Yong-Jun Liu

Yong-Jun Liu, head of research at Sanofi, discusses his push to refocus the company on internal early-stage drug discovery. Yong-Jun Liu is a drug discovery veteran with a career that has spanned both academia and industry. Since 2002 he has overseen drug discovery programmes at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor Research Institute and AstraZeneca's biologics company MedImmune. He added another large pharma firm to this roster in 2016, when he joined Sanofi as head of research. Sanofi's president of global R&D Elias Zerhouni prioritized the development-stage pipeline during the first years of his tenure at the company, but brought Liu on board last year to refocus on the internal early-stage drug discovery efforts. Liu spoke with Asher Mullard about his first year at Sanofi and the company's emphasis on multi-targeted therapeutics.