Weekend Musing: Humility

Research evidence excerpt

Weekend Musing: Humility

Biotechnology

EQUITY RESEARCH Industry Report

June 5, 2026

Research Analysts:

Eric Schmidt

212-294-7724 David Chang stepped down as CEO of Allogene last week. I had the

Eric.Schmidt@cantor.com pleasure of working for David for five years. He taught me a lot about how

Josh Schimmer cancer drugs are developed, about how to be a leader, and about how to

310-282-6513 work with others to achieve organizational goals. Josh.Schimmer@cantor.com

He also showed me and anyone who met him how to be humble, which is

why Josh has prodded me to write this Weekend Musing about David.

David has a lot NOT to be humble about…

●As a young man, he immigrated to the United States from Korea. He

found his way to MIT as an undergrad, received his M.D. and Ph.D

degrees from Stanford, did a post-doc in Phil Sharp’s lab, and then

completed residency at the Brigham and a fellowship in oncology at

the Dana Farber.

●After about a decade at UCLA as a physician-scientist and tenured

professor, David left academia (finally!) for industry. He joined Amgen

to lead the company’s clinical programs in oncology, where he

developed several drugs that are still blockbusters today (Vectibix,

Blincyto, and Xgeva).

●David then moved to Kite Pharma, where he and his team got the first

cell therapy approved for NHL (Yescarta) in what I believe is still a record

time from IND to full FDA approval.

You’d never know any of the above unless you have spent a lot of time

with David.

David was at Kite when I first met him. It was clear from those interactions

that he was talented and accomplished, yet humble and kind. After Kite was

acquired by Gilead, Kite’s CEO Arie Belldegrun (another terrific role model),

called to ask if I wanted to be CFO of his next company, Allogene (“Eric,