Chinweike Ukomadu Biography
Senior Vice President and Head of the Gastrointestinal and Inflammation (GI2) Therapeutic Area Unit (TAU)
Dr. Chinweike (Chinwe) Ukomadu is a senior vice president and the Head of the Gastrointestinal and Inflammation (GI2) Therapeutic Area Unit (TAU), where he helps guide Takeda’s global research and development (R&D) strategy. Aligned with his vision, the pipeline focuses on a variety of gastrointestinal programs (Celiac disease, chronic liver diseases, inflammatory bowel disease and motility disorders) as well as inflammatory and immunologic programs in dermatology, rheumatology, hematology and nephrology. Under his leadership, Takeda has achieved approvals for Entyvio pouchitis in EU, Entyvio sub-cutaneous for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, eohilia for eosinophilic esophagitis in the US, alofisel, maralixibat and gattex approvals in Japan, several IND filings, and key partnership deals—all essential components of building a sustainable R&D pipeline.
Chinwe is a consummate translational physician-scientist whose career spans academia, clinical care, and industry. Chinwe joined Takeda from the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) where he was head of the translational medicine Gastroenterology and Liver program. As a renowned liver expert, Chinwe led pre-clinical and translational strategy in liver diseases and provided translational medicine expertise for the entire liver pipeline at NIBR. He has also led or co-led a number of cross-functional working groups that span the drug discovery continuum, including NIBR’s Liver Strategic Working Group, an Institute-wide hepatology forum and several scientific advisory board reviews.
Prior to Novartis, Chinwe was a faculty member at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. There, Chinwe led a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded laboratory studying molecular mechanisms of hepatocyte regeneration and oversaw the Summer Training in Academic Research and Scholarship program for under-represented minority college and medical students. Chinwe studied chemistry at the Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY), graduating Summa Cum Laude with a B.S in Chemistry. He is a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Belle Zeller Trust of CUNY. Chinwe received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine and was a resident and chief medical resident as well as a fellow in gastroenterology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Chinwe is from Ovom in Abia State, Nigeria. He visits often to see his large large extended family. He currently lives in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts with his spouse Dr. Emily Oken, a professor and department chair at Harvard Medical School. They have two children, a son Obi, an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and a daughter Amara, an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
