Board of Directors

Christopher O’Donnell, PhD is Executive Director, Worldwide Research, Development & Medical and Principal, Pfizer Ventures.  Chris has 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. 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 55 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 PhD 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, Kymera Therapeutics and Storm Therapeutics (UK) and is a board observer of BioAtla, Petra Therapeutics, Mitokinin and Strata Oncology.  Chris briefly served as a board observer on Morphic Therapeutic prior to their entry into the public market.