17 April 2018 - - San Mateo, California- and Shanghai, China-based global biopharmaceutical company Terns Pharmaceuticals Inc. has named Juan Carlos Lopez-Talavera, M.D., Ph.D. and Chuan Shih, Ph.D. as scientific advisors, the company said.
Lopez-Talavera has over 20 years of experience in the biopharma industry, with extensive expertise in liver and gastrointestinal diseases.
Most recently, he was senior vice president, head of medical affairs and member of the executive team at Intercept Pharmaceuticals. Previously he held positions at AbbVie as head of medical affairs, global research and development, at Bristol Myers Squibb, where he was vice president and global development lead, and at Roche Laboratories as senior medical director.
Before moving into industry, Lopez-Talavera was Assistant Professor with the Divisions of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and Endocrinology and Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine with the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and Attending Physician of the Liver Unit at the Hospital General Universitari Vall D'Hebron in Barcelona.
Lopez-Talavera was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale University School of Medicine, and Clinical Observer at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center. He holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Hepatology from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.
Shih is currently a venture partner of Lilly Asia Ventures with over 30 years of experience working within the life sciences industry. Before joining Lilly Asia Ventures, he was the director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Research (IBPR) of the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan.
Prior to IBPR, Shih led drug discovery and translational medicine teams across multiple therapeutic areas at Crown Biosciences, Inc., Lilly Research Laboratories, and Eli Lilly and Company.
Shih received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Ohio State University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University under Nobel Laureate Professor E. J. Corey.
Terns is focused on discovering and developing molecularly-targeted, oral, small molecule drugs to treat liver disease and cancer. The company combines expertise in disease biology, medicinal chemistry, and extensive clinical development capabilities in China to advance its growing pipeline of drugs that are optimized against clinically validated targets or targets that have significant preclinical validation.