Our Team
Debanu Das, Ph.D.
Debanu has over 20 years of experience in high-throughput protein X-ray crystallography, structure-and fragment-based drug discovery and structural biology. His expertise includes structure-function analysis of a broad range of proteins and drug targets (kinases, proteases, antibody-antigen complexes, nuclear receptors, ubiquitin ligases, methylases, polymerases, microbiome enzymes, membrane proteins, transcription factors).
Prior to Accelero Biostructures, he served as Staff Scientist in the Structural Genomics Division at SSRL (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park. There he determined crystal structures of several hundred novel proteins as part of the JCSG and established multiple productive partnerships with other renowned research groups for applying the results. He received his postdoctoral training at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California Berkeley on structural genomics and membrane protein crystallography with Sung-Hou Kim, a pioneer of structural genomics and founder of the drug discovery company Plexxikon.
As an industry expert, Debanu also consults with scientific and technology innovators. He holds an Integrated MS in Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and received his Ph.D. from Rutgers, NJ, training with Millie Georgiadis, a former student of Douglas Rees and Wayne Hendrickson. He has also taken professional development courses in business and law in the Continuing Studies Program at Stanford University.
Co-Founder & CEO
Ashley M. Deacon, Ph.D.
Ashley has over 30 years of experience in synchrotron-based protein crystallography research, structure-and fragment-based drug discovery and structural biology. His professional experience and passion lies in the development and application of new technology to high impact structural biology research. Prior to founding Accelero Biostructures, Ashley held multiple positions at SSRL at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, including Staff Scientist, Senior Staff Scientist, and Group Leader of the Structural Genomics Division and JCSG Structure Determination Core.
Ashley helped develop a synchrotron-integrated platform for high quality structure determination which JCSG applied to a broad array of important biological problems, including the de novo structure determination of hundreds of proteins from the human microbiome, human stem cell and T-cell biology and the prokaryotic cell cycle. This led to the determination of about 1500 novel 3D structures, including several protein-protein and protein-nucleotide complexes and numerous protein-ligand complexes.
During postdoctoral training at Cornell University with Steven Ealick, Ashley worked closely with Nobel Laureate Herbert Hauptman to apply “direct methods” of structure determination to a broad class of biological problems using synchrotron-based multi-wavelength anomalous dispersion and ultra-high resolution diffraction data. Ashley holds a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, UK, training with John Helliwell, and is an alumni of the Stanford Manager Academy at Stanford University.
Co-Founder & CSO
Dave Jobes brings over 20 years of research and business development expertise in infectious diseases, oncology, and metabolic diseases. Dave received his Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from Tulane University. After completing his postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, Dave worked at Applied Biosystems, where he was integrally involved in bringing a novel HIV drug resistance kit to market, ViroSeq®, which received 510(k) clearance from the FDA. He then moved to VaxGen where he ran a research group that characterized the HIV strains isolated from VaxGen’s two international Phase 3 HIV vaccine trials. This work has resulted in numerous publications studying the effects of the vaccines in MSMs and IV drug users. At VaxGen, he was also instrumental in establishing the business development strategy and led a deal to acquire interest in a novel meningitis vaccine.
Dave is also a serial entrepreneur, having served as co-founder and business leader at Presidio Pharmaceuticals (HIV and HCV small-molecule therapeutics), Mid-Atlantic Biotherapeutics (novel immunotherapy for infectious diseases), and Prosper Animal Health (next-generation animal vaccines).
As a business development executive, Dave has completed >$300M in transactions to date, in a number of different therapeutic areas and covering numerous technologies and continues to consult with and mentor various companies on business development strategy and practices.
David Jobes, Ph.D.
Business Development