FORMA Team

 

Management

Steven Tregay, Ph.D.

Founder, President and CEO, FORMA Therapeutics

 

Prior to joining FORMA, Steven Tregay was a Managing Director for the $200M Novartis Option Fund. He led the fund’s investments in and served on the Board of Directors of FORMA Therapeutics, Adenosine Therapeutics (sold: CLDA) and Cequent Pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining the venture group, he was the Executive Director and Head of Strategic Alliances-Oncology, Ophthalmology and Technologies at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. He managed a team who were responsible for identification, negotiation and management of collaborations for the oncology and ophthalmology disease areas and all the technology areas. Prior to Novartis, he had roles in business development at Array BioPharma and research. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in organic chemistry from Harvard University and a B.S. from Davidson College.

Nikolai Kley, Ph.D.

Founder, VP Biology and Head of Drug Discovery Research

 

Prior to joining FORMA, Dr. Kley was Vice President and Head of Research at GPC Biotech. Dr. Kley was an early member of the GPC Biotech management team (1999-2007) and played key roles in developing and advancing the company’s genomics, proteomics, chemical proteomics and biology technology platforms, in attracting and managing multimillion dollar government grants and strategic alliances with pharmaceutical companies, and in building GPC Biotech’s preclinical oncology drug discovery pipeline and translational research capabilities. From 1997-1999 he was Director and Vice President, Functional Genomics, at Genome Therapeutics Corporation. Prior to that Dr. Kley was Senior Research Investigator, Group Leader and Head of Tumor Suppressor Program in the Oncology Division at Bristol Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute (Princeton), and a Visiting Research Scholar (Research Professor) at Princeton University. Dr. Kley was a postdoctoral fellow in Neuro-Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Max-Planck Institute (Martinsried, Germany) and Ludwig Maximillian University (Munich, Germany), and was a recipient of the Otto Hahn Medal Award (Max Planck Society) and Junior Investigator Award of the National Neurofibromatosis Foundation, which he later also served as member of the scientific advisory board. He received his B.Sc.Hon. in Biochemistry/Physiology from Leeds University (UK) and his earlier education at the European School in Varese, Italy.

James Kyranos, Ph.D.

VP, Chemical Technologies

Most recently, as Vice President of Preclinical Development for Wolfe Laboratories, Dr. Kyranos was responsible for the scientific and business operations of the company. Dr. Kyranos was Vice President of Chemical Technologies for ArQule (1995-2006). As part of the initial executive team, he was responsible for developing ArQule's proprietary high throughput parallel synthesis platform, which successfully delivered on over $300 million in collaborative research funding with pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Kyranos was responsible for all business and operational aspects of external chemistry collaborations, including managing strategic alliances and advancing the development of ArQule's technology platform. His other experience include leadership positions at BioDevelopment Laboratories and Arthur D. Little. Dr. Kyranos received his Ph.D. in Mass Spectrometry with Professor Paul Vouros at Northeastern University and a B.A. in Chemistry and Biology from Boston University.

 

 

 

Academic Founders

Stuart L. Schreiber, Ph.D.

Academic Founder, Forma Therapeutics, Inc., Director of Chemical Biology at and Founding Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University.

 

Stuart Schreiber has been a driving force of chemical biology over the past two decades, providing conceptual, experimental and leadership contributions with impact on chemistry, biology and medicine. He is especially known for his discoveries concerning both cell circuitry by signaling proteins calcineurin and mTOR and gene regulation by chromatin-modifying histone deacetylases, and small-molecule probes of extremely difficult targets and processes that are at the root of human disease. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1995. In addition to FORMA, Dr. Schreiber is also a founder of Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Ariad Pharmaceuticals and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Michael Foley, Ph.D.

Academic Founder, FORMA Therapeutics, Director, Chemical Biology Platform and Director of Medicinal Chemistry, Broad Institute

 

Dr. Foley is the Director of the Chemical Biology Platform and Director of Medicinal Chemistry at the Broad Institute, a research collaboration of MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals and the Whitehead Institute. Dr. Foley is one of the scientific founders of CombinatoRx Inc. Dr. Foley is also a founder of Infinity Pharmaceuticals and served as Vice President of Chemistry from 2001-2006. Dr. Foley was a founding scientist of the Harvard Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology (ICCB), a joint academic institute between Harvard Medical School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences which was established to capitalize on the DOS technologies. Dr. Foley served as the Head of Chemical Technology for the ICCB. Prior to his academic appointment, Dr. Foley worked in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 10 years, building up his base of expertise in medicinal chemistry at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Glaxo Wellcome. Michael Foley earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard University in the laboratories of Dr. Stuart Schreiber, researching the interface of chemistry and Biology.

Todd Golub, M.D.

Founding Director, Cancer Program, The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT Charles A. Dana Investigator, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

 

Todd Golub is a founding member of the Broad Institute and serves as director of its Cancer program. Dr. Golub is a world leader in applying genomic tools to the classification and study of cancers. His work focuses on using the human genome to understand the biological and clinical challenges facing cancer medicine. Dr. Golub has made fundamental discoveries in the molecular basis of childhood leukemia, and pioneered the use of genomic approaches to cancer biology and cancer drug discovery. Dr. Golub is the Charles A. Dana Investigator in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He holds a number of leadership positions, including serving on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors. Dr. Golub is the recipient of multiple awards, including Discover Magazine's Inventor of the Year (Health Category), the Daland Prize of the American Philosophical Society, the Paul Marks Prize of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Outstanding Achievement Award for the American Association for Cancer Research. Dr. Golub has served as an advisor to a number of successful pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including Merck & Co., Pfizer, Inc., CombinatoRx, Inc., Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and Avalon Pharmaceuticals. Todd Golub received his B.A. in 1985 from Carleton College and his M.D. in 1989 from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, followed by clinical training in oncology at Harvard.