Charles is the director of UCSF’s translational accelerator Catalyst Program and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. From 2004 to 2017 he was Senior Vice President at Threshold Pharmaceuticals and responsible for both in vitro and in vivo preclinical translational studies. He was also project leader for the global clinical development program for the hypoxia-targeted anticancer drug evofosfamide (TH-302), a partnership with Merck KGaA. Prior to joining Threshold, Charles was Senior Director of Biology at Galileo Pharmaceuticals (2001 to 2004), Director of Drug Discovery at Signature Bioscience (2000 to 2001), and a Research Unit Director at Affymax (1990 to 2000).
Charles earned his A.B. in Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977, an M.S. in Developmental Biology from Stanford University in 1980, and a Ph.D in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Yale University in 1987, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Strasbourg, France in 1990.