PRESS RELEASE
CHARM Therapeutics Strengthens Leadership Team with Key Appointments to Support Drug Discovery and Development Capability
- Enhanced leadership team brings strong AI and drug discovery expertise and experience, reinforcing CHARM Therapeutics’ existing R&D capabilities
CHARM Therapeutics (“CHARM”, “The Company”), a 3D deep-learning research Company discovering and developing transformational medicines, today announces the expansion of its leadership team with a series of key appointments to strengthen its drug discovery and development, as well as operational management capabilities.
Effective immediately, CHARM has appointed Ross Pettit as Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Skerratt as Senior Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery, Daniel Rohle as Vice President, Head of Cancer Biology, Andrew Doré as Vice President, Head of Structural Sciences, with a focus on drug discovery and development and Sergey Bartunov as Director, AI. These appointments will support CHARM as it builds out of its research and development function to advance discoveries driven by its proprietary 3D deep-learning engine towards development.
CHARM Therapeutics raised $50 million in a Series A financing round announced in 2022, led by F-Prime Capital and OrbiMed, with General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures.
Gary D. Glick Ph.D., Executive Chair of CHARM Therapeutics, commented:
“The exceptional people joining CHARM bring the perfect combination of skills, from immersion in AI, oncology and translational research to long experience in organizational leadership. With world-class 3D deep learning and structure-based drug design technology, the CHARM team is well positioned to execute on the pipeline.”
Laksh Aithani, co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of CHARM Therapeutics, added:
“I’m really happy to welcome Ross, Sarah, Dan, Andy and Sergey to the CHARM family. Their expertise will coalesce to help us build out a robust R&D function. This enables us to start to translate the output of our proprietary 3D deep learning technology, which focuses on predicting the co-crystal structure of a protein-ligand complex, into moving targets towards development.”
Strength of new discovery and development talent
Ross Pettit joins as Chief Operating Officer. Ross has over 30 years of extensive drug development experience in the biopharmaceutical industry across clinical operations, program management, data management, regulatory affairs and medical affairs. He joins CHARM from H3 Biomedicine, where he worked as Deputy President, holding leadership responsibilities over all business operations and leading the exclusive out-license of H3 Biomedicine’s splicing modulator to Roivant Sciences. Ross previously served in senior roles at Beigene Pharmaceuticals, AMAG Pharmaceuticals and ARIAD Pharmaceuticals. He holds an MBA in Healthcare management.
As Senior Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery, Sarah Skerratt brings expertise across multiple areas of drug discovery that include medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, toxicology, and pharmaceutical sciences, with senior experience ranging from biotech to large pharma. Sarah joins CHARM from Merck Sharp & Dohme, where she worked as Head of Preclinical Sciences at the London site, responsible for building and leading a multidisciplinary preclinical team. She has also served in senior positions at Vertex and Convergence/Biogen and spent many years at Pfizer Inc (2004-2016), where she held numerous roles with a strong track record in drug development. Sarah is an organic chemist by training, conducting her Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham before undertaking postdoctoral studies at Stanford University as a visiting Fulbright Scholar.
Daniel Rohle joins CHARM as Vice President, Head of Cancer Biology. Daniel Rohle has strong experience in oncology drug discovery and translational research culminating in publications in top tier journals, including Nature and Science. His most recent position before joining CHARM was as Vice President, Biology at Ridgeline Discovery, where he led the basic biology and assay development group for biotech companies that Ridgeline Discovery was helping to build. He previously worked at Hoffman La Roche as a member of the leadership team in the Molecular Targeted Therapeutics group, and at GSK as an investigator in the Tumor Signalling DPU. Daniel holds a PhD in Pharmacology from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, which he obtained whilst working at Memorial Sloan Kettering in a collaboration with Agios Pharmaceuticals.
As Vice President, Head of Structural Sciences, Andrew Doré heads CHARM’s interdisciplinary structural sciences group and brings senior experience with global pharmaceutical companies. Previously, Andrew spent 12 years as Director and Head of Crystallography at Sosei Heptares UK, founding and establishing the now world-renowned Crystallography and structural biology department with resultant landmark publications in Nature, Science and Cell. Prior to this he completed his postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. Andrew obtained his DPhil in Protein Crystallography from the University of Cambridge.
As Director of AI, Sergey Bartunov brings more than 10 years of expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning more specifically in Bayesian machine learning and deep learning. Prior to joining CHARM, Sergey worked on cutting edge AI projects at Alphabet’s Deep Mind and was a senior member of the teaching staff at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. He was also involved with a number of AI-driven start-ups. He holds an MSc PhD from Moscow State University.
ENDS
For further information, please contact:
CHARM Therapeutics
Laksh Aithani, Chief Executive Officer
Phone +44 7933 185425
Consilium Strategic Communications
Amber Fennell /Jessica Hodgson / Chris Gardner
Phone: 44 (0)20 3709 5700
About CHARM Therapeutics
CHARM Therapeutics is a 3D deep-learning research Company discovering and developing transformational medicines.
Founded on 3D deep learning inspired by the breakthroughs of co-founder David Baker, CHARM Therapeutics has developed a proprietary technology based on the first rapid, accurate protein/ligand co-folding algorithm. The Company’s goal is to use these insights to address challenging targets in cancer and other disease areas and discover and develop new drugs against these targets.
CHARM Therapeutics is Chaired by Gary Glick, founder of IFM Therapeutics, Scorpion Therapeutics and Odyssey Therapeutics. Laksh Aithani, a former machine learning engineer at Exscientia and start-up founder, is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer.
London-based CHARM Therapeutics has raised $50 million to date and is building an interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial team, combining leaders from the fields of AI and biotechnology. It supported by high quality international investors including Orbimed, F-Prime, General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Axial and Braavos. For more information, please visit: www.charmtx.com
