Orum Therapeutics has appointed Dr Chad May, PhD, as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). Dr May brings over 20 years of oncology and immunology research experience with a track record of advancing Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs), T-cell engagers and other next-generation therapeutic platforms from concept to clinical evaluation.

“Chad’s expertise strengthens our position as a leader in DAC innovation and supports our progress towards meaningful clinical milestones,” said Sung Joo (SJ) Lee, PhD, Founder and CEO, Orum Therapeutics.

“Chad has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to take bold scientific concepts and advance them into clinical candidates across multiple therapeutic modalities. His leadership experience in ADCs, T-cell engagers and structure-driven platform design aligns with Orum’s commitment to precision engineering the next generation of degrader-antibody conjugates. Chad’s expertise strengthens our position as a leader in DAC innovation and supports our progress towards meaningful clinical milestones,” said Sung Joo (SJ) Lee, PhD, Founder and CEO, Orum.

As CSO, Dr May will provide scientific vision and R&D leadership, guiding the strategic direction, discovery and advancement of Orum’s pipeline, including the continued evolution of the company’s proprietary DAC platforms and programmes. He will oversee scientific strategy across discovery, translational research and pre-clinical development and will play a central role in shaping the next stage of Orum’s technology innovation and pipeline growth.

“The opportunity to join Orum at this stage of growth is incredibly compelling. The company’s Dual-Precision Targeted Protein Degradation approach provides a powerful foundation for creating new classes of degraders guided by antibody specificity. I am excited to work closely with the talented scientific and leadership teams to advance Orum’s DAC platforms, expand therapeutic applications across cancer and other serious diseases, and drive the next wave of innovation in degrader-antibody conjugates,” said Dr May.

Dr May joins Orum from Serotiny, where he served as CSO and oversaw the advancement of a novel gene and cell therapy platform through the company’s post-acquisition integration into Johnson & Johnson. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Maverick Therapeutics, where he co-founded and built the R&D organisation, advanced multiple conditionally active T-cell engager programmes into clinical trials, and led the company’s build-to-buy collaboration with Takeda.

Earlier in his career, he held scientific leadership roles at Pfizer, where he led teams developing T-cell engagers and ADCs and advanced several programmes into IND-enabling studies and clinical development. His prior work at ImClone Systems involved the design, conjugation and evaluation of antibody-based therapeutics. Over his career, Dr May has built and led high-performing scientific teams, contributed to numerous first-in-class programme nominations, and authored over 30 publications and patents.