Ronan C. O'Hagan

Ronan has been leading the Oncology Discovery effort at Merck for the past three years, with a particular emphasis on small-molecule approaches to enabling and enhancing immune-modulatory therapies in cancer. Prior to this effort, he led Target Identification and Validation for Merck Oncology and built an early-discovery pipeline, including a mixture of biologics and small-molecule programs. Ronan also spent 10 years in biotech, working on early target discovery, small-molecule and biologics drug discovery, and translational research. Ronan has helped to bring multiple small-molecule and biologics programs into clinical development during his time in industry. He developed his over-arching perspective on cancer biology and the need for transformative therapies during his time at Dana Farber Cancer Institute working with Dr. Ron DePinho, where he focused on genetically engineered mouse models of cancer and novel approaches to target discovery.