Protagonist Therapeutics Elects Chaitan Khosla, Ph.D. to Board of Directors
MILPITAS, Calif., Nov. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc. today announced that Chaitan Khosla, Ph.D., founder of Alvine Pharmaceuticals and Kosan Biosciences (now part of Bristol-Myers Squibb), Director of Stanford ChEM-H, and Stanford University Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, has been elected to the Protagonist Board of Directors.
"Chaitan Khosla is a world renowned researcher who has been very successful at transitioning innovative science towards potential commercial products addressing unmet medical needs," said Dinesh V. Patel, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Protagonist Therapeutics. "As the founder not only of Alvine Pharmaceuticals, but also the non-profit Celiac Sprue Research Foundation, his interests and insights into immunomodulatory and inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract are directly relevant to Protagonist's own product focus on inflammatory bowel diseases and other GI-related illnesses."
"Orally bioactive peptides represent a promising frontier for next-generation therapeutics, especially for GI disorders," said Dr. Khosla. "By developing an innovative platform and directing it toward validated targets such as alpha-4-beta-7 integrin, Protagonist is emerging as an exciting company at the interface between molecular design and mucosal biology. I feel honored to be able to contribute to this bold new initiative."
About Protagonist Therapeutics
Protagonist Therapeutics is a U.S.-incorporated biotechnology company engaged in the discovery and development of 'orally stable peptides' for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and other gastrointestinal diseases and disorders. The company has a proprietary technology platform that enables it to innovate potent and orally stable peptides against protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets that have historically been approached only by 'injectable biologics'. Oral peptides offer a safer and superior choice to patients, physicians, and payers by virtue of their enhanced safety & efficacy, better convenience & compliance, and favorable affordability in comparison to the injectable antibodies. The company is currently pursuing the preclinical development of an alpha-4-beta-7 integrin specific oral peptide antagonist and preclinical discovery of oral IL23 receptor antagonists as new chemical entities (NCEs) for treatment of IBD.
Protagonist is a spin-out of University of Queensland's Institute of Molecular Biosciences (IMB) and is headquartered in the USA with discovery operations in Milpitas, California USA and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For further information, please visit http://www.protagonist-inc.com.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130501/MM06086LOGO
SOURCE Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc.
Share this article