Our Team

President and CEO

Hui Li, Ph.D. is President and CEO of Adcentrx Therapeutics. Dr. Li has over 20 years of drug discovery and business development experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Prior to founding Adcentrx in 2021, he was the CEO of Levena Biopharma, a subsidiary of Sorrento Therapeutics, focusing on antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) development. He also served as SVP of Business Development and General Manager of China Operations at Sorrento Therapeutics. During his time at Levena, he was responsible for developing a portfolio of site-specific ADC products and establishing a GMP production site to support clinical development of both internal and external ADC programs. Before Levena, he served as Executive Director of Business Development at PPD and Head of Business Development at its pre-clinical division BioDuro.

Prior to joining PPD, he spent 10 years at Pfizer Global Research & Development, where he led several programs in the areas of oncology, diabetes, antiviral, and ophthalmology, which successfully progressed into clinical development.

Dr. Li received his B.S. in Chemistry from Peking University and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of California, San Diego.

Chief Scientific Officer

Senior Vice President, Research

Maojun Guo, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President, Research at Adcentrx Therapeutics. Dr. Guo has more than 25 years of drug development experience across both academia and industry.

Prior to joining Adcentrx in 2021, Dr. Guo held Vice President positions at Gear Pharma, Levena Biopharma and Shanghai Alputon PharmTech where he was responsible for the chemistry of internal and external projects, which included discovery, IND-enabling CMC work, GMP production and ADC platform development. Dr. Guo has also held roles at Lundbeck, ArQule and Hybridon where he participated in programs in the areas of antisense oligonucleotides, combinatorial chemistry, and CNS, and was involved with Lundbeck’s major depressive disorder Trintellix/Brintellix (vortioxetine) program that successfully launched in 2013. Before entering the BioPharma industry, Dr. Guo was a researcher at Sheffield University and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University.

Dr. Guo earned his B.S. in Analytical Chemistry from Wuhan University and his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from Peking University Medical School.

Vice President, CMC

Alexander Chu-Kung, Ph.D. is Vice President, CMC and the head of development at Adcentrx Therapeutics. Prior to joining Adcentrx in 2021, Dr. Chu-Kung was the Senior Director of Development at Levena Biopharma, a subsidiary of Sorrento Therapeutics where he was responsible for all aspects of process development, cGMP manufacturing and clinical supply of the antibody drug conjugate pipeline.

Before joining Levena Biopharma, Dr. Chu-Kung spent more than decade at AbbVie, most recently as a principal scientist. In this role he oversaw process development, tech transfer, CMO interaction and scale-up for both small molecule and biologic therapeutics.

Dr. Chu-Kung holds a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara and a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University.

Vice President, Clinical Development

Abraham Fong, M.D., PH.D. is Vice President, Clinical Development at Adcentrx. He has over 8 years of clinical experience across both early and late-stage drug development primarily focused on ADCs and immunotherapeutics.

Prior to joining Adcentrx in 2023, Dr. Fong was Executive Medical Director, Clinical Development at ALX Oncology where he led the hematology malignancy program, including strategic planning and oversight of studies with a CD47-inhibitor in AML and MDS, along with early development of a novel antibody conjugate and multiple studies in solid tumors. Before joining ALX Oncology, Dr. Fong held medical director roles at AbbVie and Seattle Genetics, where he oversaw multiple early and late phase ADC studies across both hematologic and solid tumor malignancies.

Dr. Fong received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Penn State College of Medicine and a B.S. degree from University of California, Los Angeles. He completed his residency in pediatrics at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California and fellowship in Hematology-Oncology at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, where as a faculty member he conducted research focused on the development of novel therapeutics for pediatric malignancies.

Vice President, Business Development

Andrew Hopkins is Vice President, Business Development at Adcentrx Therapeutics. He has nearly 20 years of corporate development and strategic planning experience on both the buy- and sell-side. He has completed transactions with over $1 billion in aggregate deal value, including M&A, licensing, collaborations and fund raising.

Prior to joining Adcentrx in 2022, he was Senior Director, Business Development at Halozyme Therapeutics, a public biotechnology company focused on enabling platforms for the pharmaceutical industry, where he led the search and evaluation efforts for platform M&A. Previously, Mr. Hopkins held various positions with increasing responsibility at Vical Incorporated where he led the reverse merger with Brickell Bio in 2019 and the licensing of VL-2397 from Astellas in 2015. Mr. Hopkins has additional experience as a management consultant at Campbell Alliance (now Syneos Health) and a pharmaceutical sales representative at Quintiles.

Mr. Hopkins holds a B.S. in Microbiology and Biotechnology from the University of Cape Town and a Master of Business and Science from the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences.

Executive Director, Clinical Operations

Melissa Holmes is Executive Director, Clinical Operations at Adcentrx Therapeutics. She has over 20 years of experience in Phase 1 through Phase 4 clinical trials and has deep expertise in oncology clinical development.

Prior to joining Adcentrx in 2023, Ms. Holmes was Sr. Director, Clinical Operations at Turning Point Therapeutics, which was acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2022. Previously, she held positions of increasing responsibility at Ambit Biosciences through the acquisition and integration into Daiichi Sankyo. Ms. Holmes has additionally built a breadth of clinical operations experience through her various roles at Ardea Biosciences, Arena Pharmaceuticals (subsequently acquired by Pfizer), Neurocrine Biosciences, and Cato Research (now Allucent).

Ms. Holmes holds a B.S. in Biology from Elon University in North Carolina.

Senior Director, Discovery Research

Sabine Rottmann, Ph.D. is Senior Director, Discovery Research at Adcentrx Therapeutics. She is a molecular biologist by training with expertise in target identification and validation, drug discovery and clinical development in oncology, specializing in ADCs. In her nearly 20 years of experience, she has led and initiated multiple ADC programs from early research through clinical development.

Before joining Adcentrx in 2021, Dr. Rottmann held multiple positions of increasing responsibility across multiple departments at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF).

Dr. Rottmann received her M.S. in Biochemistry, Genetics, Immunology, Molecular biology and Microbiology and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Medical School of Hannover.