Webster Santos

Webster Santos is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Virginia Tech, serving as the Cliff and Agnes Lilly Faculty Fellow of Drug Discovery. He leads the Santos Lab, focusing on applying organic synthesis to medicinal chemistry and chemical biology. His research emphasizes synthetic methodology development and drug discovery targeting RNA structures (e.g., HIV), sphingosine kinase inhibitors, and mitochondrial uncouplers for metabolic diseases.

Education: B.S. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia (1997, 2002), followed by a NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University (2002–2006).

Research Interests:

• Development of boron/silicon-containing compounds for drug discovery
• Targeting RNA structures with branched peptides
• Sphingosine kinase inhibitors for cancer, multiple sclerosis, and fibrosis
• Mitochondrial uncouplers for obesity, fatty liver disease, and aging
• S1P transporter (Spns2) inhibition for kidney and immune disorders

Key Awards:

• Virginia Tech Innovators Award (2014)
• ACS Young Academic Investigator (2012)
• Molecular Biosystems Emerging Investigator (2011)

Labs/Teams: Director of the Santos Lab at Virginia Tech, co-founder of Flux Therapeutics (2018), Continuum Biosciences (2017), and SphynKx Therapeutics (2010). Editorial roles include Medicinal Research Reviews and Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry.