Peter Emtage, Ph.D., Founder & CEO

Peter is the CEO of Santa Ana Bio, a precision immunology company. In parallel Peter is also a Venture Partner with Versant Ventures. Prior to joining Versant, Peter served as the Global Head of Cell Therapy Research at Kite Pharma, a Gilead company. Previous roles include Chief Scientific Officer at Cell Design Labs Inc. (CDL), which was acquired by Gilead, and Vice President of Immune Mediated Therapy in the Oncology Innovative Medicines group at MedImmune. He has over 25 years of drug development experience in the fields of oncology, autoimmunity, infectious diseases and inflammation.​

Peter holds a B.S. and M.S. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from the University of Guelph and received his Ph.D. in Molecular Virology, Immunology and Inflammation at McMaster University. At the beginning of his career, Peter did a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute and held roles at Aventis Pasteur and Harvard Medical School.