Dr. Raphaël Rousseau is a trained pediatric hemato-oncologist with more than 25 years of experience building clinical development teams and leading phase 1 to 4 adult and pediatric clinical trials in academia, large and small biopharmaceutical companies.

 Raphaël is currently a consultant for several biopharmaceutical companies and investors. Since 2017, he has been the chief medical officer at Gritstone Bio and Neogene Therapeutics, two innovative immunotherapy startups, and more recently at Day One, helping the team transition from late-stage clinical research to commercialization of its targeted therapy in children with low-grade gliomas.

From 2009 to 2017, Raphaël created and led Roche-Genentech’s innovative pediatric drug development group (iPODD), and ensured optimized implementation of pediatric investigational plans (phase 1 to phase 3 clinical trials) across the company’s oncology portfolio. Dr. Rousseau and his team launched the iMATRIX master trial concept, an innovative Phase 1-2 multi-tumor, multi-drug collaborative drug development platform for children, adolescent and young adults with high-risk pediatric malignancies. He led or co-led the pediatric development and registration of bevacizumab, rituximab and capecitabine, and initiated the pediatric development of cobimetinib and atezolizumab in close collaboration with European and North American academic pediatric oncology consortiums. In addition, Dr. Rousseau created and led the Industry Advisory Council and was a board member of CureSearch for Children’s Cancer, and was a member of the executive board of ACCELERATE Multistakeholder Pediatric Platform. Dr. Rousseau is currently a member of the finance & audit committee of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

Before joining Genentech-Roche, Raphaël was a tenured professor of medical and pediatric oncology at the Université Claude Bernard and the Institut d’Hématologie-Oncologie Pédiatrique at Centre Léon Bérard in Lyon, France, where he chaired the pediatric translational research program. His research focus was on immunotherapy of pediatric malignancies and the use of nanoparticles for the treatment of pediatric sarcomas (ASCO’s 2008 Advanced Clinical Research Award). Dr. Rousseau created and led from 2005 to 2009 the CHILDHOPE academic consortium dedicated to the treatment of children with high-risk leukemia using CD19-targeting CAR T cells (an EU FP6 STREP programme).

Dr. Rousseau is a graduate of Texas Children’s Cancer Center pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship and was a research fellow from 1998 to 2005 at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Paris University pediatric residency program and is board certified in pediatrics and has a sub-specialty certification in pediatric hematology-oncology. Dr. Rousseau received his Ph.D. in therapeutic biotechnologies from the Université Denis Diderot and his M.D. from Université René Descartes, both in Paris, France.

A father of six children, he lives with his wife in the Bay Area, California, and enjoys visiting Brittany in his home country whenever possible.