Peter S. Kim
| Peter S. Kim | |
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| Born | April 1, 1958 |
| Institutions | Merck & Co., Inc. |
| Alma mater | Stanford University, Cornell University |
| Known for | Discovering how proteins cause cell membranes to fuse, and pioneering efforts to develop an HIV vaccine based on inhibiting membrane fusion. |
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Website Peter S. Kim Lab at Stanford |
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Peter S. Kim, Ph.D., is an American scientist. He was president of Merck Research Laboratories (MRL), 2003-2013 and is currently Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University.
Kim is of Korean descent. Kim grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey the son of a single mother, and his first job was in 1974 at a Roy Rogers restaurant, where he earned money to pay for college. Kim earned his A.B. in chemistry at Cornell University in 1979 and trained as a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Stanford University under the guidance of Robert Baldwin. While at Stanford, he was also a Medical Scientist Training Program Fellow.
Later, Kim was a Whitehead Fellow at the Whitehead Institute before joining Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Professor of Biology and as a Member of the Whitehead Institute and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Kim has a special interest in HIV / AIDS research and designed compounds that stop membrane fusion by the AIDS virus, thereby preventing it from infecting cells, and has pioneered efforts to develop an HIV vaccine based on similar principles. Kim also served as a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to develop an AIDS vaccine.
Kim joined Merck in 2001 as executive vice president, Research and Development. He was promoted to president in January 2003. In this role Kim oversaw all of Merck's drug and vaccine research and development activities.
During his tenure, Merck gained approval of more than 20 new medicines and vaccines. These include Januvia (the first DPP-4 inhibitor for type 2 diabetes), Gardasil (the first vaccine for prevention of cervical cancer), Isentress (the first HIV integrase inhibitor), Zostavax (the first vaccine for the prevention of shingles in adults), Rotateq (an oral vaccine for the prevention of rotavirus infection in infants), and Victrelis (the first hepatitis C protease inhibitor). In 2013, he retired from Merck and was succeeded by Roger Perlmutter
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