Northwestern University Alumni

Andrew Chan is senior vice president of research–biology at Genentech, a biotechnology company that works to develop medicines for people with serious and life-threatening diseases.

An accomplished immunologist and drug developer, Chan leads more than 1,100 scientists in biological research spanning therapeutic areas of oncology, immunology, neuroscience, infectious diseases, and protein sciences. His research is focused on understanding how changes in the immune system may result in disease. He is the coinventor of ocrelizumab, an antibody approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.

Through his leadership roles on several committees, Chan oversees Genentech’s research programs and priorities, and early clinical development portfolio. He also helps shape the company culture as a member of the Genentech Research and Early Development Leadership Team.

Before joining Genentech in 2001, Chan was a faculty member in the departments of medicine and pathology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and served as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He completed his internal medicine residency at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, and rheumatology fellowship at University of California—San Francisco (UCSF).

Chan began serving on Northwestern’s Chemistry of Life Processes Institute Executive Advisory Board in 2007 and became chair in 2015. He also sits on the National Council of the Washington University School of Medicine, the scientific advisory board of the Arthritis Foundation, and the Rosalind Russell/Ephraim Engleman UCSF Arthritis Center.

Chan holds a BA and MS in chemistry from Northwestern, and an MD and PhD in cellular and developmental biology from Washington University School of Medicine. He and his wife, Mary, have two children, Michael and Jennifer.