- Deep expertise in leading drug discovery programs across oncology, neuroscience and epigenetics
- Will drive advancement of Curve's rich pipeline of first-in-class therapeutic assets
- Builds on recent leadership team appointments, including Andre Hoekema as Chair of the Board
SOUTHAMPTON, England, Oct. 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Curve Therapeutics ("Curve" or the "Company"), a private biotechnology company pioneering a revolutionary intracellular screening platform addressing complex and challenging disease targets, today announces the appointment of Rab Prinjha, PhD, as Chief Research and Development (R&D) Officer. This continues Curve's strong momentum expanding its leadership team following the recent appointments of Andre Hoekema and Cora Griffin, joining as Chair of the Board and Head of Business Development respectively.
Dr Prinjha is a proven R&D leader with a more than 20-year track record of success leading drug discovery programs and collaborations pioneering research across immunology, oncology, neuroscience and epigenetics using small molecule, nucleic acid and biologic modalities. He joins from GSK where he was Head of the Immunology Research Unit and Immunology Network sponsor and led the team reshaping and focusing the immunology research portfolio. Under his leadership this team delivered over 15 clinical candidates and over 30 new targets.
Curve's mission is to improve patient outcomes by discovering innovative drugs that address the most challenging and complex disease targets. Rab will be responsible for the therapeutic portfolio strategy to advance the Company's growing pipeline of first-in-class assets, including a dual HIF-1/HIF-2 inhibitor and an inhibitor of ATIC homodimerization. He will also leverage his expertise in oncology, neuroscience, immunology and epigenetics to further enhance target selection and validation using Curve's revolutionary, disease agnostic Microcycle discovery platform.
Simon Kerry, Chief Executive Officer of Curve Therapeutics, said: "Rab is the latest addition to the truly world-class leadership team we are assembling at Curve; his skill-set, experience and passion align with our mission to successfully drug complex and challenging disease targets and develop life-changing drugs for patients. As we progress towards the clinic and develop our relationships with major pharma, Rab's exceptional track record will be invaluable."
Rab Prinjha, Chief Research and Development Officer of Curve Therapeutics, commented:"The application of Curve's unique Microcycle platform to directly screen for molecules that are functionally active in the native context of mammalian cells is hugely powerful. My passion has always been for translating scientific excellence into future medicines and with the Curve team there is an exciting opportunity to apply this ground-breaking technology to deliver first in class medicines across oncology, neuroscience and other therapeutic areas, contributing major improvements to patient treatment."
About Curve Therapeutics
Curve Therapeutics is a private biotechnology company pioneering a revolutionary intracellular screening platform to enable the discovery of innovative therapeutics that address complex and challenging disease targets with the potential to transform the lives of patients. Curve originated from world-leading Microcycle research conducted by Professor Tavassoli's group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southampton, UK. Curve is backed by blue chip investors including Advent Life Sciences, Epidarex Capital, Pfizer Ventures, Columbus Venture Partners and British Patient Capital. Curve has a US$1.7bn global research collaboration with MSD the trade name of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ USA, to discover and validate modulators of up to five therapeutic targets using its Microcycle technology, initially for oncology and neurology indications. For more information visit: www.curvetx.com.
About Curve's Microcycle platform
Curve has developed an IP-protected, mammalian cell platform technology, for functional screening and enrichment of diverse hexameric cyclic peptide Microcycle libraries, to identify those library members that have the desired biological activity against a therapeutic target. Curve's platform allows direct screening for biologically active library members inside mammalian cells and facilitates small molecule hit-to-lead programs. A key advantage of the technology is that both the library and the target are present in all their native conformations within a cell. Uniquely, the compact size and rigid structure of Microcycles enables the design of non-peptide small molecule leads. The disease agnostic discovery platform can be used for a wide range of therapeutically relevant targets, including protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions, and has been used by Curve to develop a pipeline of cancer programs against targets including a dual HIF-1/HIF-2 inhibitor and an inhibitor of ATIC homodimerization.
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