Sergio Santillana, M.D., M.Sc., MBA

Sergio Santillana is a medical oncologist with more than 25 years of oncology drug development and clinical practice experience. Prior to providing strategic consultancy services to a variety of life science companies, including Ikena Oncology, he was Chief Medical Officer for Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, focused on developing biologics and nanotherapeutics for solid tumors. Before joining Merrimack, he was Chief Medical Officer for ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, a commercial-stage biotechnology company that was acquired by Takeda. Under Sergio’s leadership, ARIAD obtained US regulatory approval of Brigatinib for the treatment of ALK+ NSCLC, and had continued growth of its portfolio of targeted agents in solid tumors. Preceding his executive role at ARIAD, he served in various oncology clinical development leadership roles at Takeda, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly. Before entering the biopharma industry, he was a practicing board-certified medical oncologist for 15 years, including tenure at the National Cancer Institute of Peru (INEN) where his research focus was in clinical studies of novel agents. He holds an M.D. and B.S. from the Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal School of Medicine in Lima, Peru and a M.Sc. in Experimental Therapeutics from Kellogg College at the University of Oxford. He also holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.