Jerold Chun, MD, PHD

Jerold Chun, MD, PhD, is a Distinguished Scholar at Neurocrine Biosciences in San Diego and Professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys (SBP) Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, CA. He received his MD and PhD (Neuroscience) degrees through the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Stanford University School of Medicine, completed postdoctoral studies as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow at the Whitehead Institute–MIT, and has held Professorships at the UCSD School of Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute and SBP where he was also Senior Vice President for Neuroscience Drug Discovery. He has also served as Department Head of Molecular Neuroscience at Merck Research Laboratories and has interacted with the biotech and pharmaceutical industry over the last 25 years. His research has made important contributions to our understanding of the brain, including the discovery of genomic mosaicism and somatic gene recombination and its involvement in the most common forms of Alzheimer’s disease, with relevance to other brain diseases; and in separate work, he identified the first lysophospholipid receptor and other members of this lipid receptor family that underlie multiple medicines (e.g., fingolimod, siponimod, ozanimod, ponesimod and etrasimod). He has further contributed to an understanding of other diseases, including hydrocephalus, schizophrenia, neuropathic pain, infertility and fibrosis. Dr. Chun has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher since 2014.