Dr. Blaine Robinson joined LLS in 2011 and was recently promoted in January 2025 to Vice President of the Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP), the venture philanthropy initiative aiming to accelerate high-risk, innovative blood cancer therapeutics. He works closely with the entire LLS Research team and is responsible for identifying and evaluating potential blood cancer drug development opportunities for investment. He has over 20 years of research, drug development and project management experience in the blood cancer field. During his tenure at LLS, he has managed over 25 TAP partnerships and has helped perform scientific due diligence on hundreds of opportunities for TAP.

Prior to LLS, Dr. Robinson worked at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where he completed a two year postdoctoral fellowship and continued on as a Research Associate for five years where he was in charge of all research laboratory operations and project management duties in a pediatric leukemia laboratory. He received his Ph.D. degree in Pharmacology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.

Dr. Jun Xu joined LLS in 2011 as Director of Therapy Acceleration Program (TAP). She was recently promoted from Executive Director – Therapy Acceleration Program Lead to Vice President, Research Business Development & Scientific Strategy. Dr. Xu participates in scientific and business due diligence of TAP funding inquiries. Leveraging her deep scientific knowledge in oncology and immunology and business insight, Dr. Xu has been very successful in selecting high potential TAP projects, such as Kite and Stemline, which led to the TAP-supported approval of Yescarta and Elzonris, respectively. She championed both TAP investments in FortySeven, which generated more than $40 million return on investment to further LLS Mission. Dr. Xu has been an integral member of the TAP team in continuously revising TAP strategy. Dr. Xu is highly respected by and influential to TAP partners. She serves on Research Advisory Committees for a diverse LLS TAP portfolio.  

Prior to joining LLS Dr. Xu spent more than 16 years working in healthcare industry including more than a decade at Pfizer. Dr. Xu has broad and in-depth experience in drug discovery and development, especially in oncology and inflammation therapeutic areas. She had successfully led multiple projects from target validation to clinical development. Dr. Xu has published in peer reviewed journals including Nature and is the lead inventor for several patents. Dr. Xu received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego and conducted her postdoc research at the California Institute of Technology under the mentorship of Dr. Melvin I. Simon.