José Miguel Vela obtained his Degree, Master’s Degree and PhD in the Autonomous University de Barcelona, where it was Associate professor engaged in teaching, mentoring and research for more than 10 years. Then, he moved to industry. He served on the Executive Management Team of ESTEVE pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, where he was initially the Director of Pharmacology and then promoted to Drug Discovery and Preclinical Development Director, responsible for the non-clinical pipeline, and provided support for the Company’s entire pipeline and R&D strategy.
He was the responsible for the team engaged in the discovery of a drug that was approved by the FDA this year and 5 other investigational drugs that were licensed out, one of them already marketed. He published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and given numerous grand rounds’ presentations in various aspects of research.
Currently he is the Director and Chief Scientific Officer of Welab Barcelona, a platform with end-to-end pharma R&D capabilities that offers services for drug discovery and development, resulting from the acquisition by Leitat (a private non-profit organization and technological center) of the R&D Department of Esteve Pharmaceuticals in August 2020.
