DELAWARE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cullgen Inc, (“Cullgen” or the “Company), a drug discovery company focused on development of drug candidates using uSMITE™ (ubiquitin mediated small molecule induced target elimination), announced that Dr. Timothy Heffernan and Dr. Michele Pagano have joined the Company’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Cullgen’s current SAB also includes Drs. Stephen Frye, Lisa Carey, and Peter Jackson.
Dr. Timothy Heffernan is currently the Executive Director and Head of Oncology Research at the Institute for Applied Cancer Science (IACS), an integrated drug discovery and development unit within MD Anderson Cancer Center. He also serves as Director for the Center for Co-Clinical Trials, a translational biology platform focused on accelerating the pre-clinical evaluation of novel drugs to inform innovative clinical trials. Dr. Heffernan earned his degree in Cell and Molecular Pathology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and performed his postdoctoral training at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. His expertise lies in basic and translational cancer research, cancer genomics, and targeted oncology therapeutics. Dr. Heffernan currently manages the development of an advanced small molecule drug discovery portfolio coordinating research on programs from target identification through IND enabling studies and phase 1 clinical development. Prior to joining MD Anderson, Dr. Heffernan led target identification efforts at the Belfer Institute at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and also was a Senior Vice President at C4 Therapeutics Inc., where he managed the drug discovery and translational biology efforts to advance a portfolio of internal and partnered programs.
Dr. Michele Pagano, MD, is the Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and the May Ellen and Gerald Jay Ritter Professor of Oncology at the New York University School of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Pagano received his doctorate in Medicine and a specialty diploma in Molecular Endocrinology in 1990 from the Federico II University in his native Napoli, Italy. He was subsequently a post-doctoral fellow at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany (1990-92), before cofounding Mitotix Inc. (1992-96). He joined the NYU School of Medicine in 1996. Dr. Pagano has received many prestigious grants including a MERIT Award (2006-2017) from the National Cancer Institute in recognition of his outstanding achievements in cancer biology. Dr. Pagano’s research focuses on the kinases and ubiquitylating enzymes that control cell proliferation and how deregulation of these machineries contribute to malignant transformation.
Dr. Ying Luo, Cullgen’s CEO, commented, “We are very pleased to have Drs. Timothy Heffernan and Michele Pagano join our scientific advisory board. We expect our scientific advisors to play significant roles in our future success, with their established expertise in ubiquitin mediated protein degradation and oncology research beneficial to our in-house R&D team.”
About Cullgen Inc.
Cullgen is a drug discovery company leveraging ubiquitin-mediated, small molecule-induced protein degradation technology, focusing on novel treatment for cancer, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases. For more information, visit www.cullgen.com.
