Mathai has been a trusted advisor to Foresite Capital since 2019. His mission is to inspire teams to create, make and commercialize medicines of unequivocal benefit for humanity, including patients, their families and their communities.
He most recently served on the Executive Committee of Johnson and Johnson as EVP J&J Pharmaceuticals, R&D. Janssen R&D has fueled the growth of Janssen over the last five years to be one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Prior to joining Janssen in June 2017, Mathai was senior vice president at Merck Research Laboratories, responsible for research in the areas of cardiovascular, metabolic and renal diseases, oncology/ immuno-oncology and immunology. Jointly with his team, he initiated numerous new programs and progressed eight into early clinical development.
Previously, Mathai led R&D at Theravance, a company he co-founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1997 based on his science done during his PhD at Harvard University, where he was responsible for the creation of five marketed drugs. Mathai spun out Innoviva (INVA) and Theravance Biopharma (THRX) from Theravance.
