Peter Cheung

Dr. Peter Cheung is the Vice President of Drug Development at Tavotek Biotherapeutics. Before joining Tavotek, he was most recently the Vice President of Drug Development at Adagene, and the Head of Immune Oncology Division supervising over 30 scientists in pre-clinical to early clinical antibody development. Prior to working at Adagene, he served as Sr. Director of Preclinical Development at Compugen and has managed safety toxicology and chemistry manufacturing control (CMC) in antibody drug development for novel immune-oncology targets.

Dr. Cheung started his career at Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in 1991, first working on erythropoietin and leptin therapeutics, and subsequently on small molecule kinase inhibitors for oncology development. After J&J, he served in various scientific leadership positions with increasing responsibilities in oncology, inflammation, infectious diseases, and bleeding disorders in various biopharmaceutical industry, including Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Xencor, Y’s Therapeutics, Biomed Valley Discoveries, and Cangene (acquired by Emergent BioSolutions).

Dr. Cheung's key accomplishments include setting up a high-throughput screening group at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals. He was a key player in the integration team after the acquisition of Coelacanth. At Xencor, he led an assay development team in establishing critical assays for the successful development of Xmab technology which has since been licensed to other biotech and pharmaceutical companies including Amgen, J&J, Merck, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Morphosys. Dr. Cheung was recruited to Y’s Therapeutics, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, to set up and manage all R&D activities of the company's US-owned subsidiary in Burlingame, CA.

In addition to his diverse team management skillset, Dr. Cheung has more than 25 years’ experience in operational leadership roles in biologics drug development, from the discovery research to proof-of-concept clinical stage. He has led the successful filing of multiple INDs, and was a key participant in the US approval of two BLAs.

Dr. Cheung holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and a BA/MS in Chemistry from Creighton University. He received post-doctoral training at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He has over 25 peer-reviewed publications, two in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and one in Science, and is an inventor on many US patents and patent applications.