Chandra Vargeese, PhD

Chief Technology Officer at Wave Life Science

Speaker

Dr. Chandra Vargeese joined Wave in 2014 as Senior Vice President and Head of Research and was named Chief Technology Officer in 2020. In this role, she is responsible for the advancement of Wave’s PRISM® platform, which combines best-in-class oligonucleotide chemistry, multiple RNA-targeting modalities, and novel insights from human genetics. PRISM® is foundational to all of Wave’s drug discovery and development efforts. Chandra is one of the industry’s leading oligonucleotide chemists with approximately 30 years of oligonucleotide research experience. She has also authored numerous scientific publications and patents in the field. Before joining Wave, Chandra worked at Novartis as Executive Director of Chemistry and Delivery, RNA Therapeutics Division for more than five years. Prior to joining Novartis, she led siRNA delivery in the RNA Therapeutics division at Merck & Co. Chandra joined Merck through its $1.1 billion acquisition of Sirna Therapeutics, where she was Vice President of Chemistry. Before her time at Sirna Therapeutics, she served as Associate Director of Chemistry at NeXstar Pharmaceuticals and is the co-inventor of Macugen® (pegaptanib), an approved therapy for treating wet AMD. Chandra earned a PhD in organic chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and completed post-doctoral work at the University of Rhode Island.