Pete Smith, PhD

Pete Smith is the CSO at Serif, bring­ing over four decades of expe­ri­ence in lipid nanopar­ti­cles, genet­ic med­i­cines, and first-in-class drug dis­cov­ery across mul­ti­ple modal­i­ties, includ­ing mRNA and siRNA.

Before join­ing Serif, Pete was the CSO at ReNA­gade, where he led the dis­cov­ery of nov­el ion­iz­able lipids and lipid nanopar­ti­cles – work that cul­mi­nat­ed in ReNA­gade’s acqui­si­tion by oRNA in 2024. Pri­or to that, he served as Chief Ear­ly Devel­op­ment Offi­cer at Alny­lam, where five of the company’s pro­grams received FDA approval, includ­ing Onpat­tro®, the first approved siR­NA and first approved LNP-deliv­ered medicine.

Ear­li­er, Pete was Head of R&D Non-Clin­i­cal at Mod­er­na, where he led a team which played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the dis­cov­ery of the lipid that was used in the company’s Covid-19 vac­cine. He also spent over a decade at Mil­len­ni­um Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as Co-Head of R&D fol­low­ing 17 years in roles of increas­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty at SmithK­line, Mer­ck, Searle/​Monsanto, and Pharmacia.

Through­out his career, Pete has con­tributed to the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of mul­ti­ple approved med­i­cines across a range of ther­a­peu­tic areas, includ­ing oncol­o­gy, inflam­ma­tion, and infec­tious dis­ease. His work has helped bring to mar­ket notable drugs such as Cele­brex®, Inspra®, Vel­cade®, Entyvio®, Onpat­tro®, Givlaari®, Oxlu­mo®, and Vutrisiran®.

Pete holds a PhD in phar­ma­col­o­gy and tox­i­col­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona and a BS in biol­o­gy from Fair­field University.