Dean’s Entrepreneurship Series Lecture featuring Dr. Arjun Deb

Title: Engineering drugs in academia from target identification to phase 1 clinical trials (Lessons learnt along the way)

Date:  May 11, 2026, 11am - 12pm
Location: Center for Health Sciences (CHS), Room 73-105 

Speaker: 

Arjun Deb, MD 
Director, UCLA Cardiovascular Theme
Professor, Medicine, Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology
UCLA

Introduction by Mark Wisniewski, Senior Director, Biopharmaceuticals, UCLA

• Open to: UCLA faculty, students and staff (This is not a public event)
• For more information: Contact the Events Team at cri@mednet.ucla.edu

Dr. Deb has engineered a humanized monoclonal antibody that has recently been approved by FDA for Phase I clinical trials. In this special seminar co-hosted by DGSOM and TDG, Dr. Deb will discuss his experiences in bringing a drug to clinical trial, the major barriers and how to overcome them. Dr. Deb will discuss a whole range of practical topics related to drug development in academic medicine including suitability of target for drug development, funding, patents, dealing with the FDA, regulatory practices, equity and venture capital and how to evaluate the future financial value of a product developed. The talk will be science agnostic and students, trainees and faculty interested in entrepreneurship and drug development are encouraged to attend.