Arvinas Appoints Robert Kleinfield as Chief Development Officer

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Sept. 23, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Arvinas LLC, a biotechnology company creating a new class of oncology drugs based on protein degradation, announced the appointment of Robert Kleinfield, Ph.D., as chief development officer of the company. Dr. Kleinfield brings over 20 years of product development and project leadership experience to Arvinas, having led programs in oncology, metabolic diseases and anti-infective therapeutic areas in a variety of pharmaceutical settings.

"Rob has an extensive track record in developing drugs at all stages of the product life-cycle, from candidate selection through life-cycle management. Rob's experience will prove invaluable as we advance our drug programs towards the clinic," said Tim Shannon, M.D., general partner at Canaan Partners and chairman of Arvinas' board of directors. "He brings a passionate, driven and dynamic leadership style to Arvinas with a deep knowledge of biology. I am confident that we have found a leader who can bring significant value to developing Arvinas' pipeline."

Prior to joining Arvinas, Dr. Kleinfield spent more than six years with Takeda Pharmaceuticals, leading global programs for a number of oncology assets, including kinase inhibitors, immuno-stimulators and protein-modifying enzymes. In this role, Rob was instrumental in introducing novel translational approaches into the early development space and implementing innovative clinical designs. Prior to Takeda, Dr. Kleinfield worked for five years at Wyeth, where he played pivotal roles in the development of Torisel^® and Bosulif^®, having led teams overseeing the global Phase 3 programs and subsequent registration of these assets, among others. Rob started his career at Bayer; over 10 years he had multiple positions of increasing responsibility, including project lead for anti-infective assets, including Cipro^® and Avelox^®, metabolic disease assets, including Precose^® and Trasylol^®, and early stage oncology assets. Rob's last position at Bayer, Germany, was VP and Head of Global Clinical Project Management. 

Dr. Kleinfield earned his undergraduate degree at University of Rochester (magna cum laude) and his Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently completed post-doctoral fellowships at University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

"Dr. Kleinfield's work throughout his career leading drug development programs clearly demonstrates the knowledge and experience he brings to Arvinas. Rob will undoubtedly have tremendous impact spearheading efforts to move our product pipeline to clinical proof of concept and beyond," noted Dr. Manuel Litchman, president and CEO of Arvinas.

About Arvinas

Arvinas is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing new small molecules aimed at degrading disease-causing cellular proteins. We are translating these innovative protein degradation approaches into novel drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Many diseases are a result of "rogue," uncontrolled proteins, whose absence could bring great clinical benefit to patients. To address these pathological intracellular proteins, Arvinas is developing a new drug paradigm based on the elimination of these proteins. Our innovative protein degradation technology uses small molecule drugs to "tag" specific proteins to be degraded by the ubiquitin/proteasome system (UPS), which is responsible for the normal turnover of most proteins within the cell.

Based on groundbreaking research conducted at Yale University by our Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor, Craig Crews, PhD, Arvinas has developed a platform technology to induce the loss of intracellular proteins: Proteolysis-Targeting Chimera (PROTAC). The ability of PROTAC-based drugs to induce protein degradation (instead of protein inhibition) offers the advantage of potentially targeting "undruggable" as well as "druggable" elements of the proteome. This greatly expands our ability to create drugs for many new, previously unapproachable targets. For more information, visit www.arvinas.com.

Arvinas Media Contact
Carolyn Hawley
[email protected]

SOURCE Arvinas

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