Yongqi Deng

CEO

Keythera (Suzhou) Bio-Pharmaceuticals Co., Limited

Short Biography

Dr. Yongqi Deng received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Peking University, his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, and completed his postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has extensive expertise in drug discovery, having worked for over 20 years in medicinal chemistry departments at globally renowned pharmaceutical companies Schering-Plough and Merck, where he served as a project leader. From project initiation and compound screening to clinical advancement, he led teams that successfully moved four small-molecule programs into clinical development, gaining extensive technical and managerial experience.
In 2018, Dr. Deng resigned from Merck to return to China full-time and founded Keythera Pharmaceuticals (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., where he currently serves as Chairman and CEO. Since its founding, the company has built an affinity-based mass spectrometry screening and optimization platform focused on novel drug targets, aiming to address the shortage of innovative drug discovery in China. Among Keythera’s robust pipeline, the most advanced program has already entered Phase 1b clinical trials.

Presentation Topic: Affinity Screening Technology in Small-Molecule Drug Discovery and Development
Keythera Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on addressing unmet medical needs in oncology, autoimmune diseases, and other serious conditions. The company has established a world-class Affinity-Directed Micro Screening (ADMS) platform and a proprietary high-content small-molecule compound library comprising over one million compounds. Leveraging its ADMS technology, Keythera is developing a pipeline of primarily first-in-class and best-in-class drug candidates targeting diseases with significant clinical demand. Currently, three of its drug programs have entered clinical development.