Meet Our Team.

Dr. Stevens helped pioneer the field of structure-based drug discovery. He has been involved in the discovery and development of several therapeutic molecules that have become breakthrough drugs including Palnziq™, which was developed at BioMarin Pharmaceutical and approved in 2018 to treat phenylketonuria. Dr. Stevens also founded Receptos which developed Zeposia™—a GPCR agonist targeting the S1PR1 receptor approved in 2020 for multiple sclerosis and 2021 for ulcerative colitis. Prior to ShouTi, Dr. Stevens founded the Bridge Institute at the University of Southern California (USC), and the iHuman Institute at ShanghaiTech University. He was previously a tenured chaired chemistry professor at Scripps Research  and before that, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Stevens’ laboratory and students have launched several successful biotech startups including Syrrx (acquired by Takeda), MemRx (acquired by Chiron/Novartis), Receptos (acquired by Celgene/BMS), and RuiYi (now Bird Rock Bio). A prolific scholar, Dr. Stevens has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and received several academic and industry awards. Dr. Stevens conducted postdoctoral research in structural biology at Harvard University with William Lipscomb, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1976. Dr. Stevens earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from USC with Robert Bau and George Olah, the latter of whom received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1994. He completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Southern Maine.

Dr. Bach is a pediatric endocrinologist with 30 years of clinical research and pharmaceutical development experience, including extensive global experience building and leading clinical teams that have successfully launched innovative pharmaceutical products into global markets. Most recently, Dr. Bach served as Senior Vice President of Endocrine Medical Sciences at Ascendis Pharma. Previously, Dr. Bach served as interim CEO and led a team to design and establish Accumulus Synergy, a cross-industry initiative to design and build a cloud-based platform to facilitate data exchange between pharmaceutical companies and health authorities. Prior to this, Dr. Bach was based in Asia and served as Head of Asia Pacific Medical Sciences and Head of China R&D at Janssen. Before that, he was Vice President of Research & Development and Scientific Affairs for Janssen Pharmaceutical K.K. in Japan. For 16 years, Dr. Bach held positions of increasing responsibility in Clinical Research at Merck, ending his tenure there as Vice President of Clinical Research Operations Worldwide. Dr. Bach has lectured in national and international forums, contributed to numerous scientific research publications, and served on professional society advisory boards to advance the field of endocrinology and clinical research. Dr. Bach received an M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, a Ph.D. in pathology from The University of Chicago, and a B.A. in chemistry from Carleton College.

Ms. Jung brings more than 20 years of life sciences corporate strategy and business development, commercial, and investment expertise. Prior to joining ShouTi, Ms. Jung served as Senior Vice President and Head of Business Development at Sangamo Therapeutics, a genomic medicines company, where she led deals with combined value over $6 billion and upfront consideration exceeding $500 million from broad strategic partnerships with Pfizer, Kite/Gilead, Biogen and Novartis. Ms. Jung also led M&A transactions including the acquisition of TxCell, a public French company. Her previous experiences include corporate development and commercial roles at Adamas Pharmaceuticals, focused on neurological diseases; Ascendancy Healthcare, with a mission to bring innovative treatments to China; and Ipsen, where she led marketing for its specialty endocrinology brand and market research for multiple brands including the US launch of Ipsen’s flagship neurology product. Ms. Jung started her career in biotechnology venture capital and fund management at Bay City Capital and Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch. Ms. Jung received her B.A. in biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Lin brings close to 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development and has delivered multiple clinical candidates, including several Phase 2 assets. Prior to ShouTi, Dr. Lin worked at Novo Nordisk as Head of Asia Pacific External Innovation, responsible for identification and evaluation of external opportunities in the region. Given his expertise in small molecules, Dr. Lin also led the formation of a strategic alliance between Novo Nordisk and Evotec focused on small molecule drug discovery and development targeting diabetes and obesity. Dr. Lin started his professional career at GSK as a medicinal chemist and later transferred to Shanghai to build and lead the chemistry team. In this role, he led global drug discovery teams to deliver clinical candidates in various disease areas including COPD, asthma, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. He ended his GSK tenure as Head of the Global Neuroinflammation Discovery Performance Unit, covering target identification through Phase 2 studies. Dr. Lin holds more than 30 patents and has authored more than 35 publications. He obtained a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University and a B.S. from Peking University.

