NEWS PROVIDED BY Panorama Medicine February 25, 2020
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Panorama Medicine (“Panorama”), a genomics and computing powered drug discovery company focusing on RNA-targeted therapeutics, today announced the appointment of Jae Lee, PhD as Executive Vice President, Research and Preclinical Development, effective February 24, and Maxine Gowen, PhD as Board Director, effective January 1. Dr. Jae Lee will oversee Panorama’s drug discovery efforts, grow the company’s research team, and guide the company to advance drug candidates from discovery to the clinic.
“We are thrilled to have Jae and Maxine join Panorama in these critical roles and at this pivotal time in the company. They will be crucial in our efforts to build out and progress our pipeline of development programs based on our PANACEA Platform. With our team’s depth and breadth in genomics and computing, particularly in identifying and advancing small molecules to modulate RNA splicing, they will be vital in helping us fulfill our mission of discovering and developing new therapies for people with diseases for whom limited treatment options exist,”said Mingfu Zhu, PhD, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Panorama, “We look forward to an exciting period of growth in our research efforts under the new leadership as we continue to expand our scientific team and progress our preclinical development programs.”
Jae S. Lee, PhD
Dr. Lee is an accomplished leader in drug discovery and translational research. He brings nearly three decades of experience leading numerous projects of discovery and preclinical development in multiple therapeutic areas including neuroscience, immunology, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, respiratory disease and anti-infective. He joins Panorama from Kintai Therapeutics, where he was a Vice President of Preclinical Development. Prior to his role at Kintai Therapeutics, Dr. Lee served as the Vice President of Drug Discovery Sciences at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals for over 10 years. He has led research in drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, biomarkers and safety pharmacology to identify new drug candidates for development. Previously, he served as Senior Director of DMPK at Pfizer where he was responsible for strategic and scientific leadership of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics from inception to New Drug Application for multiple therapeutic areas. Dr. Jae Lee started his industrial career at Novartis. Since then he has nominated over 70+ preclinical development candidates as new chemical and biological entities. He was a key member of the teams that discovered Chantix® (varenicline), Xeljanz® (tofacitinib), and SKyrizi® (risankizumab). Dr. Lee completed his postdoctoral research at University of Maryland, College Park after earning his PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at University of California at San Francisco.
Maxine Gowen, PhD, MBA
Dr. Gowen is an entrepreneur, scientist, and biotech executive. She is currently the CEO of TamuroBio Inc., an emerging biotech company. From 2007 until October 2018, Dr. Gowen founded and served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Trevena, Inc. Prior to her long-time role at Trevena, Dr. Gowen served in multiple positions of leadership at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for fifteen years. While serving as Senior Vice President for the Center of Excellence for External Drug Discovery, she innovated external drug discovery in the pharma industry. Dr. Gowen has also served in the venture capital subsidiary of GSK, SR One, as the President and Managing Partner where she led investments and participated as a board member for numerous companies. Dr. Gowen was Vice President, Drug Discovery, Musculoskeletal Diseases at GSK until 2002 where she led drug discovery and early development of therapeutics targeted at bone diseases ranging from osteoporosis to arthritis. From 1989 to 1992, Dr. Gowen held a tenured academic position in the School of Pharmacology, University of Bath, UK. She received a PhD from the University of Sheffield, UK, in cell biology and later received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, Dr. Gowen serves as board member for public biopharmaceutical companies Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. since July 2014, Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. since January 2016, and Aclaris Therapeutics, Inc. since July 2019. She also serves on the board of the state biotechnology industry association, Life Sciences PA and previously held a board seat in the national biotechnology industry association, BIO, from 2008 to 2018.
About Panorama Medicine
Panorama Medicine is a VC-backed startup founded by a multidisciplinary team of world-renowned computational and experimental RNA biologists. Panorama integrates genomics, big data, and computing to develop therapeutic interventions for RNA defects in a wide variety of genetically defined diseases. The Company’s proprietary technology platform, PANACEA, targets diseases treatable through the modulation of RNA splicing.
About PANACEA Platform
PANACEA (PANorama’s Automated Compound Effect Anaylzer) is Panorama’s proprietary genome-wide drug screening platform. RNA splicing is a fundamental mechanism in molecular biology in which segments of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are either retained or excised from the final transcript in a context dependent manner. The ability to selectively include or exclude portions of an mRNA allows the production of multiple mRNAs and hence multiple proteins from a single gene. Leveraging public genomics data and proprietary drug experiment data, PANACEA comprehensively identifies diseases treatable through the modulation of RNA splicing and efficiently screens for compounds that treat such diseases.
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