speaker-info

Steve Okada

Head of Clinical Strategy in North America and Europe, Regenerative Medicine Unit, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company

Shunichiro (Steve) Okada, MD, with more than 25 years of academic and pharmaceutical industry experience, is Vice President and Head of Clinical Strategy for Regenerative Medicine Unit (North America and Europe) at Takeda Pharmaceutical Corporation.   Regenerative Medicine Unit’s mission is to bring innovative and definitive therapies to patients with life threatening disease.   Before his current appointment, he was Vice President and Head of Exploratory Translational Development at Takeda where he led the experimental and translational medicine group for pre-clinical assessment of early assets and early stage clinical development from candidate nomination to proof-of-mechanism/proof of concept studies.

Prior to joining Takeda, Dr. Okada held various senior positions at Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline with extensive experience in early and late phase clinical development, medical affairs, business development, external partnership and collaboration in cardiovascular and metabolic disease areas.  In academia, Dr. Okada practiced medicine and led numerous studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and American Heart Association at three leading US academic medical centers.

Dr. Okada received his undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University and his medical degree from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.  He is a board certified in internal medicine and holds subspecialty certification in Cardiovascular Disease.  He is fluent in both English and Japanese and well versed in Japanese business model and culture.