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Leaders from Celgene, Third Rock Ventures and other top pharma companies will help guide new drug discovery initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
MADISON, Wis. – WARF Therapeutics, the major drug discovery program launched this year by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), has named four pharmaceutical development experts to its Advisory Board with more than 100 years of combined preclinical and translational drug discovery experience.
They are:
Deepak Dalvie: Senior Director in Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics at Celgene. Prior to joining Celgene, Dalvie was a Research Fellow at Pfizer Global Research and Development in the Department of Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics, and Metabolism in La Jolla, CA.
Dr. Mark Deeg: Most recently served as Chief Medical Officer for Regulus Therapeutics. Deeg has over 25 years of experience in translational medicine including at Eli Lilly where he served as Chief Medical and Safety Officer at Chorus, a division of Lilly Research, conducting early phase clinical trials in endocrinology and metabolism.
Christopher Dinsmore: Currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Third Rock Ventures. Dinsmore brings 25 years of experience in leadership roles including Vice President and Head of Chemistry at FORMA Therapeutics as well as Executive Director at Merck Research Laboratories.
Paul Secrist: Senior Vice President, Head of Discovery Research at LifeMine Therapeutics. Secrist brings extensive oncology drug discovery experience at both big pharma and small/startup biotechnology companies. Previously Director of Cancer Biosciences at AstraZeneca.
WARF Therapeutics officially launched in February 2019. Its mission is to identify promising biological discoveries on the UW-Madison campus that are relevant to human disease. WARF Therapeutics will invest in validated targets, design and develop drug-like molecules, and ultimately partner them with the venture capital community, pharmaceutical organizations and biotech companies. The program is led by Jonathan Young, Ph.D., an industry veteran with 25 years of drug discovery experience in both large pharma and biotech.
In March, WARF Therapeutics announced a partnership with Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP). SBP is an independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to understanding basic human biology and disease, and to advancing scientific discoveries to profoundly impact human health. SBP’s Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics (Prebys Center) is one of the most advanced drug discovery centers in the nonprofit world.
About WARF
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) helps steward the cycle of research, discovery, commercialization and investment for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Founded in 1925 as an independent, nonprofit foundation, WARF manages more than 2,000 patents and an investment portfolio of $2.7 billion as it funds university research, obtains patents for campus discoveries and licenses inventions to industry. For more information, visit warf.org and view WARF’s Cycle of Innovation.
About WARF Therapeutics
Consistent with WARF’s mission to support UW-Madison research and make a global impact, WARF Therapeutics is a major initiative to move new pharmaceuticals closer to the market and patients. The program will take select assets and lead them through preclinical development, towards commercialization and the benefit of human lives. More at warf.org/therapeutics.
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