Ilan Zipkin, senior investment director at Takeda Ventures, Japan-based pharmaceutical company Takeda’s corporate venturing unit, has left after five years to become vice-president of business development at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
Parker Institute is a collaboration between US immunologists, cancer centres and universities including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San Francisco, University of Pennsylvania and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Zipkin’s departure from Takeda comes after 17 years in the venture industry. He had previously been a partner at venture capital firm Prospect Venture Partners and an associate at investment firm MPM.
Zipkin told Global Corporate Ventuting by email: “It is a slight departure from the more focused institutional or corporate venture capital work I have done for the past 17 years.
“I will be responsible for forming collaborations between academic researchers, in particular the Institute’s member centers (U Penn, MD Anderson, MSKCC, UCLA, UCSF and Stanford), and pharmaceutical, biotechnology and tools companies to enable the field to move faster and smarter than any one group can do on their own.”
The move follows the departure of Takeda Ventures president and CEO Graeme Martin in March 2017. Martin, who is now running consultancy HatchBox Bioconsulting, handed over control of the unit to Michael Martin.
Michael Martin joined Takeda Ventures in 2015 after three years in its global licensing and business development team. having come to Takeda through its purchase of cancer treatment company Intellikine, where he had been a vice-president, for up to $310m at the end of 2011.
– Photo of Ilan Zipkin courtesy of LinkedIn.