Tadataka (Tachi) Yamada, MD, was a co-founder of Passage Bio and its former chairman of the board from July 2017 until his sudden passing on August 4, 2021.
We are forever grateful for the vision, scientific experience, and strategic influence that Dr. Yamada shared to establish our company. He has left a lasting legacy with his generous contribution to our industry, and specifically to Passage Bio and the patients we serve. We will continue to honor and build upon Dr. Yamada’s legacy as we work tirelessly to transform the lives of patients impacted by devastating CNS diseases.
Prior to his passing, Dr. Yamada was also a Venture Partner at Frazier Healthcare Partners since 2015, where he focused on both creating companies and providing strategic guidance to existing portfolio companies. He also served on several public and private company boards.
Among his many past key industry roles were his leadership of the R&D organizations for Takeda and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). It was at GSK where Dr. Yamada’s long-standing support of gene therapy began, convincing the company to provide funding in 2000 to the laboratory of James Wilson, MD, PhD, also a co-founder of Passage Bio, to design technology that helped fuel the field’s resurgence a decade later. Dr. Yamada also was a former president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Program. Prior to that, he was chief of the division of Gastroenterology and chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Dr. Yamada was also active with several academic and medical organizations, including the National Academy of Medicine, as a Fellow of the imperial College of Medicine, as a Master of the American College of Physicians, as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and as a past-President of the American Gastroenterological Association and the Association of American Physicians.
Dr. Yamada received his B.A. in History from Stanford University and an M.D. from New York University School of Medicine.
May Dr. Yamada rest in peace after living a rich and impactful life devoted to medicine and advancing therapeutic innovations to help patients.