Steven Knight, Ph.D. is Executive Director & Head of Medicinal Chemistry. He joined Proteovant Therapeutics, now SK Life Science Labs, in 2022 and brings nearly 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry as an accomplished “drug hunter” in preclinical drug discovery research.

Steve began his pharmaceutical career at GlaxoSmithKline, where he was a Director of Medicinal Chemistry. During his 25+ years at GSK, he led cross-functional teams that successfully identified several oncology clinical candidates, including those for kinesin, lipid kinase, and methyltransferase targets. Steve also led a team that pursued heterobifunctional degraders, which ultimately drew his interest to SK Life Science Labs. He is an inventor on over 70 issued US patents.

Prior to his industrial work, Steve earned a B.S. in Chemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from University of California, Irvine, where he worked on the total synthesis of Strychnos alkaloids with Professor Larry Overman. He then worked as an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Professors Ralph Hirschmann and Amos Smith at University of Pennsylvania, focusing his efforts on the design and synthesis of novel peptidomimetic scaffolds.