Sam Sperry, Ph.D.

Dr. Sam Sperry has been our Vice President of Preclinical Development & Clinical Pharmacology since December 2021. Prior to serving in his current role Dr. Sperry was Executive Director, Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics (DMPK), a department that he established shortly after joining eFFECTOR in January 2014. Prior to eFFECTOR, Dr. Sperry spent 14 years in small to medium-sized biotech/pharma companies including Tularik (acquired by Amgen), SGX Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Lilly), and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Sperry’s 23 years of industry experience has included R & D efforts aimed to advance new drug treatments in cancer, pain, cystic fibrosis, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases. His contributions over those years have included build out and leadership across multiple functional areas including DMPK, analytical chemistry & compound management, as well as having played a significant role in many successfully filed INDs. Dr. Sperry is a founding member and former Scientific Program Chair of the Pharmaceutical & BioScience Society – San Diego Chapter, was a postdoctoral fellow and Chemistry teacher at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji, earned his Ph.D in Organic Chemistry (Marine Natural Products) at the University of California at Santa Cruz and B.S. in Chemistry at California State University, Long Beach.