Bristol-Myers Squibb has appointed Saurabh Saha, M.D., Ph.D. as senior vice president and global head of translational medicine in the company’s R&D organization.

"Enhancing our translational medicine capability is critical to achieving our mission, and we are excited to add Dr. Saha’s broad leadership experience and deep scientific expertise to our team," said Tom Lynch, M.D., executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Bristol-Myers Squibb. "Dr. Saha will lead translational research across our therapeutic areas of focus to ensure we have the best understanding of disease and asset-specific biology so we can deliver the right drug to the right patient at the right time."

Saha will initially be based at the company’s Waltham, Mass research site until its new state-of-the-art research site in Cambridge, Mass opens in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Saha’s research experience includes leading translational research and implementing drug discovery strategies that have resulted in the discovery and development of two first-in-class cancer therapies and the pioneering of new approaches for unmet medical needs across therapeutic areas and clinical modalities.

Prior to joining Bristol-Myers Squibb, Saha was a venture partner at Atlas Venture where he held leadership positions with many of its portfolio biotech companies, including as chief medical officer of Synlogic, and as chief executive officer of Delinia until its sale to Celgene in early 2017. In 2008, Saha established the translational research and development organization BioMed Valley Discoveries where he served as chief scientific officer and later president, and was responsible for leading the development and demonstrating human effectiveness of novel cancer drugs for refractory and resistant disease, including an ERK inhibitor and a bacteriolytic immunotherapy. Earlier in his career, Saha was a consultant in the pharmaceutical practice at McKinsey and Company and subsequently appointed director and head of the New Indications Discovery Unit at Novartis. Saha is on the editorial boards of numerous prestigious medical journals and is an associate member and global clinical scholar at Harvard Medical School.

Saha holds an M.D. and Ph.D. in cancer genetics from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he completed his graduate studies in Bert Vogelstein’s lab. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and Oxford University, studying general management and biophysics respectively. Saha completed his undergraduate studies in biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).