Christopher Turner, MD

Christopher (Chris) Turner, M.D. is an experienced oncology drug developer and executive with over 20 years of clinical and pharmaceutical experience in both early and late stage oncology drug development. He joined Nuvalent in March 2021 as Chief Medical Officer.

Before joining Nuvalent, Dr. Turner was Vice President of Clinical Development at Blueprint Medicines, where he oversaw the development and approval of kinase inhibitor GAVRETO™ (pralsetinib) in RET fusion positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and RET altered thyroid cancer. Additionally, Dr. Turner oversaw development programs targeting the FGFR4 kinase and EGFR with emergent resistance mutations.

Dr. Turner previously led the development of novel ADC and immune-oncology pipeline compounds at Celldex Therapeutics, and the clinical development at Ariad Pharmaceuticals of two kinase inhibitor therapies that have since been approved for patients with cancer, ICLUSIG® (ponatinib) for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, and ALUNBRIG® (brigatinib) for patients with ALK-positive NSCLC.

Prior to that, Dr. Turner was Director of the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Outcomes Clinic at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Children’s Hospital Boston and an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School where he treated children and young adults with brain tumors.

Dr. Turner is double board certified in both Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology and Oncology and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He received his M.D. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, New York. He completed fellowships in both Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.