Totient Announces Formation of the New Scientific Advisory Board
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Totient, a human-derived therapeutic antibody discovery company based in Cambridge, MA, today announced the formation of its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) including Prof. Simon Tavaré, PhD, Bharath Ramsundar, PhD, Chris Powell, PhD, and Prof. Duncan Jodrell, DM.
Totient is enabling next generation cell therapies and other therapeutic modalities by building the largest library of human-derived antibodies to novel and known tissue-specific antigens. The SAB will work closely with the Totient leadership team to help guide the further high throughput discovery and development efforts.
"We are excited and privileged to have the opportunity to work with this group of experts on improving our core computationally-driven high throughput discovery and development technology," said Deniz Kural, PhD, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Totient. "These thought-leaders bring tremendous expertise in application of statistical bioinformatics and computational biology to target identification, characterization and optimization of novel and safe therapeutics, and successful progression to clinical trials. We look forward to their contributions as Totient enters a new stage in building the deepest library of disease-derived tissue-specific immunogenic antigens and fully human antibodies and advances its lead antibodies into the clinic."
Prof. Tavaré stated, "Totient has demonstrated once again that computational biology can find new tricks for old data: legacy cancer sequencing data can now be used to obtain functioning human antibodies against tumor antigens."
The Totient Scientific Advisory Board is composed of the following experts:
- Prof. Simon Tavaré, PhD, FRS, FMedSci is a Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Biological Sciences at Columbia University, the Founding Director of the Herbert and Florence Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics, and an International Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Previously, he was the Director of Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. Dr. Tavaré has tremendous experience in statistical bioinformatics and computational biology, particularly evolutionary approaches to understanding cancer biology.
- Bharath Ramsundar, PhD is the founder and CEO of Deep Forest Sciences, a start-up working to accelerate the use of AI in deep tech. Dr. Ramsundar is also the lead maintainer of the DeepChem project, an open source consortium working to build software for open source medicine discovery. Bharath previously co-founded Computable, a venture-backed start-up building better tools for collaborative dataset management. Dr. Ramsundar has a Computer Science Ph.D. from Stanford University. His research and professional interests include the application of deep-learning in drug discovery. Bharath is the lead author of "TensorFlow for Deep Learning: From Linear Regression to Reinforcement Learning", a developer's introduction to modern machine learning, with O'Reilly Media, and the lead author of "Deep Learning for the Life Sciences".
- Chris Powell, PhD, FRCPath, FRSB, FBTS is a consultant on medicines safety and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, The Royal Society of Biology and the British Toxicology Society. Previously, Dr. Powell was VP of Translational Medicine and Safety at GlaxoSmithKline and has notably served on Scientific Advisory Committees for the UK/EU Government and for the World Health Organization. Dr. Powell has extensive professional background in preclinical safety of drug targets and the risk assessment of medical compounds during clinical development.
- Prof. Duncan Jodrell, DM, MSc, FRCP(Edin.) is the Professor of Cancer Therapeutics at the University of Cambridge. He leads the Cambridge NIHR/CRUK Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre, is the Director of the Cambridge Cancer Trials Centre and an honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. His renowned research focuses on optimizing the preclinical development and science-led clinical application of novel therapeutics and therapeutic strategies, particularly in patients with pancreatic cancer. Previously, Prof. Jodrell held senior positions at the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian. He has been involved in the pre-clinical and clinical development of many novel cancer therapeutics.
Additional information and biographies are available at www.totient.bio.
"The scientific guidance of this group of experts will be invaluable as we internally advance two of our programs through IND enabling studies and into the clinic," said James Sietstra, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer at Totient. "We look forward to working together with our SAB members as Totient's antibody platform enables next generation cell therapies and provide benefits to patient health."
About Totient
Totient is enabling next generation cell therapies and other therapeutic modalities by building the largest library of human-derived antibodies to novel and known tissue-specific antigens. Totient reconstructs antibodies from patients experiencing exceptional immune responses. For more information, visit www.totient.bio.
Contact:
James Sietstra
[email protected]
SOURCE Totient
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