Chris joins KalVista as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development with over 15 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry spanning various leadership roles and experiences in R&D, competitive intelligence, search and evaluation, corporate strategy and business development. Prior to KalVista, Chris was Vice President of Business Development at Ultragenyx leading search and evaluation and transactions to further expand the AAV clinical stage gene therapy portfolio by licensing UX111 for the treatment of MPS3A from Abeona Therapeutics and additional business development activities to further diversify the translational research preclinical pipeline and evaluation of new technologies via various other collaboration agreements. Prior to Ultragenyx, Chris led search and evaluation efforts and execution of various business development transactions to help build the rare disease strategy and preclinical pipeline at Takeda, Center of External Innovation and at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Chris was Senior Director of Strategic Evaluation, Strategy and Business Development focused on leading end-to-end business development activities to help diversify Alexion’s rare disease clinical stage portfolio, including leading execution of key deals and strategic efforts to build the anti-FcRn and ATTR amyloidosis pipeline for the company prior to the AstraZeneca acquisition. Chris began his career in the industry at Merck Research Laboratories in R&D as a medicinal chemist advancing small molecule programs in neuroscience and oncology through preclinical development and began his career in rare diseases evaluating transformative therapies and technologies in rare hematology and metabolic disease areas and covering rare disease companies as Vice President, Equity Research at Cowen and Company. Chris earned his B.A. in Chemistry from Hamilton College and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Columbia University.
