Primary Job Title Scientific Founder Primary Organization 
Pliant Therapeutics
Gender Male
Bill DeGrado, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF, where he is also a member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute. DeGrado’s work focuses on the design of small molecule drugs, peptides, proteins and peptide mimetics. Before joining UCSF in 2011, he was a member of DuPont Central Research and DuPont Merck
Pharmaceutical Company and the George W. Raiziss Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania.
DeGrado is a member of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a past President of the Protein Society and was the scientific founder of PolyMedix, which discovered brilacidin. Brilacidin, currently licensed to Cellceutix, is now in Phase 3 clinical trials for drug-resistant Staphylococcal aureus infections. Some of DeGrado’s research interests include de novo design of proteins and peptides; peptide mimetics; structure/function of membrane proteins, including integrins and viral ion channels; small molecule drug design; and bioinorganic chemistry.
DeGrado graduated from Kalamazoo College and holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago. He joined the DuPont Central Research without an intervening postdoctoral position.
