Nancy Chang, Ph.D. Research Symposium

Dr. Nancy Chang is a Taiwanese American biochemist, entrepreneur, business executive and philanthropist. She completed her undergraduate studies at Taiwan National Tsing Hua University and Brown University and attended the Ph.D. program at the Division of Medical Sciences at Harvard Medical School as one of the first few international students. With a Ph.D. in biochemistry and her pioneering postdoctoral research work at Roche on interferons, Nancy joined the founding team at Centocor, where she served as director of research and made substantial contributions to the development of monoclonal antibody as therapeutics and to the HIV field including the development of the first HIV diagnosis assay. Centocor was later acquired by Johnson & Johnson and formed the foundation of Janssen Biotech.

In 1986, Nancy moved to Houston and joined Baylor College of Medicine, where she served as Associate Professor of Virology until 1991. During this tenure, Nancy co-founded Tanox, with a vision to treat immunological diseases including allergy, asthma, and inflammation by using antibodies as a therapeutic agent. With Nancy serving as Chairman and CEO, Tanox achieved the then-largest IPO in 2000 on NASDAQ and launched Xolair in 2003, the first biotech product cleared for treating patients with moderate and severe asthma. Tanox was acquired in 2007 by Genentech for $919 million.

Afterward the sale of Tanox, Nancy led OrbiMed’s Asia fund as the chairman, founder and managing director. She served on the board of directors for various institutes including the Federal Reserve Bank in Houston, BioHouston, Biotechnology Innovation Organization (Bio), Charles River Laboratories, and several biotech companies. Throughout her career, she received numerous awards from academic, industrial, national and international organizations. She was named the Most Respected Woman in Biotechnology in 2005, Forbes Twenty-Five Notable Chinese Americans list in 2008 and was the first woman to receive the Biotechnology Heritage Award in 2012.

During her 40-year tenure in the biotechnology industry, Nancy has developed and commercialized several highly successful diagnostic and therapeutic products for cancers, HIV infection and for treating inflammatory disease including Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis, atopic dermatitis, allergy and asthma. In 2018, Trogarzo was approved by the FDA for HIV treatment. Trogarzo was originally developed by Tanox as TNX-355 under Dr. Chang. Even today, there are breakthrough drugs which are coming to the market due to Dr. Chang’s work. In 2020, Lilly paid $1.1 billion to acquire Dermira for the anti-IL-13 antibody lebrikizumab. Lebrikizumab was TNX-650. The drug was developed at Tanox under Dr. Chang. Lilly reported the drug’s success in two phase 3 clinical trials in treating moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis in late 2021. Lebrikizumab was approved in EU in 2023 and is expected to gain US FDA approval in the near future. In addition, Tanox’s Anti-tryptase antibody is in phase III clinical development by Genentech for IgE-independent severe asthma.

Currently, Nancy serves as president of the Tang Family Foundation and dedicates her time to supporting the development of novel scientific breakthroughs aimed at treating unmet medical needs.