Dr. David Schenkein has spent his career trying to positively impact the lives of patients and their families in need – as a physician, through drug development, and as an investor in the next generation of health startups. David co-leads GV’s life science investment team, where his interests include therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, novel care delivery systems, and payer innovation.

David has been a hematologist and medical oncologist for over 30 years, and his focus has always been on people and impact. “As a doctor, I started by working with one patient and their family at a time,” he says. “When I transitioned into developing new medicines, I could see the effects of helping tens of thousands of patients around the globe. So today, I’m working with companies that maximize impact across all aspects of healthcare. For me, there is nothing more exciting than that.”

Before joining GV, David spent ten years as chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors at Agios Pharmaceuticals, where he remains as a director. He also served as senior vice president of clinical hematology/oncology at Genentech. David was responsible for numerous successful oncology drug approvals and led the medical and scientific strategies for their BioOncology portfolio. While at Genentech, he also served as an adjunct clinical professor of medical oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Before Genentech, David was the senior vice president of clinical research at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, overseeing the clinical development and worldwide approval of Velcade, a first-in-class cancer therapy now approved to treat multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

“When I think of all the medicines I’ve had the good fortune to work on, what’s most meaningful to me is the number of patients those medicines have helped,” he explains. “The first drug I ever worked on was Velcade, a frontline treatment that continues to help patients worldwide since its approval 20 years ago.”

Dr. Schenkein holds a B.A. in chemistry from Wesleyan University and an M.D. from the State University of New York Upstate Medical School. He currently serves as an adjunct attending physician in hematology at Tufts Medical Center and is on the board of directors of Denali Therapeutics, Agios Pharmaceuticals, Treeline Biosciences, Prime Medicine, Aera Therapeutics, and Leyden Labs.