CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Relay Therapeutics, a biotech company dedicated to developing breakthrough medicines by focusing on insights in protein motion, today announced the appointment of Sanjiv K. Patel, M.D. to President and CEO. Dr. Patel brings to Relay over 20 years of life sciences industry experience. He succeeds interim CEO Alexis Borisy, a Partner at Third Rock Ventures, who is assuming the position of Chairman of the company’s Board of Directors.
“We are thrilled to welcome Sanjiv as the CEO of Relay Therapeutics. Sanjiv’s strategic acumen and business experience coupled with his deep commitment to patients will help fulfill the transformational potential of Relay,” said Mr. Borisy. “Along with this key leadership appointment, our new board members, Laura Shawver and Markus Warmuth bring to Relay an incredible depth of research, development and entrepreneurial experience in building great biotech drugs and companies. We are enthusiastic to partner with them as Board members as we build a great company that will make a transformative difference for patients.”
Prior to Relay, Dr. Patel was at Allergan for over 10 years, and played a key part in Allergan’s sustained growth and value creation over that period. He was most recently part of Allergan’s Executive Team, as Chief Strategy Officer and at the center of some of the industry’s largest transactions. Prior to this, he held roles of increased responsibility, including leading Global Strategic Marketing for all franchises and general management of Allergan’s fastest growth geographic region, the Emerging Markets. Prior to Allergan, Dr. Patel was a Management Consultant at Boston Consulting Group in London and he started his career as a surgeon in the U.K.’s National Health Service. Dr. Patel received his MBA from INSEAD, MBBS from the University of London and has a M.A. in Neurosciences from Cambridge University.
“This is a rare opportunity to join a team that is fully dedicated to treating diseases where today, no truly effective therapy exists,” said Dr. Patel. “Relay is uniquely positioned to design innovative drugs by visualizing protein motion through integrating emerging computational and experimental methods. I look forward to working with the team to build a pipeline of groundbreaking therapies with an initial focus in oncology.”
Board of Directors Appointments
Laura Shawver, Ph.D., brings more than 25 years of experience in the development of small molecule drugs for cancer and other serious diseases. She is the CEO of Cleave Biosciences. Prior to joining Cleave, Dr. Shawver was Entrepreneur in Residence for 5AM Ventures and was previously the CEO of Phenomix Corporation. Prior to this, she was President of SUGEN, Inc. after holding various positions there over 10 years. SUGEN focused on kinase inhibitors and developed Sutent and Palladia. Dr. Shawver is also the Founder of The Clearity Foundation, a nonprofit organization providing access to molecular profiling for ovarian cancer patients to improve their treatment options. Dr. Shawver received her Ph.D. in pharmacology and a B.S. in microbiology, both from the University of Iowa.
Markus Warmuth, M.D., currently serves as President and CEO of H3 Biomedicine. Prior to joining H3, Dr. Warmuth was Head of Oncology Drug Discovery for the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR), Cambridge (U.S.) site, where he led a significant portion of NIBR’s global oncology drug discovery portfolio. Before that, he served as Director of Kinase Biology, Head of the Oncology Pharmacology Program and as a member of the Research and Drug Discovery Steering Committee for the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in San Diego. Dr. Warmuth currently serves on the Scientific Review Board of the Starr Cancer Consortium. Dr. Warmuth received his doctorate in medicine from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany, where he trained in internal medicine and oncology.
About Relay Therapeutics
Relay Therapeutics is committed to discovering and developing medicines that will make a transformative difference for patients by building the first dedicated drug discovery pipeline centered on protein motion. Bringing together the latest scientific advances in structural biology, biophysics, computation, chemistry and biology, Relay’s drug discovery engine illuminates the full mobility of a protein and the ways in which protein motion regulates function. By applying this approach and by focusing on disease-causing targets, Relay aims to develop breakthrough medicines for patients in need. The company’s initial programs are focused on developing therapeutics in oncology. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Relay Therapeutics is a private company launched in 2016 with $57 million in Series A financing from Third Rock Ventures and an affiliate of D. E. Shaw Research.
