Terns Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the appointment of Jeffrey R. Jasper as senior vice president, head of research. Dr. Jasper joins Terns with more than 28 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Terns also announced the promotion of Diana Chung to senior vice president, chief development officer.

Both Dr. Jasper and Ms. Chung will report to Erin Quirk, M.D., president, head of research and development and chief medical officer. Prior to joining Terns, Dr. Jasper served as vice president, drug discovery at Rubedo Life Sciences, overseeing drug discovery and nonclinical development efforts on small molecule therapeutics targeting diseases of aging. Before that, he served as executive director, research science at Merck Research Laboratories, with previous positions at Roche Bioscience, Theravance, Cytokinetics and Revolution Medicines.

He also co-founded Altos Therapeutics (acquired by Takeda Pharmaceuticals) where he led the development of gastrointestinal therapies. His academic activities include more than 18 years as a member of the editorial board for the American Journal of Physiology: Cell Physiology and 12 years instructing the Molecular Pharmacology course at the University of California, Berkeley Extension. Ms. Chung was previously senior vice president, clinical development and operations at Terns.

She has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in drug discovery and clinical development including management of Phase I-IV studies and managed access programs.