Dr. Robichaud (Al) is a Partner of Cure Ventures with over three decades of industry experience focused primarily on neuroscience. Prior to joining Cure, he was the founding scientist and Chief Scientific Officer at Sage Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel medicines to treat life-threatening, rare CNS disorders. While there, Al helped launch the company into the public market in 2014 and built the entire research and development organization, culminating in the discovery and development of two commercially approved drugs, Zulresso and Zurzuvae, as well as 9 additional development candidates.
Prior to Sage, Al was the Vice President of Chemical and Pharmacokinetic Sciences at Lundbeck Research, USA, where he was responsible for the strategy and development of novel therapeutics for mood disorders, neurodegenerative disease, and psychiatric illness. Before Lundbeck Research, Al was the Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Wyeth Discovery Research where he focused on the direction of multiple key Neuroscience projects and succeeded in advancing more than 15 compounds into clinical development. Al has also held roles of varying responsibility at several big pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Al is an inventor of more than 100 granted US patents and US patent applications and has authored or co-authored more than 200 external publications and poster abstracts. He has given multiple invited lectures at universities and national symposia and has served as Section Editor for Annual Reports in Medicinal Chemistry, Editorial Advisor for Burger’s Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery as well as ACS journal Chemical Neuroscience. Al is a Scientific Advisory Board member to Morphic Rock Pharmaceuticals, Sage Therapeutics, as well as several venture capital initiatives.