Rate My Professor James Leahy

James W. Leahy is Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of South Florida, within the College of Arts and Sciences. He holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Morsani College of Medicine and serves as a faculty member of the Florida Center of Excellence for Drug Discovery and Innovation (CDDI) and the Center for Global Health and Inter-Disciplinary Research (GHIDR). Leahy received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of South Florida, followed by postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He launched his independent academic career as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1992 to 1998. He then held industry positions as Director of Chemistry at MetaXen from 1998 to 1999 and Senior Director of Chemistry at Exelixis Inc. from 1999 to 2011, where he assembled a team of over 100 chemists and contributed to the discovery of more than two dozen novel drug candidates. These efforts led to four approved drugs: Cometriq and Cabometyx for the treatment of medullary thyroid cancer and advanced kidney and liver cancers, Cotellic for melanoma, and Minnebro, a non-steroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist approved in Japan for hypertension.

Leahy's research centers on the discovery and development of new therapeutic agents, with a current emphasis on infectious diseases and neurological disorders. His laboratory synthesizes and optimizes small-molecule leads across various therapeutic areas and develops novel synthetic methodologies. He has advanced more than a dozen compounds into human clinical trials, including Cometriq/Cabozantinib/XL184. Leahy is a named inventor on 30 U.S. patents and a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. He has mentored 17 Ph.D. students and four Master's students to completion. His accolades include the NSF CAREER award, Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar award, and induction into the 2025 American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows for contributions to drug discovery in cancer, cardiovascular, and infectious diseases. Notable publications encompass the total synthesis of rapamycin and demethoxyrapamycin (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1995), enantioselective total synthesis of rhizoxin D (The Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2003), and patents on c-Met modulators (2011) and protein kinase modulators (2010).