John Wehrli's practice focuses on first-chair representation of life science companies in structuring and negotiating complex "bet-the-company" intellectual property global strategic transactions and licensing, including strategic alliances, joint ventures, global partnering deals, collaborations, spin-outs, and strategic mergers & acquisitions. He also represents financial institutions as advisor and in IP due diligence for private and public financings and buyers and sellers in M&A of life science companies.

John has 31+ years life sciences industry experience combining law, business, and science. His legal background includes chief legal officer at two public biotechnology companies and patent licensing and prosecution at a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory. He is co-founder of several biotechnology companies, and his scientific experience includes a decade as a research chemist and computational systems chemist and software engineer for Syntex/Roche. He has extensive background in computational systems biology and mathematical modeling and hands on technical experience in physical organic, analytical, and protein chemistry; drug delivery and computational pharmacokinetics, where he holds numerous patents; and therapeutic experience in immunology, infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease, and oncology.

John is a member of many legal and engineering and scientific organizations, including senior member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and member of IEEE, the Organization for Computational Neuroscience, and Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and serves on several university boards, including the board of directors and deans leadership council for the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, where he focuses on quantitative biology and computational systems biology research and educational programs.