Cheryl Pickett-Gies, MD, PhD

Medical Officer

Cheryl Pickett-Gies, MD, PhD, joined the Investigational Drug Branch and CTEP in 2020. Her current portfolio includes immune check point inhibitors and modulators, antibody drug conjugates, bispecific and other antibody based therapeutics. She is also director of the IDB/CTEP externship/ fellowship program. Dr. Pickett earned her PhD in biochemistry at the University of California (UC) Davis and her MD at the University of Colorado. She completed residency in Internal Medicine at UC Davis and a clinical and research fellowship in Endocrinology at the University of Colorado. She subsequently held academic appointments at the University of Colorado and the University of Washington Medical Centers before moving from academia to oncology clinical development positions in the biotech/pharma sector, first at Merck and later at Amgen. Dr. Pickett's early research focused on the mechanisms by which growth factors and hormones modulate activity of protein kinases; subsequently including work to elucidate how aberrancies in these signal transduction mechanisms modulate gene transcription and cell growth in tumor models. During her fellowship and academic appointments her clinical focus was on diagnosis and management of endocrine tumors; she was co-founder of a multidisciplinary endocrine tumor clinic at the University of Washington. Upon moving to biotech/pharma research in 2004, she has established broad oncology clinical trial expertise developing and conducting trials across phases 1-3, covering a wide range of compounds, mechanisms of action, and tumor indications.