FogPharma CEO and leadership

WeiQing Zhou is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of LifeMine Therapeutics where she oversees and drives corporate development and communications, finance, operations and human resources. As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at WuXi Healthcare Ventures, WeiQing co-led the team that developed LifeMine from a concept to a seed-stage company to a fully operational biotech company financed by a powerful international investor syndicate.

Prior to LifeMine, WeiQing co-founded FOG Pharmaceuticals with Gregory Verdine and Sir David Lane, and continues to serve as FogPharma’s Chief Operating Officer. Prior to FogPharma, WeiQing spent much of her career in corporate strategy, business development and product development at MedSkin Solutions Dr. Suwelack, Germany, having risen through positions of increasing responsibility to General Manager, with responsibility for global marketing, business development and commercialization. She holds an M.B.A. from the University of Dortmund, Germany.

Dr. Keith Orford oversees the translational medicine and clinical development initiatives for FogPharma as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Clinical and Translational Science.

Prior to joining Fog, Dr. Orford was the Chief Medical Officer of Calithera Biosciences, where he led the Clinical group, including Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, Biometrics, Pharmacovigilance, and Medical Affairs. Prior to Calithera, Dr. Orford was the Clinical Development Lead in the Immuno-Oncology and Combinations Development Performance Unit at GlaxoSmithKline, where he oversaw clinical development, including multiple early-stage clinical trials with targeted agents and immunotherapies. Bef GlaxoSmithKline, Dr. Orford was at Merck, where he worked on early clinical development programs across therapeutic areas. Previously, Dr. Orford was a Research Fellow and Instructor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he trained in Internal Medicine and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. David Scadden, studying epigenetic regulation of hematopoietic and embryonic stem cell differentiation.

Dr. Orford received his undergraduate, M.D., and Ph.D. degrees from Georgetown University. His Ph.D. research elucidated the mechanism by which b-catenin is regulated by the Wnt signaling pathway.

As FogPharma’s Chief Data Officer, Dr. Lihua Yu is responsible for the development and implementation of data science strategy across all R&D functions and research programs, as well as establishing informatics and machine learning systems to power the design-make-test-predict cycle of the proprietary Helicon™ platform.

Dr. Yu brings over 20 years of experience and leadership in data science across computational biology, cancer genomics, research informatics, clinical genomics, real-world data, and evidence.

Prior to joining FogPharma, Dr. Yu was the President and Chief Data Science Officer at H3 Biomedicine Inc. and served in multiple roles during her near a decade tenure. At H3, she held overall responsibilities for the company’s R&D. As their Chief Data Science Officer, Dr. Yu was responsible for driving the expanded use of data and technology and leading the creation of a data science/cancer genomics/information-sharing engine supporting all phases of drug discovery and early clinical development. She led H3 during its transition from a drug discovery company to an early phase drug development company. Prior to H3, she was the Cancer Bioinformatics Leader at AstraZeneca and held roles of increasing responsibility from 2000-2011.

Dr. Yu earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University working under Dr. Temple Smith, and her M.S. and B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

WeiQing Zhou is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of LifeMine Therapeutics where she oversees and drives corporate development and communications, finance, operations and human resources. As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at WuXi Healthcare Ventures, WeiQing co-led the team that developed LifeMine from a concept to a seed-stage company to a fully operational biotech company financed by a powerful international investor syndicate.

Prior to LifeMine, WeiQing co-founded FOG Pharmaceuticals with Gregory Verdine and Sir David Lane, and continues to serve as FogPharma’s Chief Operating Officer. Prior to FogPharma, WeiQing spent much of her career in corporate strategy, business development and product development at MedSkin Solutions Dr. Suwelack, Germany, having risen through positions of increasing responsibility to General Manager, with responsibility for global marketing, business development and commercialization. She holds an M.B.A. from the University of Dortmund, Germany.