Norbert Bischofberger, Ph.D.

Director

Norbert Bischofberger, Ph.D., has served as a member of our Board since May 2024.

Dr. Bischofberger brings close to 40 years of experience as a biotech executive and in research and development leadership roles to the industry. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Kronos Bio, Inc., a clinical-stage company dedicated to the discovery and development of therapeutics that target the deregulated transcription that causes cancer and other serious diseases, and he continues to serve as a member of the Kronos Bio board of directors. 

Prior to joining Kronos, Dr. Bischofberger was Executive Vice President, Research and Development and Chief Scientific Officer at Gilead Sciences, Inc., which he joined in 1990 as Director of Chemistry after having worked as a Senior Scientist in Genentech, Inc.’s DNA Synthesis Group from 1986 to 1990. During his 28-year tenure at Gilead, Dr. Bischofberger presided over the development and approval of more than 25 medicines for a range of serious conditions which led to the transformation of the treatment of diseases such as HIV and viral hepatitis, including hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Dr. Bischofberger was part of the core management team that grew Gilead from less than 50 employees with no revenue to 10,000 employees with $25 billion in revenue. 

Dr. Bischofberger received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Zurich’s Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule and performed postdoctoral research in steroid chemistry at Syntex. He also performed additional research in organic chemistry and applied enzymology in Professor George Whiteside’s lab at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Bischofberger received an honorary doctorate in Natural Sciences (2016) from The University of Innsbruck and an honorary doctorate in Letters in Medicine (2017) from Baylor College of Medicine. He was elected a Fellow of The American Association for Advancement of Science (2018). 

In addition to board appointments with Kronos Bio and Vir Biotechnology, Dr. Bischofberger also serves on the boards of directors of MiNA Therapeutics Limited, a private biotechnology company focused on small activating RNA therapeutics, since March 2025, and Rezo Therapeutics, Inc., a private biotechnology company focused on mapping disease networks, since 2021. He previously served on the board of directors of Morphic Therapeutic Inc., a U.S. publicly traded biopharmaceutical company that was acquired by Ely Lilly and Company in August 2024, and the Supervisory Board of Bayer AG, a multinational public company with core competencies in the life science fields of health care and agriculture.