SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BlackThorn Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage, neurobehavioral health company pioneering next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to advance targeted therapeutics, today announced the appointment of Monique Levy as chief strategy officer. As a healthcare technology innovator, Ms. Levy will use her extensive experience in corporate and commercial strategy to help BlackThorn deliver on its mission of bringing personalized medicine to millions of people with neurobehavioral disorders.
Ms. Levy will lead BlackThorn’s corporate development and digital health teams and oversee business development initiatives for the company’s therapeutic pipeline and computational psychiatry platform. She will be a member of BlackThorn’s executive management team and report to Bill Martin, Ph.D., president and chief operating officer.
“Monique’s strong track record in driving growth and innovation at the intersection of patient care and technology will be a tremendous asset to BlackThorn as we continue to advance end-to-end solutions for neurobehavioral health,” said Dr. Martin. “In addition to creating innovative solutions to complex business challenges, Monique is known for building, and managing highly effective cross-functional teams, and we are thrilled to have her leadership and expertise.”
Ms. Levy brings more than two decades of healthcare industry experience to BlackThorn, most recently as global head of strategy and partnerships at iCarbonX Group, a precision healthcare company. There she led corporate and commercial strategy spanning consumer and enterprise solutions as well as partnership strategy and operations. Prior to iCarbonX Group, Ms. Levy was executive vice president of corporate development & US commercial at the patient network PatientsLikeMe. Earlier in her career, she led digital innovation services within leading business intelligence firms, including Decision Resources Group, where she was a trusted advisor to pharmaceutical companies. Ms. Levy also serves on the Google Health Advisory Board.
"BlackThorn is pioneering the convergence of technologies in digital health, computational science and neuroscience to finally make more precise care possible for mental health,” said Ms. Levy. “I’m excited to work with the expert and experienced team at BlackThorn who are committed to delivering a new generation of targeted therapeutics and solutions to transform neurobehavioral care."
Ms. Levy holds a bachelor’s degree in international health and development from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a master’s degree in clinical health psychology from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology.
About BlackThorn Therapeutics, Inc.
BlackThorn Therapeutics, Inc., is a clinical-stage neurobehavioral health company pioneering the next generation of artificial intelligence technologies to advance its pipeline of targeted therapeutics for treating brain disorders. The company has engineered PathFinder™, a cloud-based computational psychiatry and data platform, to enable the collection, integration and analysis of multimodal data at great speed and scale. BlackThorn applies its data-driven approaches to create an understanding of the core underlying pathophysiology of neurobehavioral disorders and uses these insights to generate objective neuromarkers, which support drug target identification, patient stratification and objective clinical trial endpoints. By identifying more homogenous patient subgroups that share underlying neurobiology, BlackThorn aims to direct its drug candidates to neurobiologically defined patient populations most likely to respond. BlackThorn’s lead therapeutic candidate, BTRX-335140, is a selective small molecule antagonist of the kappa opioid receptor, in development for mood and anxiety disorders. BTRX-335140 has completed phase 1 studies in healthy volunteers and was found well tolerated; a phase 2a trial is planned to begin in the fourth quarter of 2019. BlackThorn is also developing BTRX-246040, a selective antagonist of the nociceptin opioid receptor, for mood and anxiety disorders, as well as BTRX-323511, a selective vasopressin 1a receptor antagonist, for autism spectrum disorder. BTRX-335140 and BTRX-323511 were discovered as part of a research collaboration with The Scripps Research Institute. BlackThorn is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit blackthornrx.com.