Chris Takimoto, M.D., Ph.D. is Vice President and Head of Experimental Medicine & Early Development in the Oncology Therapeutic Area at Janssen Research & Development, LLC. He is responsible for the clinical development of the oncology therapeutics portfolio from first-in-human studies through proof of concept.
Prior to Janssen Research & Development, Chris was the Director of Pharmacology at the Institute for Drug Development at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he was also the Zachry Chair for Translational Research. Chris was an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSCSA) at San Antonio and was one of the founding members of South Texas Accelerated Research Therapeutics, an independent clinical research center dedicated to early trials in oncology drug development.
Earlier in his career, Chris was an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology at UTHSCSA and served as a Senior Investigator in the Developmental Therapeutics Department in the Medicine Branch at the National Cancer Institute and as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at the Uniformed Services University.
Chris graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Stanford University in California and received both his doctorate in pharmacology and his medical degree from Yale University in Connecticut. After finishing residency training in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, he completed a fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and a second fellowship in clinical pharmacology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, also in Bethesda, Maryland.