior Group Leader in the Drug Discovery Translational Science Division at Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd and has been with the company since it was launched in 2017. Currently he is responsible for Lead Discovery and Biology Technologies. Projects from various disease areas include anti-infective therapies targeted against Gram-negative and Clostridium difficile infections.
Previously, he was leading the preclinical anti-infective group at Actelion working on cadazolid that was in clinical development for the treatment of C. difficile infections and on research projects that resulted in the discovery of three broad-spectrum antibiotics that were advanced into preclinical development. Before that, Daniel held a Research position at Cubist Pharmaceuticals and was involved in the lipopeptide optimization program. He led the biology team responsible for natural product screening,
Daniel’s background is in biochemistry and bacterial genetics and his research activities are focused on early discovery, lead optimization and preclinical development, as well as microbiology aspects during later development stages with more than 20 years of industry experience, and he has authored over 30 papers, and holds several patents.
Daniel received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry (Dipl Natw) and his PhD in microbiology from the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland and completed a postdoctoral training as research fellow in the lab of Jon Beckwith at Harvard Medical School in Boston.