Walter Keung

Biography

Dr. Keung is a medicinal chemist who has been in the drug discovery for 16 years. Walter started his education at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana where he completed his bachelor degree. He then completed his doctorate work at the University of Southern California under the guidance of Professor Nicos Petasis where his work centered around the use of dialkyl titanocenes for the synthesis of masked enolates directed at intramolecular cyclizations. After graduating, Dr. Keung worked at Senomyx where he focused around deorphaning of multiple hT2R taste receptors and lead optimization around these targets. Dr. Keung has been at Takeda California for 10 years and has focused his work around fragment and structure-based drug discovery. While at Takeda, he has worked in the therapeutic areas of oncology and metabolic disease. More recently, he has directed his efforts on targets for the gastro-intestinal indications.

Research Interest

Microbiology