Wenkai Li

CEO and CSO at NeuroVanda

Presenter

Dr. Wenkai Li is the Co-Founder, CEO & CSO of a stealth mode biotech. Prior to his current role, Dr. Li was the External Innovation Head for APAC at Biogen from 2020 to 2023. The primary goal of his job was to create competitive advantage for the company by establishing Biogen as the partner of choice through interactions with biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies, academic labs, and venture groups. To achieve this, he cultivated strong and in-depth scientific relationships with academic and life science communities to access emerging sciences including novel targets, promising preclinical and clinical assets, and disruptive technologies. Before Biogen, Dr. Li was the CEO of Biopeutix where he had been leading a team of industry veterans in attacking neurodegenerative diseases since 2017. Along with the management team, he set strategic directions and designed research pipelines for the company. He also played important roles in fundraising and business development. Before Biopeutix, he was the Vice President of R&D at Zensun where he provided executive leadership in progressing a diverse product portfolio covering cardiovascular, oncology, metabolic disorders, and neurology. Dr. Li began his pharmaceutical career as a Senior Biologist in Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Merck Research Laboratories, and later became a Principal Scientist at GSK, leading multiple cutting-edge drug discovery programs. Dr. Li has 18 years of industry experience developing assets of multiple modalities including small molecules, biologics, nucleic acids, and gene therapies. He has advanced 8 NMEs into IND and various stages of clinical development. Dr. Li received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently on the Editorial Board of the Chinese Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders.