Tim joined Mersana as Chief Scientific Officer in its start-up days in February 2008, and in August 2019, he was named our Chief Science and Technology Officer. Tim has led all of Mersana’s discovery efforts and is a co-inventor of all of our innovative ADC platforms and product candidates.

Prior to joining Mersana, Tim acquired nearly 15 years of international scientific leadership and drug discovery experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Over the course of his career at Bayer Pharmaceuticals in the U.S., Japan, and Germany, he led a department of 150 scientists and contributed to the discovery of more than 15 product candidates in the areas of oncology, asthma, inflammation, virology, obesity, and diabetes, including anti-angiogenic kinase inhibitors, PI3K inhibitors, and anti-viral drugs.

Tim has published and presented widely in the fields of synthetic and medicinal chemistry, polymer-drug conjugates and ADCs, and he is a co-inventor on more than 50 patents. He earned a B.Sc. (Hons.) in chemistry, and a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of British Columbia and was a Merck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ohio State University in the labs of Professor Leo A. Paquette.

Fun fact about Tim: Tim is a fan of all things Japanese. He has scaled Mt. Fuji to see the sunrise on his birthday, found the best places to eat okonomiyaki, and named his beloved labradoodle Yoshi (Japanese for lucky).