Matthew J. Cukierski, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow, Development

Dr. Cukierski is a Senior Fellow in the Development Department at Takeda San Diego. In this role, he supports the progression of discovery stage compounds into Takeda’s global drug development pipeline. Dr. Cukierski has over 21 years experience in the drug approval process and has directly contributed to nonclinical portions of regulatory submissions for multiple FDA approved small molecule drugs and an FDA approved anti neoplastic radioimmunotherapeutic monoclonal antibody.

During his career, he has experience developing drugs intended to treat patients with cancer, gastrointestinal motility disorders, genitourinary dysfunction, metabolic and central nervous system diseases.

Dr. Cukierski has authored or co authored scientific publications in the areas of nonclinical drug safety, drug delivery and excipient safety.

Prior to joining Takeda San Diego, Dr. Cukierski served as Director, Drug Safety at Theravance, Inc. in South San Francisco, CA. Dr. Cukierski was also head of nonclinical drug safety departments at Roche Palo Alto and Coulter Pharmaceutical (acquired by Corixa Corporation), in South San Francisco. He spent the first decade of his career at ALZA Corporation (Palo Alto and Mountain View CA) supporting development of ALZA’s drug delivery technologies.

Dr. Cukierski received a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stony Brook University and a Ph.D. in Anatomical Sciences from the University at Buffalo, School of Medicine. Following his doctoral degree, he conducted postdoctoral work at the University of California, Davis in the Department of Developmental and Reproductive Biology.