Travecta Therapeutics Appoints Leading Experts to Expand its Scientific Advisory Leadership Team

PRINCETON, N.J. and SINGAPORE, Feb. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Travecta Therapeutics, Pte Ltd., a preclinical stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering a portfolio of product candidates engineered to cross the blood-brain-barrier, today announced significant expansion of the Scientific Advisory Board ("SAB"). The newly appointed members of the Scientific Advisory Board include: Stuart Grossman, MD; William Elmquist, PharmD, PhD; Jann Sarkaria, MD; and Mark Wallace, MD. These esteemed clinical scientists join current SAB members: Jerold Chun, MD, PhD Professor and Senior Vice President of Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Institute and Adjunct Professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Departments of Pharmacology and Neurosciences; and Peter Honig, MD, MPH, former Senior Vice President and Head of Global Regulatory Affairs and Group Head of Development for China and Japan at Pfizer.

"We are delighted to have leading authorities in the fields of blood brain barrier structure and function, neuroscience and clinical drug development join our Scientific Advisory Board," said Travecta President and CEO Charles Ryan. "We believe that this team of accomplished academicians and industry experts will enhance Travecta's ability to accelerate development of our mVECTA™ platform and expand our pipeline with innovative and strategic assets. Their contributions will advance our goal of developing an entirely new therapeutic pathway to treat patients with various central nervous system diseases."

"Travecta Therapeutics' novel transporter-based blood-brain barrier access shows great promise for approaching a broad range of neurological and neuro-oncology diseases," said Dr. Williiam Elmquist. "I am excited to be joining this dynamic company, and I look forward to working alongside my distinguished colleagues on Travecta's Scientific Advisory Board to advance this novel platform with the potential to revolutionize drug delivery across the blood brain barrier for a variety of neurological diseases."

"Travecta's proprietary mVECTA™ platform and our expertise in MFSD2A transporter science enables us to develop an unprecedented range of therapeutics directed toward previously inaccessible targets within the brain using a low-cost, oral therapy," said Donald Manning, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer and Head of R&D at Travecta. "This technology is currently at an inflection point, with multiple proprietary programs advancing through research and toward the clinic, including a lead compound expected to enter Phase 1 study in Q4 2022. The newly established SAB is a key strategic resource for Travecta providing clinical expertise and guidance to our team as we advance the development of our platform technology and identify lead clinical targets."

New Scientific Advisory Board Members

William Elmquist, PhD, PharmD, Distinguished Professor, Department of Pharmaceutics and Director of the Brain Barriers Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Elmquist's laboratory studies the biochemical and physiological determinants of drug absorption, distribution and elimination. Recent studies have focused on the role of drug transport proteins in drug distribution to target tissues. His current research examines the effect of multidrug resistance proteins (drug efflux pumps), such as the p-glycoprotein (P-gp), breast-cancer resistance protein (BCRP) and other multidrug-resistance associated proteins (e.g., MRPs), have on drug targeting to the central nervous system (CNS). Molecular biology, in vitro models, intracerebral microdialysis, and gene knockout animals have been essential tools in his research.  An important project currently underway is the search for strategies to improve the brain delivery of anticancer drugs and determine their permeability to the blood-brain barrier. Long term objectives of Dr. Elmquist's research include examining expression and regulation of transport systems influencing drug disposition in key tissues, and how variability in expression, either genetically or environmentally controlled, may contribute to variability in clinical drug response. Dr. Elmquist holds a PharmD in Clinical Pharmacy from the University of Minnesota as well as a PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Minnesota. He also received a BS in Pharmacy from the University of Florida and a BA in Zoology from the University of South Florida.

Stuart Grossman, MD, has been a Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and co-Leader of the Brain Cancer Program and Director of the clinical and research neuro-oncology efforts at Johns Hopkins since 1981. He served as Principal Investigator and Director of the Central Operations office of the National Cancer Institute-funded phase I/II Brain Tumor Consortium (New Approaches to Brain Tumor Therapy CNS Consortium and the Adult Brain Tumor Consortium) for the past 22 years. He has led many Phase I, II, and III institutional and cooperative group translational and clinical brain cancer research projects. Dr. Grossman's expertise includes care and treatment of patients with cancers of the brain, translational and clinical research, as well as directing large, multicenter, multidisciplinary clinical trial groups and training programs. He is Board Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in internal medicine and medical oncology. Dr. Grossman was an intern and resident at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY, and a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received his MD from the University of Rochester. 

Jann Sarkaria, MD is a Professor of Radiation Oncology at Mayo Clinic.  Dr. Sarkaria conducts translational neuro-oncology research focused on developing novel therapeutic strategies for people with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and brain metastases. Specifically, his lab's focus includes understanding the basis of resistance to chemotherapy and radiation, identifying methods to overcome therapy resistance, integration of novel signal transduction inhibitors into conventional therapies for newly diagnosed or recurrent GBM, and use of next-generation sequencing and proteomics to guide individualized therapy for patients with GBM.  Another major focus of Dr. Sarkaria's laboratory is examining the blood-brain barrier and defining which drugs have adequate penetration into brain tumors and testing novel delivery methods to enhance drug accumulation within brain tumors. Dr. Sarkaria was a Research Fellow in the Radiotherapy Research Unit at the Institute of Cancer Research and a Resident in Radiation Oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He received his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mark Steven Wallace, MD is a board-certified anesthesiologist and has been program director of UC San Diego Health's Center for Pain Medicine since 1996. Dr. Wallace is also Chair of the Division of Pain Medicine within UC San Diego School of Medicine's Department of Anesthesiology and has co-authored 171 peer-reviewed articles and nine books on pain medicine. He is active in clinical trials of investigational drugs, including medicinal use of cannabinoids, and techniques for managing chronic pain. Prior to joining UC San Diego Health, he was an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at University of Texas, Houston. Dr. Wallace is board-certified in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. Dr. Wallace is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Pain Society and serves on scientific planning meetings for both national and international meetings, including the World Congress of Pain, World Institute of Pain, American Academy of Pain Medicine and American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. Dr. Wallace completed subspecialty fellowship training in pain management at UC San Diego School of Medicine and residency training in anesthesiology at University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. He was a general surgery intern at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. and earned his medical degree at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha.

About Travecta Therapeutics

Travecta Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company developing a broad portfolio of product candidates engineered to cross the blood-brain-barrier. The company's proprietary platform mVECTA™ allows the company to screen and develop product candidates that can cross the blood-brain-barrier targeting novel and untapped neurological pathways. Travecta's mVECTA™ proprietary platform is built upon a deep understanding of the MFSD2A transporter protein and its function at the blood-brain barrier as well as in other key pathophysiological conditions discovered by Dr. David Silver. The new chemical entities discovered through mVECTA™ have significant advantages over existing therapies and allow the company to address large patient populations with conditions that were previously difficult to treat using existing modalities. Travecta focuses on biological pathways that have been clinically validated but where key biological targets have not been engaged or have been inadequately targeted due to blood-brain barrier impermeability. To date, Travecta Therapeutics has leveraged the mVECTA™ platform to design and test novel molecules with high brain penetration focused in the areas of visceral pain, neuro-oncology, anxiety, MS and epilepsy.

For more information, visit: https://travectatx.com/.

SOURCE Travecta