Rick Ewing, phd

head of medicinal chemistry

Dr. Rick Ewing is a senior medicinal chemist experienced in leading teams to deliver development candidates, running academic collaborations and leading scientific assessments for business development opportunities.

Rick has held the position of Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery at the Barer Institute, a discovery phase oncology biotech. Previous to his role at the Barer Institute, Dr. Ewing was a senior director in Discovery Chemistry at Bristol Myers Squibb where he led medicinal chemistry teams in the therapeutic areas of cardiovascular, diabetes, obesity, and heart failure. In these areas, Dr. Ewing led medicinal chemistry teams to deliver over 15 development candidates. Among these are Milvexian, a first in class Factor XIa inhibitor currently in PIII development.

Rick has experience at developing and leading CRO and consulting networks.  He has a broad knowledge of biotechs through his lead role in the search and evaluation of business development opportunities, Over his last 5 years at BMS, Dr. Ewing was involved in over 100 scientific evaluations for business development across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, immunology, fibrosis, heart failure and platform technologies.

Rick is coinventor on 74 patents, and co-author on 73 peer reviewed publications. In 2021, he was awarded the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellow for his scientific achievements and contributions to the Society, and in 2018 received the Ondetti-Cushman award for leadership of the FXIa team that discovered Milvexian.  Prior to Bristol Myers, Dr. Ewing spent 12 years at Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (now part of Sanofi). Dr. Ewing received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, and his B.S. in Chemistry West Chester University of Pennsylvania.