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John Wehrli

Headshot of John Wehrli

Partner, Wilson Sonsini

John Wehrli is a partner in the San Diego office of Wilson Sonsini where he leverages more than 36 years of experience in law, business, and science extensively in the life sciences industry. John has worked on a wide range of deals worth a total of over $100 billion. He counsels life sciences companies in structuring and negotiating complex strategic intellectual property transactions and licensing, including strategic alliances, joint ventures, global partnering deals, collaborations, spinouts, and strategic mergers and acquisitions. John also represents financial institutions as lead intellectual property advisor and conducts and defends scientific, business, and intellectual property due diligence for life sciences public and private financings and merger and acquisition transactions. 90% of his strategic deals have been cross boarder and he has extensive experience in Asia, Europe, and South America.

John has a background in applying the tools of computational science and engineering and mathematical modeling to systems biology and chemistry and has hands-on technical experience in physical organic, analytical, and protein chemistry; drug delivery and computational pharmacokinetics, where he is co-inventor on numerous patents; and therapeutic experience in neurology, immunology, infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease, and oncology.

John’s Ph.D. research focused on computational and behavioral neuroscience where he studied phylogenetically proximate neurobiological and neuropsychological endophenotypes of inhibition related to dynamical systems comprising dopaminergic corticomesolimbic neural network circuits and upstream neurogenesis-polygenic etiology, including polymorphic allelic genotype DRD4-7R, of downstream behavioral phenotypes.