Samantha Du is Founding Managing Director of Quan Capital. During her career, she has been a successful drug developer, entrepreneur, investor and an overall industry leader in China, recognized for her wide influence on healthcare policies and for her work with various government bodies in China.
Dr. Du began her career with Pfizer in the US where she was responsible for the company’s global metabolic licensing program and was also involved in the development of multiple early and late-stage products, including two global blockbusters.
Dr. Du achieved her first success as an entrepreneur with founding Hutchison MediPharma (HMP), which was widely recognized as a leader for innovative drug R&D in China, bringing five category 1.1 drugs into clinical trials. In addition to the development of a rich pipeline in oncology and autoimmune diseases, she established partnerships with multinational companies such as AstraZeneca, J&J, Lilly, Merck Serono and Nestle.
Following her time at HMP, she joined Sequoia Capital as head of healthcare investments for China, making significant returns to the fund during her two-year tenure.
Driven by her passion for drug development and entrepreneurship, Dr. Du returned and founded Zai in 2014 with the goal of bringing innovative transformative medicines to China and creating a globally recognized biopharmaceutical leader. In 2017, Dr. Du successfully took Zai public on the NASDAQ.
Dr. Du has been recognized with awards such as 2020 Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen; 2017 Bayhelix life time achievement award; Biocentury/ BayHelix 2016 Person of the Year and 2015 R&D Leader of the Year awards; 2015 FierceBiotech’s Top 12 Women in global Biopharma among many others. She has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nature Review, scripts, Bloomberg, Financial Times and C&EN, etc.
Dr. Du earned her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cincinnati, and her BS/MS in molecular biology from Jilin University.