Professor James Leahy has extensive experience in researching to discover new drug candidates with fully optimized pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics parameters, having advanced more than a dozen compounds into human clinical trials including the discovery of Cometriq/Cabozantinib/XL184. Toward this end, the Leahy group is actively engaged in collaborative research efforts aimed at the synthesis and optimization of small molecule leads in a number of therapeutic areas such as infectious diseases and neurological disorders as well as the pursuit of novel synthetic methodology.