Theresa Williams

Dr. Theresa M. Williams provides medicinal chemistry consulting services to SHY Therapeutics, LLC. As a founding team member, she has been instrumental in hit identification, target compound design and optimization, and coordinating compound synthesis and QA, biophysical studies, and computational chemistry through CRO partnerships.

Before joining SHY Therapeutics, Dr. Williams spent 25 years at Merck Research Laboratories in West Point, PA, where she made significant contributions to medicinal chemistry projects in ophthalmology (carbonic anhydrase inhibitors for glaucoma), oncology (farnesyl transferase inhibitors), and HIV antivirals (first-generation non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors).

In her managerial roles, Dr. Williams led projects in neuroscience, focusing on treatments for migraine and schizophrenia, and HIV antivirals, focusing on second-generation NNRTIs to combat emerging clinical resistance. Her team pioneered the first orally bioavailable CGRP receptor antagonist for acute migraine, telcagepant. Despite demonstrating clinical efficacy, telcagepant was discontinued due to a liver safety signal; however it laid the groundwork for future approved therapies ubrogepant (Ubrelvy) and atogepant (Qulipta). Her group's research on second-generation NNRTIs culminated in the discovery of doravirine (Pifeltro), approved in August 2018.

Dr. Williams is a co-inventor on 77 patents/patent applications. Her past professional activity includes serving on a number of boards and committees, including NIH Drug Discovery in Neuroscience; the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Advisory Board; and the Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents Senior Editorial Board.