Top 20 most influential pharmaceutical R&D executives in the world

Endpoints recently sorted out the "20 most influential R&D executives in the world", including Dr.

Every major scientific innovation in the biopharmaceutical field may not be unfamiliar to us in this industry

Through this combing, we found that not only men, but women can also make great breakthroughs in the field of drug development

The 20 most influential R&D executives in the world

The following is a brief introduction to the 20 R&D executives shortlisted

David Altshuler: A firm practitioner of gene therapy

David Altshuler

David Altshuler is the co-founder of the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute; the leader of the Human Genome Project; the research and development strategy designer of Vertex (Futai Pharmaceutical) cystic fibrosis therapy

Patrick Baeuerle: Pioneer in the field of bispecific antibodies

Patrick Baeuerle

Patrick served as the CSO of Micromet

In 2012, Micromet was acquired by Amgen for nearly $1.

Jay Bradner: A leader in protein degradation

Jay Bradner

Jay Bradner is the President of the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research

David Chang: Pioneer of allogeneic CAR-T therapy

David Chang

David Chang is a Chinese descent

In addition to serving as CEO of Allogene, Chang is also a director of A2 Biotherapeutics and Peloton Biotherapeutics, and a venture partner of Vida Ventures

Stanley Crooke: Pioneer and Defender of Antisense Therapy

Stanley Crooke

Stanley Crooke is the founder and long-term CEO of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, a leading antisense oligonucleotide, and the founder and CEO of NGO N-Lorem

Stanley Crooke was first a genius executive of GSK.

In 2020, Crooke retired from Ionis and founded a non-profit organization (NGO) called "n-Lorem", which aims to provide more rare disease patients with drugs for only one patient (N-of-1)

Fan Xiaohu: The first major inventor of China's first successful overseas CAR-T

Fan Xiaohu

Fan Xiaohu is the Chief Science Officer (CSO) of Legendary Biotech.

The Biologics Licensing Application (BLA) of cilta-cel for CAR-T therapy of BCMA targeting BCMA has been granted priority review by the FDA for the treatment of relapsed and/or refractory multiple bone marrow Tumor patients

Carole Ho: Solving the blood-brain barrier problem of neurological diseases

Carole Ho

Carole Ho graduated from the Department of Biochemistry at Harvard University, and went to Cornell University School of Medicine as a graduate student, and obtained a postdoctoral degree in neurobiology from Stanford University

Now she is the CMO of Denali Therapeutics.
Denali is a company focused on treating neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
.

Kathrin Jansen: A pioneer in major vaccine research and development

Kathrin Jansen

Kathrin Jansen is the head of Pfizer's vaccine research and development department.
She has led a huge and unprecedented revolutionary study, proving that the company's COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for humans
.
In addition, she is also a pioneer in the research and development of Merck’s HPV vaccine and Pfizer’s Prevnar 13 vaccine
.

Katalin Karikó: pioneering improved mRNA technology

Katalin Karikó

Katalin Karikó is honored by the industry as the "mother of the new coronavirus vaccine"
.
She was born in Hungary in 1955 and has been conducting RNA research at the University of Pennsylvania since the 1990s, and then published a large number of articles describing how specific nucleoside modifications in mRNA can lead to reduced immune responses
.
Karikó left academia in 2013 and has served as Senior Vice President at BioNTech
.

Cynthia Kenyon: Our Lady of Anti-aging

Cynthia Kenyon

Professor Cynthia Kenyon is a member of the American Academy of Sciences, more than 20 years ago in the morning
.
In the laboratory, she changed the single DNA of the nematode to extend its life span from 3 weeks to 6 weeks
.
She is currently the vice president of aging research for Calico, an anti-aging company under Google
.
The ultimate goal of this company is to establish a "Bell Labs" to study the problem of human aging, and to find creative ways to effectively extend human life
.

John Leonard: the pioneer of gene editing LNP technology

John Leonard

John Leonard was the senior vice president of global drug development at AbbVie and currently serves as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Intellia Therapeutics
.
After obtaining a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University, he participated in the residency program at Stanford University, and did postdoctoral work at NIH, researching HIV genetics
.
Intellia is one of the first CRISPR companies founded by Nobel Prize winner and pioneer Jennifer Doudna
.

John Maraganore: Develop the world's first RNAi drug

John Maraganore

Dr.
John Maraganore is the President and CEO of Alnylam
.
The RNAi therapy Onpattro (patisiran) developed by the company was approved by the US FDA in 2018 and is the first small interfering RNA (siRNA) drug to be marketed
.
At present, the company has 4 RNAi therapies approved by regulatory agencies, and 1 is in the NDA stage
.

