Appointment highlights scope and productivity of drug discovery platform
Cambridge, UK, March 16, 2015 / B3C newswire / -- MISSION Therapeutics, a company focused on the discovery and development of modulators of the deubiquitylating (DUB) enzyme family for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, announces the appointment of Paul Wallace PhD as Chief Business Officer.
Dr Wallace joins MISSION to formulate future business strategy at a time when the Company’s pipeline has matured to the point where strategic options such as development partnerships are ready to be explored. Having worked in business development roles within drug discovery companies for nearly 20 years, Dr Wallace was most recently Executive Vice President and Head of Business Development at Medivir AB, where he was also a member of the Executive Management Team responsible for strategic and operational leadership, R&D portfolio management and investment planning. During this time he was central to the execution of more than 25 partnership deals, 8 products were taken into clinical development, 2 drugs were launched and Medivir transitioned into a profitable pharmaceutical company. Prior to his roles in business development Dr Wallace had a career in pharmaceutical research and undertook his PhD and post-doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge.
Anker Lundemose, MISSION Chief Executive Officer, commented: “With MISSION currently embarking on the preclinical development of its lead molecules, Paul’s extensive business development experience will be invaluable in helping us find the right strategic partnerships to fully realise the potential of these assets. Our core focus is cancer, but our platform discovery approach has yielded highly promising molecules for other indications, such as Parkinson’s disease. We see partnering as an attractive option for taking these non-core projects forward.”
Paul Wallace responded: “I am delighted to be joining the MISSION team at a time when the commercialisation of certain of its assets is an increasingly promising prospect. The Company’s progress in unlocking successive DUB targets to potent and selective small molecule inhibitors positions MISSION for entering partnership transactions outside its proprietary oncology programs. The diversity of assets created is testimony to the rigour of MISSION’s screening platform in this critically important, but hitherto difficult, area of drug discovery”.
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About MISSION Therapeutics
Founded in 2011, MISSION Therapeutics builds on the research of Professor Steve Jackson FRS, who holds the Frederick James Quick Chair of Biology at the University of Cambridge, by exploiting the new and extensive research emerging on the ubiquitin pathways that control cellular responses to DNA damage.
MISSION has established a broad platform of technologies for the discovery and preclinical development of first-in-class modulators of ubiquitin pathway enzymes involved in cancer and other diseases. The Company is developing drugs to inhibit the proliferation of tumour cells, exploiting certain properties of specific DUBs, such as their oncogene status or association with synthetic lethality, the latter now a clinically-proven mechanism for selectively killing tumour cells.
The Company has received £27 million in venture capital from a blue chip syndicate comprising institutional and corporate investors (Sofinnova Partners, Imperial Innovations, SR One, Roche Venture Fund and Pfizer Venture Investments) and is based at the Babraham Research Campus, south of Cambridge.
Contacts
MISSION Therapeutics Ltd
Dr Anker Lundemose, Chief Executive Officer
+44 (0)1223 497197
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Instinctif Partners
Tim Watson
+44 (0)20 7866 7861
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