Charles Wells

Charles Wells currently serves as ad interim Chief Medical Officer at the Gates Medical Research Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he joined in 2019 as a clinical development leader then served as Head of Therapeutics Development. In his roles in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, he has dedicated his expertise to addressing global health and bringing forward critically needed new products and tools to address unmet medical need for TB, HIV, malaria, and other neglected infectious diseases endemic to lower- and middle-income countries.

Previously, he served as Executive Vice President for Global Health and Development for Infectious Diseases at Evotec and Associate Vice President for Infectious Diseases Therapeutics at Sanofi during 2015-2019. In this role spanning transfer of the group between organizations, he oversaw development activities for new therapeutic agents for malaria and bacterial diseases including tuberculosis (TB), as well as biologics development for HIV and other viral infections.

Prior to joining Sanofi in 2015, he served as Senior Medical Director and lead clinician for the development and initial registration of delamanid (Deltyba®) for treatment of multidrug resistant-TB at Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, during 2007-2015. Before Otsuka, he served as Chief of the International Research and Programs Branch of the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination at the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during 2000-2007.

He is a native of North Carolina where he completed his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering in 1987 at North Carolina State University and his medical degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992. He then completed his post-graduate medical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Emory University in 1998, as well as the Epidemic Intelligence Service at CDC (1995-97).