David R. Parkinson, M.D.

David R. Parkinson is President and CEO of Nodality, a South San Francisco-based biotechnology company focused on the biological characterization of signaling pathways in patients with malignancy to enable more effective therapeutics development and clinical decision-making. Until October 2007 Dr. Parkinson was Senior Vice President, Oncology Research and Development at Biogen Idec. At Biogen Idec he oversaw all oncology discovery research efforts and the development of the oncology pipeline. Previously he had served as Vice President, Oncology Development, at Amgen and Vice President, Global Clinical Oncology Development at Novartis. During his tenures at Amgen and Novartis, Dr. Parkinson was responsible for clinical development activities leading to a series of successful global drug registrations for important cancer therapeutics, including Gleevec, Femara, Zometa, Kepivance, and Vectibix.

Dr. Parkinson worked at the National Cancer Institute from 1990 to 1997, serving as Chief of the Investigational Drug Branch, then as Acting Associate Director of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, before leaving for Novartis. He has also held academic positions at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas and New England Medical Center of Tufts University School of Medicine. He received his M.D. as gold medalist from the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine in 1977, with Internal Medicine and Hematology/Oncology training in Montreal at McGill University and in Boston at New England Medical Center.

Dr. Parkinson is a past Chairman of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Biologics Advisory Committee and is a recipient of the FDA's Cody Medal. He is a past President of the International Society of Biological Therapy, and past Editor of the Journal of Immunotherapy. He currently serves on the National Cancer Policy Forum of the Institute of Medicine, serves as co-chair of the Cancer Steering Committee of the NIH Foundation Biomarkers Consortium and is Chairman of the AACR Finance Committee. He has recently completed terms as a member of the FDA's Science Board and as an elected Director on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Cancer Research. He also serves on the Boards of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. From 2008-2010 Dr. Parkinson was a Director of Facet Biotech, Inc., a public biopharma company which was acquired by Abbott Pharmaceuticals. He recently joined the Board of Threshold Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of anti-cancer drugs.