Our Team

Dr. Smith serves as a Senior Scientific Advisor to Zoe Biosciences. For more than 20 years, he has led drug discovery and development campaigns in both industry and academia. His portfolio spans several therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular and metabolic, oncology and neurodegenerative. He and his teams developed countless assays, conducted >300 high-throughput screens, advanced eight compounds to optimized leads, nominated multiple clinical candidates, and cleared two INDs. He garnered >$35MM in NIH grants, corporate sponsored research agreements and contracts. His publication record includes more than 70 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He is an inventor on six patents. In addition to this wealth of drug discovery experience, Layton’s team published early work on apelin and cardiovascular disease and discovered novel agonist and antagonist scaffolds. He is a consultant for pre-seed and early start-up companies providing subject matter expertise in pharmacology and lab operations. As a member of the faculties of both the Sanford Bunrham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and The Scripps Research Institute, he was instrumental in the establishment of their small molecule discovery operations, and the advancement of their pipelines. He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University in 2002 where he trained with Dr. Douglas Vaughan.