From April, 2013 until January, 2021, Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter served as executive vice president, Merck & Co., Inc. and president of Merck Research Laboratories, Merck’s global R&D organization. During this period he supervised the discovery and development of numerous lifesaving medicines including KEYTRUDAtm, Merck’s pioneering immuno-oncology therapeutic, which continues to transform cancer care around the world. In all, Merck received more than 100 regulatory approvals globally for its medicines and vaccines under Dr. Perlmutter’s supervision. He became chairman of MRL in January of 2021.
Before joining Merck, Dr. Perlmutter was executive vice president and head of R&D at Amgen, Inc. where for 11 years he oversaw the discovery, development and subsequent approval of innovative biologic and small molecule medicines in the areas of cancer, endocrinology, hematology, inflammation and osteoporosis.
Prior to joining Amgen, Dr. Perlmutter worked at Merck Research Laboratories and held roles of increasing responsibility from 1997 to 2001, culminating in his appointment as executive vice president of Worldwide Basic Research and Preclinical Development. He has also served as a director of several biotechnology companies and as a science partner at The Column Group, a biotechnology-focused venture capital firm, and more recently at the CBC Group, a healthcare-dedicated investment firm.
Before assuming leadership roles in industry, Dr. Perlmutter was a professor in the Departments of Immunology, Biochemistry and Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, and also served as chairman of its Department of Immunology, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His research focused on understanding the signaling pathways that control lymphocyte activation. Prior to his role at the University of Washington, he was a lecturer in the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Dr. Perlmutter graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He pursued clinical training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Perlmutter is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is both a Distinguished Fellow and Past President of the American Association of Immunologists.