Mr. Yoon has over 20 years of industry operating experience in building and leading venture-backed biotechnology companies. He most recently served as Vice President of Corporate Development at Cellerant Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing cell- and antibody-based immunotherapies for hematologic malignancies and other blood-related disorders. His previous experiences include serving as Sr. Director of Licensing and Business Development at VIA Pharmaceuticals, a public biotechnology company focused on developing therapies for cardiovascular diseases. Mr. Yoon has also held business development roles at MemRx/Sagres Discovery, which focused on oncology therapeutics and was acquired by Chiron/Novartis, and was an early employee of Syrrx, a structure-based drug discovery company acquired by Takeda. Mr. Yoon earned his B.A. in molecular cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Ma has more than 15 years of research, technology and drug discovery experience in pharma and biotech settings. Prior to joining ShouTi, Dr. Ma was site head and General Manager of Amgen Biopharmaceutical R&D (Shanghai), responsible for Amgen’s structural biology and China research platforms, supporting all preclinical drug discovery projects including small molecules and biologics in cardiometabolic, oncology and inflammatory disease areas. Prior to Amgen, she was at GSK (Shanghai), supporting multiple preclinical drug discovery programs across a variety of target classes (kinase, PPI, channel, membrane receptor, nuclear receptor etc.) for target validation, protein characterization and structural biology studies in the fields of neuroscience, regenerative medicine and mitochondrial biology. Dr. Ma obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Clinical Medicine from China Medical University.

Dr. Zhang brings 20 years of experience of drug discovery in both pharmaceutical and biotech settings. Prior to joining ShouTi, Dr. Zhang served as Chief Executive Officer of Shanghai Tuojie Biomedical Technology and Vice President at Hengrui Medicine, where she built up the Tuojie organization and therapeutic pipeline. Before Tuojie, Dr. Zhang held various leadership positions at Novo Nordisk, including Vice President at Novo Nordisk Research Centre China and Senior Director at Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford in UK, where she led multiple functions including biology, bioanalysis, pharmacology, and discovery technology. Before Novo Nordisk, Dr. Zhang held research positions in the U.S. at Eli Lilly and Company, Metabolex (now CymaBay Therapeutics), and DNA Sciences. Dr. Zhang has long term research interest and passion in drug discovery for cardio-metabolic diseases with patents and scientific publications in this field. Dr. Zhang obtained a Ph.D. in oncological sciences from the University of Utah and a B.S. in biological sciences and biotechnology from Tsinghua University.

Ms. Ibarra has over 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in clinical operations, project management, medical writing, and clinical finance. Prior to joining ShouTi, Ms. Ibarra was Vice President of Global Clinical Operations at Molecular Partners AG, where she was responsible for driving the execution of oncology programs in the U.S. and Europe. For more than six years, Ms. Ibarra was Vice President of Clinical Operations and Medical Writing at Dynavax Technologies, where she built and led the clinical development operations teams responsible for the BLA submission and approval of Heplisav-B^®. Ms. Ibarra has held multiple roles of increasing responsibility in clinical development operations in oncology, infectious disease, ophthalmology, and Alzheimer’s disease for biotech companies including Kartos Therapeutics, CoMentis, InterMune, FibroGen, Gilead Sciences, and Novartis. Ms. Ibarra started her career in the industry as a formulations chemist. She earned an M.S. in biological science from Stanford University and a B.A. in biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Jiang leads ShouTi’s DMPK, CMC, and toxicology activities. He has more than 26 years of experience leading teams in developing safe and robust manufacturing processes for drug substances and drug products in cGMP environments. Prior to ShouTi, Dr. Jiang held positions of increasing responsibility at companies including Roche, Novartis, AstraZeneca, and Janssen. He has experience in the preclinical, clinical, and commercial stages of drug development, including contributions to two marketed drugs, Xenical^® and Xeloda^®. Dr. Jiang has published more than 35 patents and peer-reviewed scientific papers. Dr. Jiang earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Connecticut and his M.S. and B.S. from Beijing Normal University.

