- Accomplished CFO and COO with proven track record in the
biotech and pharmaceutical industry
- Strengthens Curve's Leadership Team following £40.5 million
Series A financing
SOUTHAMPTON, England,
July 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/
-- Curve Therapeutics ("Curve" or the "Company"), a private
biotechnology company pioneering a revolutionary intracellular
screening platform addressing complex and challenging disease
targets, today announces the appointment of Simon Jones as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and
Chief Operating Officer (COO).
Simon has over 20 years of experience in the biotech and pharma
sector. He is an accomplished C-Suite executive with a skill set
that includes senior operational and commercial roles within the
life-science sector, including significant venture fundraising and
deal-making. He joins from SpyBiotech, where he headed the Finance
and Operations functions, during which time the Company
successfully took its lead vaccine candidate into the clinic. This
followed almost a decade as CFO at Karus Therapeutics where he
managed the financial operations as the Company secured a sizeable
funding round from US and EU investors, as well as investment
through the UK Government's Future Fund Scheme. Prior to this,
Simon was CFO at various early-stage life sciences companies,
including Eykona Technologies and Glide Pharmaceutical
Technologies, which transitioned from development to
commercialisation.
Simon Kerry, Chief Executive
Officer of Curve Therapeutics, commented: "Simon brings
extensive financial experience at the leadership level from
multiple clinical stage biotech companies. His appointment comes at
a pivotal time as we look to expand our team, advance our
proprietary Microcycle® discovery platform, and
progress our pipeline of potential first-in-class assets."
Simon Jones, Chief Financial
Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Curve Therapeutics,
said: "Curve's revolutionary Microcycle discovery platform
and rich pipeline of assets means that it is a company primed to
disrupt the drug discovery space. I am excited to be joining as the
Company expands and transitions to become a clinical stage
company."
Curve Therapeutics' mission is to unlock the therapeutic
potential of complex and challenging disease targets that are
intractable to conventional discovery methods. Through the
utilisation of its world leading Microcycle discovery platform,
Curve can screen directly inside mammalian cells, allowing for the
identification of biologically active library members within an
intracellular environment where both the library and the target are
present in their native conformations. Curve is developing a
small-molecule dual inhibitor of HIF-1 and HIF-2, along with an
inhibitor of ATIC homodimerization, both with first-in-class
potential.
About Curve Therapeutics
Curve Therapeutics is a
private biotechnology company pioneering a revolutionary
intracellular screening platform to enable the discovery of
innovative therapeutics that address complex and challenging
disease targets with the potential to transform the lives of
patients. Curve originated from world-leading
Microcycle research conducted by Professor
Tavassoli's group in the Department of Chemistry at the
University of Southampton, UK. Curve is backed by blue chip
investors including Advent Life Sciences, Epidarex Capital,
Pfizer Ventures, Columbus Venture Partners and British Patient
Capital. Curve has a US$1.7bn global
research collaboration with MSD the trade name of Merck &
Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ USA, to
discover and validate modulators of up to five therapeutic targets
using its Microcycle technology, initially for oncology and
neurology indications. For more information visit:
www.curvetx.com.
About Curve's Microcycle platform
Curve has developed
an IP-protected, mammalian cell platform technology for functional
screening and enrichment of diverse hexameric cyclic peptide
Microcycle libraries, to identify those library members that have
the desired biological activity against a therapeutic target.
Curve's platform allows direct screening for biologically active
library members inside mammalian cells and facilitates small
molecule hit-to-lead programmes. A key advantage of the technology
is that both the library and the target are present in all their
native conformations within a cell. Uniquely, the compact size and
rigid structure of Microcycles enables the design of non-peptide
small molecule leads. The platform can be used for a wide range of
therapeutically relevant targets, including protein-protein and
protein-DNA interactions, and has been used by Curve to develop a
pipeline of cancer programmes against targets including a dual
HIF-1/HIF-2 inhibitor and an inhibitor of ATIC
homodimerization.
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