Meet our Therapeutics Leadership Team

Kenneth joined 23andMe in 2019 as Head of Therapeutics. He leads a dedicated discovery research and therapeutic development team that uses human genetic data to identify and pursue novel therapies for common and rare diseases.

Kenneth held leadership roles at Genentech from 1994 to 2011. He led the medical and scientific strategies for its Immunology, Tissue Growth and Repair drug portfolio. He served in a number of key leadership positions in research and development, including Senior Vice President Clinical Development, Inflammation, Vice President Immunology, Tissue Growth and Repair (ITGR), Vice President Development Sciences and Vice President Research Operations and Pathology. He also served as Senior Vice President and Head of Clinical Development and Product Development Strategy in Asia-Pacific for Roche in Shanghai, China.

Kenneth has served on the board of directors of Achaogen, Inc., since 2011. He served as Achaogen’s Chief Executive Officer from 2011 until 2017, and as its Chief Medical Officer from 2011 to 2014. He has served on the board of directors of Zymeworks, since February 2017. He served on the board of directors of Relypsa from 2014 until 2016, when it was acquired by Galenica AG.

Kenneth has an M.B. Ch.B. (Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery) degree from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Glasgow, U.K. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS, Glasg), and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath). Dr. Hillan has authored dozens of scientific publications and is a named inventor on almost 50 issued patents.

Astrid Ruefli-Brasse is the VP of Drug Discovery, responsible for leading the in vitro and in vivo biology, small molecule, biomarker discovery, protein science and antibody engineering groups. Before coming to 23andMe Astrid worked at Roche working as the Senior Group Leader for Molecular Targeted Therapies in the Pharma Research and Early Development Group. Her team focused on drug discovery for cancer immunotherapy and targeted molecular therapies at the company. Before her time at Roche, Astrid spent several years as a principal scientist at Amgen, in the department of hematology and oncology. Astrid received her Ph.D. in Pathology from the University of Melbourne and was a post-doctoral research fellow at Genentech. Astrid brings over 15 years of industry experience with broad expertise in drug discovery research and development.

Jennifer Low joined 23andMe in 2018 as Head of Therapeutics Development. She oversees the transition of potential therapeutics from 23andMe’s research laboratories into clinical development studies.

Jennifer has considerable drug development experience and has most recently worked as a consultant and advisor to biotech CEOs and investors on their drug development strategies. She has been the Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Loxo Oncology where she oversaw the clinical development of Vitrakvi (Trk inhibitor). Prior to that she was a Senior Group Director at Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, where she oversaw the Erivedge (hedgehog), Zelboraf (b-RAF), and Cotellic (mek) clinical development programs among many others.

She received her undergraduate degree from Caltech, her MD and PhD degrees from Georgetown, and completed her internal medicine residency at the University of California Davis, her medical oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, and was a Senior Investigator at the Cancer Therapeutics Evaluation Program at NCI and an attending physician in breast cancer at the National Institutes of Health and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. She has co-authored papers appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Cancer Discovery, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Nature Reviews Cancer.

Monica Viziano joined 23andMe in 2020 as VP Portfolio Strategy and Alliance Management. She oversees the Business Development, Alliance Management and Project Management groups.

Monica has considerable experience in the Pharmaceutical and Biotech Industry. She has participated in the development and commercialization of drugs across multiple therapeutic areas such as Inflammation, Oncology, HIV, HBV, CV and CNS.

She worked at Gilead for 18 years. During her tenure at Gilead, she developed and maintained the most important and complex alliance collaborations. She was involved in the development of several drugs at Gilead, including TRUVADA, ATRIPLA, STRIBILD and GENVOYA. Monica participated in several business development transactions, including in-licensing and partnerships with Japan Tobacco, ONO Pharmaceuticals and Galapagos. Prior to joining Gilead, Monica worked at Schering-Plough and GSK.

Monica received her degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies at the University of Milan.

Adam Auton is the VP of Human Genetics at 23andMe, and is responsible for computational approaches to target discovery via statistical genetics and computational biology. Before joining 23andMe, Adam was an assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where his group developed algorithmic approaches for using large-scale genomic data to understand human population genetics. Adam earned his DPhil in statistics from Oxford University, before completing his post-doctoral training at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford, and Cornell University.

Richard H. Scheller joined 23andMe in 2015 as Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Therapeutics. Under his leadership, 23andMe has built a dedicated research and therapeutic development team that uses human genetic data as the starting point for identifying novel therapies for common and rare diseases.

For 14 years Scheller was Executive Vice President and Head of Genentech Research and Early Development, and a member of both the Genentech and Roche executive committees. Prior to joining Genentech, Scheller was a professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University (1982-1994), and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1994 to 2001. Scheller has been an adjunct professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UC San Francisco since 2004. He is a member of the board of trustees at the California Institute of Technology.

Scheller’s research elucidating the molecular machinery and regulatory mechanisms that underlie the release of neurotransmitter earned him the 2013 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, and the 1997 US National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology.

Scheller is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Scheller holds a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology and a postdoctoral fellow in Molecular Neurobiology at Columbia University at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.