John Reed holds a BA in chemistry from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and an MD and PhD (Immunology) from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

He began his academic career as a member of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, following a post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology at the Wistar Institute and a residency in Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. John Reed subsequently held faculty appointments at several universities including the University of California, the University of Florida and ETH-Zurich.

In 1992, he joined the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, California, one of the largest independent non-profit biomedical research institutes in the United States. From 2002 to 2013, he served as CEO of the Institute. During his tenure, John Reed ran a highly productive laboratory that generated more than 900 research publications and over 130 patents, was awarded more than 100 research grants, and trained over 100 post-doctoral fellows. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his accomplishments in biomedical research.

John Reed has served on multiple editorial boards of research journals, and was scientific founder or co-founder of four biotechnology companies. He has served on the Board of Directors for five publicly traded biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and on the governing boards for various non-profit biomedical research organizations.

From 2013 to 2018, John Reed was Global Head of Roche Pharmaceutical Research & Early Development, based at company headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. He was responsible for research through Phase IIb development for all therapeutic areas, overseeing R&D activities across 7 global sites.

He assumed his current position as Executive Vice President, Global Head of Research & Development for Sanofi in July 2018.