Zhonghua Pei

Dr. Zhonghua Pei is currently the Vice President of Chemistry at Neuron23. Zhonghua was previously the Senior Director of Medicinal Chemistry at IDEAYA Biosciences from September 2017 to August 2020, where they specialized in oncology drug discovery with a focus on Synthetic Lethality and DNA repair pathway-related targets. Prior to that, they were a Senior Scientist and chemistry team leader/project team leader at Genentech from January 2007 to September 2017. There, they were responsible for leading project teams from hit-to-lead to lead optimization and delivering clinical trial candidates. Zhonghua also has experience managing and mentoring both Ph.D. and associate level scientists, as well as leading and managing collaborator and CRO teams. Dr. Pei has broad experience in small-molecule drug discovery across multiple disease areas such as oncology and immunology, and is an expert in property- and structure-based drug design with experience in multiple target types including kinases, proteases, GPCRs, and protein-protein interactions. Prior to Genentech, they were a Research Investigator at Abbott Laboratories from January 1997 to December 2007.

Zhonghua Pei received their PhD in organic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they specialized in methodology development and total synthesis of natural product. Zhonghua also has a MS in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a BS in Chemistry & Material Sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China. Additionally, Pei attended No. 2 Middle school of Nanchang.

Scott Savage - Director, CMC, Ming Yu - Director, Medicinal Chemistry report to Zhonghua Pei. Some of their coworkers include Luc Desnoyers - VP Translational R&D, Steve Wood - VP Drug Discovery, and Desmond Padhi - Interim Head of Translational Medicine. Their manager is Nancy Stagliano, CEO & Board Chair.