Konstantina Katcheves
SVP & Chief Business and Strategy Officer, Acadia Pharmaceuticals | 20+ Years in Biopharma M&A & Strategy
Konstantina (Tina) Katcheves is the senior vice president and chief business and strategy officer of Acadia Pharmaceuticals, where she leads business development and corporate strategy. She joined Acadia in 2025 and has more than two decades of experience in biopharmaceutical dealmaking, corporate strategy, and innovation leadership.
Before Acadia, Katcheves served as senior vice president of global business development at Teva Pharmaceuticals, where she oversaw the expansion of the company’s innovative-medicines pipeline. Earlier, she held a series of senior roles at Bristol Myers Squibb, including interim head of enterprise strategy and business development. While at BMS she led the company’s $14 billion acquisition of Karuna Therapeutics, which moved the company more deeply into neuroscience with a novel schizophrenia treatment (KarXT), and helped drive more than $18 billion in announced transactions, including the acquisition of the radiopharmaceutical company RayzeBio. Across her career she has worked on deals spanning therapeutic areas, platforms, precision medicine, and cell and gene therapy, as well as international transactions.
Katcheves holds a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and cell biology from the University of California, San Diego, a Master of Science in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Oklahoma School of Law.
Katcheves appeared on Open Door Salon alongside Daphne Karydas, president and chief financial officer of Flare Therapeutics, for a conversation on mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships in the life sciences. She framed dealmaking as a discipline driven first by strategy: a transaction, she argued, has to advance a company’s long-term direction and address an unmet scientific need before financial considerations come into play.
Throughout the conversation she emphasized the organizational mechanics behind transactions: the internal champions required across clinical, commercial, and executive functions; the reality that living with a deal after signing is its own challenge; and her view that business development is an apprenticeship trade in which judgment accrues through years of exposure to deals that rarely go as planned.
Frequently Asked Questions About Konstantina Katcheves
What is Konstantina Katcheves an expert in?
Konstantina (Tina) Katcheves is an expert in biopharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions, business development, and corporate strategy, with deal experience spanning neuroscience, radiopharmaceuticals, precision medicine, and cell and gene therapy.
Who is Konstantina Katcheves?
Konstantina (Tina) Katcheves is senior vice president and chief business and strategy officer of Acadia Pharmaceuticals, with more than two decades in biopharma dealmaking. She previously served as SVP of global business development at Teva Pharmaceuticals and held senior roles at Bristol Myers Squibb, where she led the company's $14 billion acquisition of Karuna Therapeutics. She holds degrees from UC San Diego and Johns Hopkins and a JD from the University of Oklahoma School of Law, and appeared on Open Door Salon, the life sciences podcast hosted by Lori Ellis.
How does Konstantina Katcheves approach dealmaking?
Konstantina Katcheves frames dealmaking as a discipline driven first by strategy: a transaction has to advance a company's long-term direction and address an unmet scientific need before financial considerations come into play. She emphasizes the organizational mechanics behind deals, the internal champions required across clinical, commercial, and executive functions, the challenge of living with a deal after signing, and her view that business development is an apprenticeship trade.
What organizations is Konstantina Katcheves affiliated with?
Konstantina (Tina) Katcheves is senior vice president and chief business and strategy officer of Acadia Pharmaceuticals. She was previously SVP of global business development at Teva Pharmaceuticals and held senior roles at Bristol Myers Squibb, where she led the $14 billion Karuna Therapeutics acquisition and helped drive more than $18 billion in announced transactions, including the acquisition of RayzeBio.
On Open Door Salon
“Inside Pharma M&A: How Deals Get Done”
Konstantina (Tina) Katcheves & Daphne Karydas · March 25, 2026
Episode page & show notes on Open Door Salon
In this episode
- Why life sciences M&A is essential to driving innovation forward
- How strategic alignment and corporate strategy set the stage for dealmaking
- The role of internal champions across clinical, commercial, and executive teams
- CBO and CFO alignment as the engine behind every major transaction
- How bankers, VCs, and the external ecosystem feed the deal pipeline
- Why M&A can be cleaner than licensing — and where partnership contracts fall apart
- Competition for quality late-stage assets and moving fast enough to win
- Public vs. private M&A dynamics and stakeholder management
- Why business development is an apprenticeship built on collective experience
- Personal motivations: why operators stay in a hard industry
Topics
Watch on Open Door Salon
Open Door Salon brings life-sciences leaders into candid conversation. Every Monday, the week's takeaways land in your inbox.
Subscribe on Substack →