BOSTON– Orum Therapeutics has appointed Chad May, Ph.D., as chief scientific officer, strengthening the company’s leadership as it advances degrader-antibody conjugate, or DAC, technologies and programs.
May brings more than two decades of experience in oncology and immunology research, with a track record of advancing antibody drug conjugates, T-cell engagers and other next-generation therapeutic platforms from early discovery through clinical evaluation.
“Chad has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to take bold scientific concepts and advance them into clinical candidates across multiple therapeutic modalities,” said Sung Joo Lee, founder and chief executive officer of Orum. “His leadership experience in ADCs, T-cell engagers and structure-driven platform design aligns with Orum’s commitment to precision engineering the next generation of degrader-antibody conjugates. Chad’s expertise strengthens our position as a leader in DAC innovation and supports our progress toward meaningful clinical milestones.”
In his new role, May will provide scientific vision and research and development leadership across Orum’s organization. He will guide the strategic direction, discovery and advancement of the company’s pipeline, including the continued evolution of its proprietary DAC platforms and programs. His responsibilities will span discovery, translational research and preclinical development, with a focus on supporting technology innovation and pipeline growth.
“The opportunity to join Orum at this stage of growth is incredibly compelling,” May said. “The company’s dual-precision targeted protein degradation approach provides a strong foundation for creating new classes of degraders guided by antibody specificity. I look forward to working closely with the scientific and leadership teams to advance Orum’s DAC platforms, expand therapeutic applications across cancer and other serious diseases, and drive the next wave of innovation in degrader-antibody conjugates.”
May joins Orum from Serotiny, where he served as chief scientific officer and led the advancement of a gene and cell therapy platform through post-acquisition integration into Johnson & Johnson. Previously, he was senior vice president of research and development at Maverick Therapeutics, where he co-founded and built the R&D organization, advanced multiple conditionally active T-cell engager programs into clinical trials, and led the company’s build-to-buy collaboration with Takeda.
Earlier in his career, May held scientific leadership roles at Pfizer, where he led teams developing T-cell engagers and antibody drug conjugates and advanced several programs into IND-enabling studies and clinical development. He also worked at ImClone Systems, contributing to the design, conjugation and evaluation of antibody-based therapeutics. Over his career, May has built and led scientific teams, supported multiple first-in-class program nominations, and authored more than 30 publications and patents.
