Michael Jackson

Dr. Jackson is senior vice president of drug discovery and development at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, where he oversees the bicoastal operations of the Prebys Center, an approximately 80-person Drug Discovery enterprise embedded in the Institute. The center is equipped with state of the art ultra High Throughput Drug Screening (HTS) and lead discovery capabilities. His overall goal is to generate a pipeline of first in class small molecule therapeutics based on the break through discoveries on the molecular basis of disease made by investigators at the institute and collaborators.

Upon joining SBP in 2009 Dr. Jackson managed and then lead as Principal Investigator, SBP’s NIH-funded Molecular Libraries Probe comprehensive center which successfully executed over 100 HTS campaigns with collaborators across the Nation. Over a six year period the center generating >30 million screening data points and produced over 60 chemical probe reports published through the NCBI bookshelf. Since the Molecular libraries program ended the Prebys Center has continued to operate in a highly collaborative framework with investigators from many academic institutes and biopharmaceutical companies, it continues to conduct HTS screens against > 25 targets each year in search of drug leads to advance to therapeutics. Dr. Jackson is integrally involved in the center’s outreach and translational efforts that include over 35 ongoing collaborations, supported by grants, collaborations and contracts.

Dr. Jackson works closely with SBP’s senior leadership to seek new avenues of support for preclinical and clinical drug development initiatives to enable the overall mission of the Institute to translate basic research to new products.