Alice Chen, PhD

PARTNER | HEAD OF APAC

Alice Chen, Ph.D., serves as Partner and Head of APAC at Accelerator Life Science Partners. Dr. Chen joined the firm in 2013 as a Principal, where she led portfolio company operations and provided executive oversight of preclinical development activities across the portfolio.

Alice is actively involved in identifying and evaluating emerging biotechnology investment opportunities, and has played an instrumental role in the formation, oversight, and transaction of several Accelerator portfolio companies, including Acylin Therapeutics (asset acquisition by a global pharmaceutical company), Petra Pharma (acquired by a global pharmaceutical company), Nemean Pharma, Rodeo Therapeutics (acquired by Amgen Inc.), Magnolia Neurosciences, and Automera.  Dr. Chen has served in various operational leadership roles across portfolio companies and is currently on the Board of Directors for Automera.

As an experienced life sciences operating executive and investment professional, Dr. Chen brings 20 years of research and drug development experience, principally in small molecule therapeutics. Before joining Accelerator, she consulted for several venture-backed biotech firms, where she served as drug development project leader and supported partnership and M&A initiatives. Earlier in her career, she held the position of Director of Technologies at Qwell Pharmaceuticals, a venture-backed biotechnology company developing novel, small-molecule drugs focused on cancer and inflammation.

Dr. Chen completed her doctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Chaitan Khosla at Stanford University, where she focused on protein engineering and protein characterization. Dr. Chen holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Chen served as an Engineering Fellow at Merck & Company and is a graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program (Class 19). Dr. Chen served on the board of Life Science Washington, the state’s life-science trade association, for 6 years prior to her current post as ALSP’s head of operations in Singapore. Dr. Chen is a current member of various institutional and national technology incubation review committees in the U.S. and abroad.