News
FORMA Therapeutics Strengthens Scientific Advisory Board with Addition of Three Leaders from Industry and Academia
March 30, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, MA — FFORMA Therapeutics announced today the addition of three new members to the Company’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). The new members are:
-
SAB Chairman Robert Gould, Ph.D., Director of Novel Therapeutics, Broad Institute and former VP of Licensing and External Research and VP of Basic Research, Merck;
-
Simon Campbell, Former SVP of Worldwide Discovery and Medicinal R&D Europe, Pfizer; and
-
Yigong Shi, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and Chair Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Tsinghua University.
They join existing FORMA SAB members Stuart Schreiber, Ph.D., Todd Golub, M.D., and Michael Foley, Ph.D. FORMA is integrating important new advances in chemistry and biology to unlock important drug targets that have been elusive to the best scientists in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.
“The addition of these visionaries in the fields of genetics, oncology, structural biology, chemistry and drug discovery to our existing world-class, influential Scientific Advisory Board, is a strong endorsement of FORMA’s transformative drug discovery platform capabilities, “ said Steven Tregay, President and CEO of FORMA. “This also highlights our dedication to exploiting new advances in the understanding of previously elusive drug targets so that we are at the forefront of successfully developing drugs for these targets. We look forward to working closely with our SAB to help us execute on the scientific promise of the company.”
"FORMA's commitment to creatively combining technologies from multiple sources and to marry biological screening technology with advanced chemistry puts them in a strong position to accelerate drug discovery," said Robert Gould, Ph.D., Chairman of FORMA’s SAB. "We believe that the company's unified approach will allow them to discover a new generation of therapeutics, particularly for oncology."
FORMA Therapeutics is integrating transformative chemistry and biology to unlock the best targets and pathways that genomic medicine has revealed. Capitalizing on the targets and pathways validated by the Cancer Genome Atlas Project and other related efforts, FORMA is developing a new generation of cancer therapies aimed at previously elusive drug targets. The Company is achieving this by applying its proprietary cell-based screening, structure-guided drug discovery and Diversity Oriented Synthesis (DOS) technologies, which FORMA also uses to discover novel compounds for its partners in indications beyond oncology. FORMA is a global company headquartered in Cambridge, MA with additional research operations in Connecticut, Singapore and Beijing. www.formatherapeutics.com
Contact:
FORMA Therapeutics
Steven Tregay, CEO
(617) 679-1970
Media Contact:
MacDougall Biomedical Communications
Douglas MacDougall or Kari Watson
(781) 235-3060
New SAB Members
Robert Gould, Ph.D., Chairman of Scientific Advisory board,FORMA Therapeutics; Director of Novel Therapeutics, Broad Institute
Dr. Gould is currently Director, Novel Therapeutics, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Gould retired from Merck Research Labs in 2006 where he was Vice President, Licensing and External Research. For the three years prior to that position he was Vice President, Basic Research, Merck Research Labs, where he oversaw strategic direction and drug discovery activities for multiple therapeutic areas, as well as MRL's centralized high throughput screening and imaging facilities. Dr. Gould obtained degrees from Spring Arbor College, Michigan and The University of Iowa. After post-doctoral studies at The Johns Hopkins University, he joined Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Labs where he remained until retiring and joining the Broad Institute. Dr. Gould has published over 90 peer-reviewed publications and 16 patents.
Dr.Simon Campbell, CBE FRS Past President of the Royal Society of Chemistry
Simon Campbell is a synthetic organic chemist who retired from his position as senior vice president for world-wide discovery and medicinals R&D Europe at Pfizer in October 1998. He has co-authored over 110 publications and patents and was a key member of the research teams that discovered doxazosin (Cardura™) and amlodipine (Norvasc™). He was also senior author on the research proposal that led to sildenafil (Viagra™), the first oral treatment for erectile dysfunction. Dr. Campbell was the first chair of the Expert Scientific Advisory Committee for the Medicines for Malaria Initiative, was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry 2004-06 and was elected FRS in 1999. In 2006, Dr. Campbell was appointed CBE for services to science. Dr. Campbell received both his BSc and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Birmingham in England.
Yigong Shi, Ph.D., Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University; Chair Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Tsinghua University
Yigong Shi has been a Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Molecular Biology since 1998. Dr. Shi's research is aimed at elucidating the molecular mechanisms involved in tumorigenesis, with a focus on key regulatory components in programmed cell death (apoptosis). His approaches include a variety of biochemical and biophysical methods, particularly x-ray crystallography. Dr. Shi is a founder of TetraLogic, Inc. and currently serves as co-Chairman of the scientific advisory board. He is also Chair Professor for the department of Biological Sciences at Tsinghua University. Prior to joining the faculty at Princeton, Dr. Shi was a Postdoctoral fellow in the Structural Biology Laboratory of Tumor Suppressors and Oncogenes at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center under Dr. Nikola P. Pavletich. Dr. Shi earned his Ph.D. and stayed on as a Post Doctorate fellow through the Inter-campus Program in Molecular Biophysics (IPMB) and the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under Dr. Jeremy M. Berg. Yigong Shi received his B.S. from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China with highest honor in both Biology and Mathematics.