P.K. Morrow is the Head of the Oncology Therapeutic Area Unit and a member of the R&D Management Committee (RMC). In her role, she has overall responsibility for the oncology R&D strategy, development portfolio goals and budget. The therapeutic area unit consists of clinical, program leadership, and program and portfolio management functions. P.K. has matrix leadership responsibility for all development programs from candidate selection through lifecycle management, via cross-functional program teams.
Prior to joining Takeda, P.K. served as Chief Medical Officer at CRISPR Therapeutics, where she led a cross-functional team of physicians, scientists and support staff and was responsible for end-to-end development of clinical programs spanning hematology, oncology, diabetes and cardiovascular disease states. In this role, in partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, she helped lead the development of exa-cel, which is the first and only CRISPR gene-editing therapy to be approved by the FDA for the treatment of sickle cell disease with vaso-occlusive crises and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia.
Prior to her leadership at CRISPR Therapeutics, P.K. spent over a decade at Amgen, where she served as Vice President and Global Therapeutic Area Head of Hematology, GI Oncology, GU Oncology, and Bone Diseases. During this time, she was responsible for the development of numerous drug candidates and for the implementation of strategic partnerships with academic institutions, key opinion leaders, regulatory agencies and biopharmaceutical collaborators to facilitate successful execution of clinical trials. Before joining industry, she held the role of Assistant Professor, Department of Breast Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
P.K. received an MD from the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. She completed her internal medicine residency at Baylor College of Medicine and a Hematology/Oncology Fellowship at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, during which she received the Clifton D. Howe Award for Clinical Excellence, the ASCO Young Investigator Award for her translational work in head and neck cancer, and served as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Chief Fellow.
