20n Bio, an AI-powered drug discovery startup focusing on designing new proteins for therapeutics, announced the appointment of LIANG Shide, PhD, as Vice President of Computational Biology, effective May 9, 2022. Dr. LIANG will oversee the computational design and R&D of proteins for therapeutics, grow the company’s research team, and guide the company to advance drug candidates from discovery to the clinic.
“We are thrilled to have Dr. LIANG join 20n Bio in this critical role and at this pivotal time in the company. He will be crucial in our efforts to build out and progress our pipeline of development programs based on our protein design platform. With our team’s depth and breadth in protein design and computing, particularly in designing and developing the protein drugs in new application scenarios, he will be vital in helping us fulfill our mission of discovering and developing new proteins for therapeutics”, said Mingfu Zhu, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of 20n Bio, “We look forward to an exciting period of growth in our research efforts under the new leadership as we continue to expand our scientific team and progress our preclinical development programs.”
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LIANG Shide, PhD
Dr. LIANG is an accomplished biopharmaceutical leader. He possesses over two decades of research experience in fundamental theories of bioinformatics and their applications in experimental biology. He has garnered fruitful investigations in protein structure prediction and antibody drugs R&D. He maintained responsibility for projects under National Natural Science Foundation of China and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and played a key role in major research projects in both countries. Then he led numerous projects of discovery and preclinical development in multiple therapeutic areas. Prior to his role at 20n Bio, Dr. LIANG served as Senior Director at Bio-Thera Solutions, Ltd.
where he was responsible for the founding of the world’s leading antibody R&D platforms, including the full-human antibody phage display library, platform of antibody structure design, bispecific and multifunctional antibody technology, and the building of a stable and efficient antibody drugs R&D system for Bio-Thera to propel its novel antibody drugs development. Dr. LIANG also pioneered a set of advanced computational methods for protein structure and function analysis, and protein immunogenicity prediction. He has published more than 30 papers in international authoritative journals like Nucleic acids Research and Bioinformatics, producing a total of over 1,800 citations. He completed postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center after earning his PhD in Physical Chemistry at Peking University.