Dr Bilbe is the Research and Development Director, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi). Dr Bilbe has the overall responsibility of building DNDi’s project portfolio and advancing the discovery and development of new treatments for neglected diseases.
Prior to joining DNDi in June 2012, Dr Bilbe was Global Head of Neuroscience Discovery at Novartis tasked with discovery and early development of novel treatments for brain diseases. He served in several management positions at Novartis including the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research Leadership Team, Head of Research for the Neuroscience Franchise, which brought two innovative drugs, Exelon patch for Alzheimer’s disease and Gilenya for multiple sclerosis, to the fruition. He also chaired the Neuroscience Disease Area Decision Board, which built a robust pipeline of projects from early discovery through to proof-of-concept clinical testing and Phase IIb trials. He led the scientists who discovered and developed AFQ056, Mavoglurant, a metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 antagonist, which demonstrated early clinical efficacy in L-DOPA-induced dyskinesias in Parkinson’s disease and also improved symptoms in fragile X mental retardation syndrome patients.

Dr Bilbe completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Zentrum for Molecular Biology in Heidelberg and the Imperial College London. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of London, Imperial College and his BSc in Zoology and Biochemistry from the University of Nottingham.