Dr Ming-Qiang Zhang is corporate Vice President of Research & Development and a member of Senior Leadership Team in Translational Science at Amgen. He leads Amgen’s Asia R&D as the Head of the company’s R&D Center in Shanghai, China and General Manager / Legal Representative of Amgen BioPharmaceutical R&D (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. He also serves as chair of the R&D Working Group of the R&D-based Pharmaceutical Association in China (RDPAC), and Vice-Chairman of the Med Chem Committee of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association (CPA) as well as an adviser to a number of local government and industry organizations on biopharmaceuticals. He has >20 years of R&D experience and led the discovery of multiple candidate drugs progressed to approval or clinical development for the treatment of CNS, cancer, inflammatory and infectious diseases, including Merck's first-in-class muscle relaxant reversing agent BRIDION® (sugammadex). He is co-author / co-inventor of >100 scientific publications / patents, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a scientific advisory board member of several scientific publications incl. MedChemComm, Current Drug Discovery, Chinese J Med Chem, BAO J Pharm Sci. His scientific achievement has been recognized by a number of prestigious awards including the Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize and the Nexxus Life Science Award for Innovation. BRIDION is nominated for 2016 Prix Galien USA “Best Pharmaceutical Product” - the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in biopharmaceutical and medical technology research.

Prior to joining Amgen, Dr Zhang held a series of R&D leadership roles with increasing responsibilities in top-notch companies ranging from biotech, specialty pharma to large multi-national companies. He was corporate Vice President and Head of Asia Pacific R&D at Merck Sharp & Dohme (Merck & Co.), and served as the founding General Manager of MSD R&D (China) Co. Ltd. He also co-founded ViroChem Pharma Inc in Montreal, Canada, which was acquired by Vertex in 2009.