Recludix Pharma Announces Scientific Advisory Board

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 06, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Recludix Pharma, a leader in platform approaches to discover inhibitors of challenging cancer and inflammatory disease targets, today announced the establishment of its scientific advisory board.

“We are thrilled to have established a group of distinguished scientific thought leaders as advisors to the company,” said Nancy Whiting, Pharm.D., chief executive officer of Recludix. “Our scientific advisory board consists of pioneers in precision medicine for both oncology and inflammatory diseases. Their deep and diverse expertise will prove invaluable as we advance our pipeline of potent and selective oral inhibitors of important targets that have historically been challenging to drug.”

Brian Druker, M.D., director of the Knight Cancer Institute, associate dean for oncology, and JELD-WEN chair of leukemia research at the Oregon Health & Science University, added, “The differentiated development candidates being generated by Recludix’s platform to selectively inhibit the once-elusive, but critical, targets of STAT3 and STAT6 could yield transformational new therapies. I am looking forward to working with the Recludix team to advise on current and future research activities as Recludix continues to advance these and the other promising candidates in their pipeline to bring new medicines to patients in need.”

Scientific Advisory Board Members

Brian Druker, M.D.
Dr. Druker is the director of the Knight Cancer Institute, associate dean for oncology, and JELD-WEN chair of Leukemia Research at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR. A pioneer in the field of precision medicine, his research focuses on translating knowledge of the molecular pathogenesis of cancer into specific therapies and investigating the optimal use of these molecularly targeted agents. Dr. Druker’s research led to the first drug to target the molecular defect of a cancer while leaving healthy cells unharmed—imatinib (Gleevec) for chronic myeloid leukemia. He performed the preclinical studies that led to its development and then spearheaded the clinical trials that led to Food and Drug Administration approval of imatinib in record time. The drug changed the life expectancy of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia from an average of three to five years to a 95% survival rate at five years. The approach has led to a paradigm shift in cancer treatment from nonspecific chemotherapy to targeted therapeutic agents, spurring the development of numerous precision therapies for other cancers. Dr. Druker has served as a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors to the National Cancer Institute and on the board of directors of the American Association for Cancer Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Among his many awards, he received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.

Carlos Garcia-Echeverria, Ph.D.
Dr. Garcia-Echeverria has provided scientific leadership to drug discovery and early clinical development teams across different modalities and diseases. He currently serves as the chief of Rx creation at EQRx, leading the research and early-stage development functions. Previously, he was the chief operating officer of research at Sanofi where he oversaw the establishment and execution of the mid- and long-term vision and strategy of global research for effective portfolio management. Prior to Sanofi, Dr. Garcia-Echeverria was a member of the leadership team and global oncology decision board at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research. He has also broad experience in managing research partnerships. His research accomplishments are documented by 190 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and review papers, as well as 45 granted patents.

Dr. Garcia-Echeverria holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Barcelona and received the Leonidas Zerwas Award from the European Peptide Society in recognition of his outstanding contributions to peptide science.

Stefan Knapp, Ph.D.
Dr. Knapp is the chief scientific officer of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) and professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His research interests are the rational design of selective inhibitors that target protein kinases as well as protein interactions modules that function as reader domains of the epigenetic code. He joined Frankfurt University (Germany) in 2015 as a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Buchmann Institute of Molecular Life Sciences.

From 2012 and 2015 he was the director for Chemical Biology at the Target Discovery Institute (TDI), and between 2008 to 2015 he was a professor of structural biology at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine (NDM) at Oxford University (UK). Previously, he was a principal research scientist in structural biology and biophysics at Pharmacia Corporation.

Dr. Knapp studied chemistry at the University of Marburg (Germany) and at the University of Illinois (USA). He did his Ph.D. in protein crystallography at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) and continued his career at the Karolinska Institute as a postdoctoral scientist.

Marco Londei, M.D.
Dr. Londei most recently was the chief executive officer of Gadeta. Previously, he was the chief development officer and chief medical officer of AnaptysBio (NASDAQ: ANAB), where he played a crucial role in the company’s transition from a preclinical phase to its successful IPO, and several rounds of financing as a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company. Prior to AnaptysBio, Dr. Londei held leadership roles at Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, in charge of global teams for clinical development in transplantation, autoimmune and inflammatory disease areas. Over the 15 years in the pharma industry, Dr. Londei and his team brought more than a dozen of new molecular entities into clinical development, six of which have since entered the market. Before his move to the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Londei was professor of medicine at Imperial College and University College London in the UK. From his academic tenure, he also brings his valuable expertise in human T lymphocyte and their role in pathology.

Dr. Londei received his M.D. from the Faculty of Medicine at University of Bologna and has conducted post-doctoral studies at Tumor Immunology Unit, London, UK. He was a key member of the team which pioneered the development of anti-TNF therapies while at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology (KIR) Faculty of Medicine Imperial College, London with professors Ravinder Maini and Marc Feldmann. He is a widely recognized world-class contributor in the field of inflammation and self-recognition by T lymphocytes.

Jeff Tyner, Ph.D.
Dr. Tyner is a co-director of the Translational Oncology Program for the Knight Cancer Institute, director of the Cancer Biology Graduate Program, and a professor in the Department of Cell, Developmental & Cancer Biology. Dr. Tyner’s research is focused towards identification of cancer-causing gene targets in cancer patients and identification of patient-tailored, gene-targeted therapies. To accomplish these objectives, he has spent the past decade developing and implementing a functional screening approach whereby primary cells from hematologic malignancy patients can be tested ex vivo for sensitivity to a library of small-molecule inhibitors. This assay has now been cumulatively applied to over 2,500 patient specimens, and this large data set has been leveraged to inform findings that offer new diagnostic and therapeutic options.

Dr. Tyner attended undergraduate school at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, and graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. His graduate work, focusing on asthma and respiratory viral infections, was conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Holtzman. For his post-doctoral fellowship, he joined Dr. Brian Druker’s laboratory at OHSU where he studied molecular mechanisms of leukemogenesis.

About Recludix
Recludix is a leader in developing platform approaches to discover potent and selective inhibitors of challenging protein targets. The company was founded by members of Blueprint Medicines’ founding scientific team and its management team includes industry veterans with a track record of success in the discovery, development and commercialization of multiple oncology drugs. Recludix has developed a unique drug discovery platform that integrates custom generated DNA-encoded libraries, massively parallel determination of structure activity relationships, and a proprietary screening tool to ensure selectivity. The company is employing this approach first in the development of SH2 domain inhibitors. Recludix’s most advanced programs are focused on Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription (STAT) proteins — STAT3 and STAT6 — where abnormal activation is found in numerous cancer types, such as multiple leukemias and lymphomas, as well as inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, atopic dermatitis inflammatory bowel disease, and others. The company is advancing another program with an undisclosed non-STAT SH2 domain target that also plays a significant role in both cancer and autoimmune diseases. For more information, please visit the company’s website at https://recludixpharma.com.

Recludix Contacts:
Alexandra Santos
[email protected]

Aljanae Reynolds
[email protected]