Roy Baynes

Dr. Roy Baynes is the Chief Medical Officer at Eikon Therapeutics, Inc., a private biotechnology company that employs advanced imaging technologies to identify novel therapeutic candidates by virtue of their effects on protein dynamics in living cells. Dr. Baynes was previously Chief Medical Officer at Merck & Co.

Dr. Baynes received his MB, BCh (Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery) from the University of Witwatersrand, where he also received an MMed (specialist registration), and completed a Ph.D. exploring mechanisms of human iron metabolism. After additional clinical training in Johannesburg, and service on the faculty of the Department of Medicine at the University of Witwatersrand Medical School, Dr. Baynes moved to the United States and joined the Division of Hematology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center where he served as Professor of Medicine in both hematology and bone marrow transplantation. From 1997 until 2002, Dr. Baynes led the bone marrow transplantation service at the Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he was also a Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Oncology), and the Charles Martin Professor of Cancer Research. Thereafter, Dr. Baynes joined Amgen, Inc., where he became Vice President of Global Development and head of the hematology/oncology development team. He left Amgen in 2012 to become Senior Vice President at Gilead, Inc., and joined Merck in 2013. At Merck, he was responsible for the development of the entire clinical portfolio in Merck Research Laboratories and was the architect of the development strategy for dozens of important new medicines including Keytruda®, a drug that has revolutionized cancer treatment around the world.