Board of Directors

John G. Houston, Ph.D.

Dr. John Houston most recently served as Arvinas’ President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chair of the Board of Directors. Prior to this, he served as the Company’s President of Research & Development as well as Chief Scientific Officer. After joining Arvinas in 2017, Dr. Houston presided over progressing multiple investigational programs into clinical development, reporting the first positive pivotal results for a PROTAC degrader, and demonstrating central nervous system pharmacodynamic activity for an orally administered PROTAC. Dr. Houston led Arvinas to its 2018 IPO and raised over $2 billion through private funding, partnerships and strategic collaborations, and follow-on financings.  

With over 35 years of experience, he served as the Senior Vice President of Specialty Discovery at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). He spent more than 18 years at BMS in roles of increasing responsibility and had accountability for all Discovery Biology disease teams as well as various Discovery technology departments. Dr. Houston was a member of the BMS R&D Executive Leadership team and chaired the Target Portfolio Committee, which had governance oversight in the discovery space. With his teams and research colleagues, he progressed over 200 compounds into early development, several of which advanced into late-stage clinical trials and toward commercialization. 

Prior to joining Bristol Myers Squibb, he worked at Glaxo Wellcome Research and Development in the UK, where he served as head of the Lead Discovery Unit. Dr. Houston currently serves on the boards of directors of NextCure, Inc. and Cybrexa Therapeutics. 

Dr. Houston obtained his B.Sc. degree in Medical Microbiology from Glasgow University and obtained his Ph.D. in Microbial Biochemistry from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. He also completed his post-doctoral studies on an MRC grant at Glasgow University.