Litao Zhang's Biography

Litao Zhang, Vice President/Leads Discovery & Optimization, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Dr. Litao Zhang, Vice President of Leads Discovery and Optimization at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), has broad range of experiences in the pharmaceutical industry.
She joined BMS in 2003 and prior to that, held positions of increasing responsibility at Aventis and DuPont Pharmaceuticals.
During the past 15 years, her scientific expertise has been excelled in multiple disease areas including Oncology, Neuroscience, Virology, Cardiovascular, Immunology, Immuno-oncology and Metabolic Diseases.

One of Dr. Zhang’s major accomplishments at BMS includes establishing and leading the Lead Evaluation Function across three research sites. The first-in-class technology platforms and novel informatics solutions developed by this cross-functional team led to a significant paradigm shift and repositioned BMS technology infrastructure at the frontier of two major drug target classes, kinases and G-protein coupled receptors.
During past two years, she led the teams cross functional areas and identified technology gaps in each of therapeutic areas. Advanced technology solutions and translational in-vitro cellular models for high through put screening were delivered to advance discovery programs from concept to drug candidate nomination.
The revolutionary lead optimization process resulted in a 20-fold productivity increase and a 3-fold cycle time reduction for in-vitro pharmacology data packages. This in turn empowered quicker, more informed decisions on the chemical synthesis strategy and influenced selection of high quality drug candidates earlier in the lead optimization process.
As a result, her team has impacted over 100 program transitions from concept to drug candidate nominations over the past ten years.