During her nearly 20-year career, Dr. Lei has led various projects to develop drug candidates to a range of targets including proteases, nuclear receptors, kinases, and GPCRs. These efforts led to multiple clinical candidates targeting neuroinflammation diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, and metabolic diseases. Prior to joining ShouTi, she was Vice President of Chemistry at Jing Medicine, where she established their drug discovery portfolio and oversaw various technology platforms. Prior to that, Dr. Lei was Associate Director at Lilly China R&D Center and GSK R&D China. Previously, she held various positions at ChemPartner and CoMentis. Dr. Lei is an inventor of multiple international patents. Dr. Lei received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a B.S. in chemistry from Peking University.

Dr. Lim is a Respiratory Specialist with over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Most recently, he was Chief Development Officer, Experimental Drug Development Centre which is part of Singapore’s Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR). Before that, Dr. Lim was Vice President and Head of China Development at Janssen China R&D, and Vice President and Respiratory Therapy Area Head at AstraZeneca Global Medicines Development, China. Working primarily in respiratory medicines, he has also held global and regional roles with GSK and Merck. In addition, Dr. Lim has held a number of academic roles, including Professor, Office of Clinical Science of DUK-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, and Chief Operating Officer of Singapore Clinical Research Institute. Dr. Lim received his M.D. from Monash University in Melbourne and was awarded a fellowship from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Australia. He earned his Ph.D. studying asthma at the Imperial College School of Medicine of London University, and his MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management.

Dr. Navre is a 30-year veteran of the biopharma industry. Before ShouTi he was CEO & CSO of Facile Therapeutics, developing a small molecule for the treatment of Clostridium difficile infections, and recipient of a CARB-X award worth up to $18 million. Earlier, Dr. Navre served as SVP of Research at Achaogen where he oversaw the advancement of a small molecule LpxC inhibitor from discovery into early development as well as an antibody discovery platform targeting surface proteins of Gram-negative bacteria. Prior to that, Dr. Navre was VP of Biology & Pharmacology at Ardelyx, where he established the biology infrastructure for developing GI- targeted drugs. He is co-inventor of IBSRELA® (tenapanor), approved by the FDA for treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. While VP of Biology at Takeda San Diego, he was part of the team that created Nesina® (alogliptin), now a launched drug for Type 2 diabetes. Prior to this at Affymax – a division Glaxo Wellcome (GW) – he was a director of one of four Research Units responsible for medicinal and high-throughput chemistry, in vitro high throughput pharmacokinetics, assay development for screening encoded combinatorial libraries and scientific computing. Dr. Navre earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.S. in Chemistry from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

Tony has over 15 years of experience in leading IP strategies at pharmaceutical and biotech companies.  Before ShouTi, he served as Vice President, Intellectual Property at Global Blood Therapeutics, a public biotechnology company focused on treating sickle cell disease, where he managed all IP matters including patents and trademarks for monoclonal antibody and small molecule therapeutics.  From 2012 to 2017, Tony held various in-house IP positions at Genentech, with a primary focus on supporting the company’s oncology portfolio ranging from early-stage research to commercial products.  He was also involved in business development transactions and collaboration IP management. Prior to 2012, Tony spent 13 years at GSK, first as a medicinal chemist, then as a patent attorney. He holds an M.S. in Organic Chemistry from Bryn Mawr College, an M.S. in Computer Science from Villanova University, and a J.D. from Temple University.

Ms. Wright is Vice President of Finance and Controller at ShouTi. She has more than 30 years of financial expertise in leading and building strong financial functions for domestic and international companies, both privately held and public biotech companies. She has worked with companies as they evolved from discovery and development to the commercial stage. Prior to joining ShouTi, Ms. Wright served as Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Jaguar Health and has held Vice President of Finance and Controller positions at Veracyte, VIA Pharmaceuticals, Intermune, Cytokinetics, and Elan Pharmaceuticals. Ms. Wright participated in the initial public offerings of Veracyte and Cytokinetics. Earlier in her career, Ms. Wright spent 13 years at Genentech. Ms. Wright holds a B.S. in business administration with a concentration in accounting and marketing from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.