The Leadership Team

Formerly Vice President and Head of Asia and Emerging Markets iMed at AstraZeneca, previous roles including Vice President and Head of research and development (R&D) Asia at Pfizer. Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco.

Since joining WuXi AppTec, Dr. Xuanjia Peng has successful track records in leading business and operation units spanning drug discovery hit generation, chemistry catalog, chemistry service operation, and medicinal chemistry service. Dr. Peng received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Lanzhou University.

Hui Xu has over 20 years’ experience in operations and management for Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) facilities. As Vice President of Operations, she is fully responsible for the internal operations process and cross-function coordination with headquarters. Prior to joining WuXi AppTec in 2008, Hui worked in a Chinese government laboratory for 17 years. Hui has extensive experience in toxicology and drug safety evaluations in China. Under her leadership, the team successfully passed a series of regulatory audits including U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) GLP inspections, AAALAC (Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care) inspections, internal Quality Assurance (QA) audits and sponsor animal welfare audits. Hui actively participated in the development of the NMPA toxicology guidelines and the most recent revision of the NMPA GLP regulatory policy.

Dr. Liang Shen has over 17 years’ experience in Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics, Toxicology, Clinical Pharmacology, and Therapeutic Drug Monitoring. Dr. Shen has published or co-authored over 50 research articles, led or participated in the translation of 3 books including “ADME-Enabling Technologies in Drug Design and Development” into Chinese (Science Press, Beijing, 2020). His rich experience in drug discovery, Pre-Clinical Candidate (PCC) profiling and Investigational New Drug (IND) submission has successfully supported multiple pipelines in the fields of Oncology, Immuno-Oncology, Immunology, Metabolic diseases, Infectious diseases, Central Nervous System (CNS) & Cardiovascular diseases to proof-of-concept at clinical stage.  He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Georgia.

Bill Harrison is the Vice President and Head of the WuXi AppTec Toxicology business units based in Suzhou, Chengdu and Nantong, China.

Bill has almost 40 years’ experience in the Contract Research Organization (CRO) industry. Prior to joining WuXi AppTec, he was the founder and CEO of VIDA Sciences, a company dedicated to serving CROs focusing on performance improvement. Before then, Bill was President and COO of MPI Research. Prior to joining MPI Research, he was Director of Regulatory Affairs and Operations at Pharmaco-LSR, (later Envigo, now LabCorp). Bill began his career in QA and was active in the SQA for many years. He is also a former President of the U.S. Society of Quality Assurance (SQA). Bill has served on the Board for numerous companies and institutions and currently serves on the Board for the American Life Sciences Innovation Council.

Bill holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and has been an invited lecturer in North America, Japan, China, Korea and Australia.

Dr. Sharon Tong has about 30 years’ experience in the fields of bioanalytical and drug metabolism at both pharmaceutical industry and contract research organization. She has a strong record of managing high efficiency operation teams and GLP facility, establishing state-of-art new technology platforms, and delivering drug candidates to support from early discovery through IND-enabling to late-stage clinical development cycle. Prior to joining WuXi AppTec, she held multiple scientific and management positions at Merck Research Laboratories. She has published or co-authored more than 70 scientific research articles for drug discovery and development. Dr. Tong received her Ph.D. at University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed her post-Doctoral work at Cornell University.

Lan Li joined WuXi AppTec in 2018, as Vice President and Global Head of Bioanalytical Services for the Laboratory Testing division. Ms. Li has more than 20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in the U.S. Prior to joining WuXi AppTec, Ms. Li held multiple leadership positions at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, where she played a variety of critical roles in the discovery and development of Alexion’s drug products. Having authored many peer-reviewed articles that have been published in top scientific journals, Ms. Li has made significant contributions to the market approval and label expansion of biotherapeutics. Ms. Li received her Master of Science from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.