Chengzhi Yu, Ph.D.

 

Dr. Yu is the Executive Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Pharmaron. Prior to joining Pharmaron, he has spent six years and worked as the senior research scientist on two drug discovery programs for Alzheimer’s disease at two biotech companies, namely, Torreypines Therapeutics and Transition Therapeutics. There are several advanced pre-clinic candidates were identified out from his scientific contribution. Previously, he worked on oncology programs at Abraxis Bioscience where he helped the company establish several IP platforms. One of the microtubule depolymerization inhibitors he designed and synthesized is currently going to phase II clinic trials.

Dr. Yu obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry. His did his first postdoc at Department of Medicinal Chemistry in Rutgers College of Pharmacy, where he successfully designed several anticancer prodrugs for antibody-directed enzyme prodrug therapy. Later, he did another postdoc at The Scripps Research Institute, where he worked on a synthetic biology project for expansion of genetic alphabet under Drs Peter G. Schultz and Floyd E. Romeberg’s advisement. Dr. Yu is the author of over 7 patents, 22 peer-viewed journal articles, 1 book chapter as well as 8 conference presentations.