Jay Grobler is Executive Director, Infectious Disease and Vaccines at Merck. He currently leads early clinical development for infectious disease programs and oversees biology for pipeline and marketed infectious disease products. Before assuming this role, Dr. Grobler had leadership roles in discovery and early clinical development focused on identifying new agents for HIV, HCV, as well as neuroscience and cardiovascular targets. He has led identification and lead optimization activities for several small molecule discovery programs, these activities include biochemical, biophysical, and cell-based assay development, compound screening, high throughput screen follow-up and compound mechanism of action determination.
Among his contributions, Dr. Grobler carried out seminal studies on the mechanism of action of integrase inhibitors that contributed to the identification of Isentress. More recently, he led the preclinical and early clinical development of islatravir, a first-in-class nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase translocation inhibitor (NRTTI; currently in phase 3 clinical development).
Dr. Grobler received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Miami in Miami, Florida, and subsequently competed training as an IRTA Fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, before joining Merck in 1997.
