Deog Joong (DJ) Kim has 35 years of experience in drug discovery and development. His career in new drug development has been built in biotech companies, where the outsourcing of multiple key tasks is efficiently maximized in close collaboration with academic institutions, contract research organizations (CROs) and contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs). He primarily focuses on developing novel therapeutics for Parkinson’s disease. He identified small molecules that activate the nuclear receptor Nurr1 and is actively leading the clinical development of ATH-399A, an orally administered small molecule Nurr1 activator, in the areas of lead selection, IND-enabling studies, GMP drug substance and drug product manufacturing. He founded NurrOn in 2020 and currently serves as its chief executive officer. Prior to founding NurrOn, he was vice president of R&D at Rexahn Pharmaceuticals. He had also served as chief scientific officer of Chemgenomics, Inc., a subsidiary biotechnology company of SK Corporation.