Christopher O’Donnell

Christopher O’Donnell, Ph.D. is a Partner at Pfizer Ventures and Executive Director, Pfizer Worldwide Research, Development & Medical. Chris has over 20 years of scientific leadership at Pfizer and a strong track record of delivering clinical candidates across multiple disease areas and modalities. Prior to Pfizer Ventures, Chris built and led the Applied Synthesis Technologies group within Pfizer Worldwide Research & Development organization to accelerate the delivery of Pfizer’s small molecule portfolio. Prior to that, Chris built and led Pfizer’s Antibody Drug Conjugate Oncology Medicinal Chemistry group which delivered new linker, payload and conjugation methods resulting in 7 conjugates entering clinical development for many different cancer indications and this technology is at the foundation of PYX-201 and PYX-203. Chris started his career in the Neuroscience Medicinal Chemistry group where he invented and helped deliver numerous clinical candidates, with the most advanced being the AMPA positive allosteric modulator in Phase II that was licensed to Biogen. Chris has co-authored 60 peer reviewed manuscripts and is the inventor/co-inventor on 25 patents.

Chris earned his BS in Chemistry from the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and joined Pfizer after his post-doctoral research studies as an American Cancer Society Fellow at the University of California – Irvine.

Within Pfizer Ventures Chris is responsible for identifying, evaluating, making and managing equity investments aligned with the future directions of Pfizer. He currently serves on the boards of Adapsyn Biosciences, ARKUDA Therapeutics, Pyxis Oncology, Storm Therapeutics (UK) and Strata Oncology. Chris previously served on the boards of Kymera Therapeutics (KYMR) and was a board observer of BioAtla Inc. (BCAB), Mitokinin, Morphic Therapeutic (MORF) and Petra Therapeutics.