Frank McCormick: Focus on RAS-driven tumor research

Frank McCormick

Dr.
Frank McCormick is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the director of the RAS science project at the National Cancer Institute
.
He founded Onyx Pharmaceuticals in 1992 and served as CSO.
He is one of the developers of the multi-target inhibitor Sorafenib
.
He also participated in the founding of Avidity NanoMedicines, Olema Oncology, BridgeBio and many other companies
.

Richard Mulligan: Pioneer of gene transfer technology

Richard Mulligan

Richard Mulligan won the "MacArthur Genius Award" when he was only 27 years old
.
His research focuses on developing methods to introduce genes into mammalian cells, and how to use gene transfer technology to answer basic biological questions and develop gene therapies.
He is recognized as a "pioneer of gene transfer technology" in the industry
.

His research has promoted the development of retroviral and lentiviral vectors.
Scientists have used these vector tools to interpret many basic problems in human biology and development, and used them to develop gene therapies for the treatment of various diseases
.

Roger Perlmutter: Pioneer of immune checkpoint inhibitors

Roger Perlmutter

Dr.
Roger Perlmutter is an industry and academic leader with 35 years of experience
.
During his tenure as Merck’s global executive vice president and president of R&D, he guided the discovery and development of a variety of drugs, including the immune checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda
.

In May of this year, Perlmutter served as the CEO of Eikon Therapeutics.
The company opened a drug discovery platform based on super-resolution microscopes that can clarify the behavior of proteins in living cells
.

Aviv Regev: Advocate of algorithm-driven drug discovery

Aviv Regev

Dr.
Aviv Regev is the head of early R&D at Genentech and one of the initiators of the Human Cell Atlas project, which sequence all cells in the human body at the single-cell level
.

Her team intends to provide detailed analysis based on biological and genomics characteristics, and construct a "panorama" depicting the characteristics of each cell in the human body and their interaction with other cells, in order to understand human health, diagnosis, monitoring and treatment The disease lays the foundation
.
She believes that with the development of big data and algorithms, it is expected to change the existing drug development model
.

Jude Samulski: Pioneer of AAV Vector Development

Jude Samulski

Jude Samulski is the founder of AskBio and a pioneer in adeno-associated virus (AAV) research
.
He isolated the first AAV genome when he was a graduate student in the 1980s
.
This discovery allows researchers to start designing the transformation of AAV into a gene delivery tool
.

AAV vectors are currently one of the main vector tools for gene therapy delivery
.
In October 2020, Bayer spent approximately US$4 billion to acquire AskBio
.

Richard Scheller: From R&D boss to independent consultant

Richard Scheller

Dr.
Richard Scheller is a former Stanford University professor and former Executive Vice President of Genentech’s Early R&D
.
After retiring from Genentech in 2014, he joined 23andMe and founded the Therapy Development Department
.

The department cooperates with pharmaceutical companies such as GSK to make it possible to discover innovative therapies based on the information in the genome database, and in 2020 will license the IL-36-targeting bispecific antibody developed based on the genome database to Almirall for continued development
.

Scheller left the corporate world in 2019 to become an independent consultant, advising companies including 23andMe, Google Ventures, Alector and BridgeBio
.

David Schenkein: Advocating the use of science to change the "rules of the game" in the industry

David Schenkein

Dr.
David Schenkein is a hematologist and medical oncologist and is currently the head of GV's life science investment team
.
He started as CEO of Agios Therapeutics in 2009
.
Under his leadership, Agios has grown from only 10 employees to more than 500, and has developed 2 innovative drugs that target tumor metabolism
.

Schenkein currently holds a VC role at GV and supports the creation of companies such as Encoded Therapeutics
.
He is also the operational mentor of Kartik Ramamoorthi and firmly believes that the scientific method is a potential game changer
.

George Yancopoulos: The world's highest paid R&D executive

George Yancopoulos

George Yancopoulos is the co-founder and chief scientific officer (CSO) of Regeneron, and the world's highest paid R&D personnel, with revenues of up to 130 million U.
S.
dollars in 2020
.

For more than 30 years, Yancopoulos has shaped Regeneron into today's highly regarded industry leader
.
As CSO, he has been working at the forefront of all the company's pioneering sciences and is one of the company's technical inventors of nine FDA-approved drugs
.
He built the foundation laying technology platform of Regeneron and accelerated the development of innovative drugs
.

Yancopoulos has published more than 300 papers and owns more than 100 patents.
Yancopoulos is one of the 10 most cited scientific authors in the world since the 1990s and the only one on the list in the industry
.

Reference materials:

From bench to boardroom: 20 of the most influential biopharma R&D executives in drug development