Vice President

Xiang Gao, Ph.D. is working at Ionis Pharmaceuticals as a Vice President, head of PK and Clinical Pharmacology. He received a B.S. and M.S. in mechanical/chemical engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology (1983/1986), a M.S. in analytical chemistry from University of Toledo (1992), and a Ph.D in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry from The Ohio State University (1997). Prior to joining Ionis, Dr. Gao worked for Kira Pharmaceuticals (1 year) as a VP, Alexion (8 years) as an executive director, Pfizer (>9 years, 2004-2013) as a director and group head at clinical pharmacology, Bristol-Myers Squibb for 5 years (1999-2004) and MDS Harris for 2 years (1997-1999). He has published 44 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and more than 90 abstracts. During his tenure with pharmaceutical industry, he has contributed to 10 major NDA/BLA/MMA filings and approvals (Abilify for treatment of schizophrenia and Metaglip for treatment of diabetes 2, Xiapex for Treatment of Duputran, Revatio for Pediatric indication), Soliris for the treatment of aHUS/MG/NMOSD, Ultomiris for PNH/aHUS, Asfotase Alfa for the treatment of HPP, eplontersen for ATTR polyneuropasia, olezarsen for FCS, and donidalorsen for HAE, and numerious supplemental NDA filings, IND applications. He has extensive experience spreading from preclinical PK ADME, bioanalytical, to clinical PK, drug-drug interaction, PK-PD modeling and simulation, and worked on variety of disease areas such as CNS, CVMED, inflammation and immunology, infectious disease, hematology, and rare diseases etc. His current role at Ionis includes serving as a head of PK and clinical pharmacology overseeing Bioanalytical, DMPK, PK Operations, Clinical Pharmacology, and Pharmacometrics, and serving as a clin pharm lead on several NDA filing teams. He is very passionate for implementing and advocating the model informed drug discovery development using integrated quantitative approaches and quantitative system pharmacology.