Dr. Leonard G. Presta has more than 30 years of experience in the biotechnology industry, working in the fields of antibody and protein engineering. Most recently, Dr. Presta served as a Distinguished Fellow at Merck & Co., Inc., where he was responsible for the protein engineering of all their internal therapeutic antibodies. Dr. Presta also held positions of increasing responsibility at Genentech, Inc., including Director of the Antibody Technology Group, where he was directly responsible for or led the protein engineering of notable antibody therapeutics, including Herceptin®, Perjeta® Raptiva®, Xolair®, Avastin®, Lucentis® and Ocrevus®, and the therapeutic protein Tenecteplase®. Dr. Presta also designed the therapeutic antibody Ilumya® which was licensed to Sun Pharma by Merck. He is an inventor of 190 U.S. patents and has served on the editorial boards of notable journals, including the Journal of Biological Chemistry, PROTEINS, and MABS.

Dr. Presta received a B.S in Chemistry and B.S. in Biology at the University of Arizona and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Texas A&M University with a thesis on the computational modeling of protein-ligand interactions.