Totus Medicines Announces Global Pharma Leader Tom Hughes as Board Chair & Creation of Scientific Advisory Board

Wide-Ranging Group Includes Experts in Chemical Biology, Artificial Intelligence, Clinical Oncology, and Genetics

SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Totus Medicines, the drug discovery company mapping the universe of molecular drug interactions across the entire human genome to eliminate untreatable diseases, today announced the selection of global pharma leader Tom Hughes, Ph.D., as the chair of the company's board of directors, and revealed the appointment of four members to the company's innovative Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).

Dr. Hughes currently serves as president and CEO of Navitor Pharmaceuticals, and he has over 30 years of industry experience in the development and commercialization of pharmaceutical products. Prior to Navitor, Dr. Hughes served as CEO of Zafgen, where he established the company as a leader in the biotechnology industry. Before Zafgen, he held several positions at Novartis, where he oversaw many drug discovery and development projects. Dr. Hughes is also a member of the board of directors of Viridian Therapeutics, Inc., and he serves as a member of several other scientific and strategic advisory boards.

"Dr. Hughes's extraordinary breadth of experience makes him the perfect choice to lead our board — his knowledge of the industry is unparalleled, and he has led many projects that brought life-saving treatments to the public," said Totus CEO and founder Dr. Neil Dhawan, Ph.D. "We couldn't be more thrilled that he is joining our team as we move forward in bringing TOS-358 to the clinic later this year."

"I'm thrilled to serve as the chair of Totus' board. The company's scientists have engineered an extraordinary and revolutionary new AI-backed cell-based drug discovery platform that opens up possibilities for genome-scale screening for targets of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry," Dr. Hughes said. "Using this approach, the Totus team has already discovered a powerful, clinic-ready PI3Ka inhibitor with best-in-class potential, and they are working to enable a portfolio of programs in the area of precision oncology. Opportunities for implementation of this efficient drug discovery platform could expand beyond oncology into areas of high unmet need and societal impact, including neurodegeneration, cardiovascular diseases, immunological diseases, and more." 

Totus is also announcing the formation of its Scientific Advisory Board, taking a different approach to the common practice of populating an SAB with experts of similar backgrounds. Instead, Totus has recruited industry leaders from different disciplines to provide strategic guidance as the company expands its platform and enters clinical trials later this year.

"We have brought world-leading experts in oncology, chemical genetics, AI/machine learning, drug discovery, biology, and other research disciplines to join our Scientific Advisory Board. Our SAB leaders will play an important role in shaping our drug discovery work for years to come," Dhawan said. "Each member's specific expertise will prove crucial as we enter clinical trials and work to expand our pipeline in the future."

The SAB formation advances Totus' efforts to continue to deliver unparalleled efficiency and accuracy with its groundbreaking drug discovery platform. The company's TOS-358 drug program, which treats the PI3Kα oncogene, will enter clinical trials later this year. 

Members of the Totus SAB include:

Dr. Kevan Shokat, Ph.D.: Dr. Shokat is the department chair of Cellular Molecular Pharmacology and Howard Hughes Investigator with the University of California, San Francisco. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences (2010), the National Academy of Medicine (2011), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011). He has commercialized discoveries from his laboratory through co-founding several biotechnology companies, including Araxes Pharma, eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Erasca, Intellikine, Kumquat Biosciences, Kura Oncology, Mitokinin, Revolution Medicines, and Wellspring Biosciences. Dr. Shokat's current research group is focused on the discovery of new small molecule tools and drug candidates targeting regulatory proteins such as protein/lipid kinases and GTPases, as well as RNA helicases.

Dr. Chris Bowden, M.D.: Dr. Bowden is board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology, and he serves as strategic advisor at Agios, where he began as Chief Medical Officer in 2014. In this role, he led clinical development activities that resulted in the TIBSOVO^® approvals for IDH1 mutation positive acute myeloid leukemia in the U.S. Previously, Dr. Bowden was vice president product development oncology, franchise lead (Signaling Group) at Genentech. During his eight years there, Dr. Bowden was responsible for the successful development of a number of novel targeted oncology medicines, including Zelboraf™ for patients with BRAF V600E positive melanoma, and Tarceva™ for patients with EGFR activating mutation positive, non-small cell lung cancer. From 2003 to 2006, Dr. Bowden was the executive director for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) regions for Bristol Myers Squibb. Prior to his industry experience, Dr. Bowden was on the oncology faculty at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center, where he participated in numerous industry and cooperative group trials. He serves on the board of directors at Ziopharm Oncology Inc.

Steve Crossan: Mr. Crossan is the vice president of artificial intelligence & machine learning at gsk.ai. Previously, he led the product team responsible for putting DeepMind's technology into Google, which included data-center optimization for Google Assistant and protein folding, as well as reporting directly to DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. Mr. Crossan joined DeepMind after several years at Google working on the Google Maps, Gmail, and Google Search product teams. In 2011, during the Arab Spring, he launched speak2tweet to open access to social media when the internet was cut off in several countries. Before this work, he left a Ph.D. in AI at University of Sussex unfinished to start a series of startups, including Runtime Collective, which later became brandwatch.com.

Dr. Stephen P. Hale, Ph.D.: The founder and CEO of DG Medicines, Dr. Hale has advanced several programs across cardiovascular, oncology, immunology, and neurodegeneration in his 20+ years in drug discovery. He is co-inventor of a transformative DNA-encoded library (DEL) and screening technology that has since become ubiquitous in the industry as the gold standard for encoded-small-molecule discovery. Previously, he was the senior vice president, global head of R&D for Cambridge-based Dewpoint Therapeutics. Before that, Dr. Hale was CSO of Ensemble Therapeutics, where he built a drug discovery platform supporting six major collaborations that raised over $80 million in non-dilutive capital. He was also responsible for initiating and advancing internal and partnered programs that leveraged DNA-encoded macrocyclic compound collections and a massively parallel screening process. Before joining Ensemble, Dr. Hale was at Praecis Pharmaceuticals, where he helped advance oncology programs, including Plenaxis™, which was approved for prostate cancer prior to an acquisition by GSK.

About Totus Medicines

Founded in 2019, Totus Medicines is mapping the universe of molecular drug interactions across the entire human genome to create life-changing therapies to end the era of untreatable diseases.

For more information, please visit totusmedicines.com and follow Totus on LinkedIn and Twitter.

SOURCE Totus Medicines