CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rheos Medicines, a biopharmaceutical company bringing molecular targeting and precision treatment to autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, today announced that it has appointed Soumya Raychaudhuri, M.D., Ph.D., and Cornelia Weyand, M.D., Ph.D., to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). They will join the other scientific founders and advisors who provide expert insight and guidance, complementing the company’s deep internal R&D expertise.
“As we progress our pipeline of precision medicines for autoimmune diseases, now is the right time to augment the experts on our SAB to support our evolution into a clinical-stage company. We are pleased to have attracted these esteemed leaders who work at the nexus of emerging science and clinical research for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases,” said Dania Rabah, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Rheos. “Both Soumya and Cornelia bring unique perspectives and deep expertise and will provide valuable insights to support the advancement of our drug development programs.”
“Rheos’s approach to precision medicine for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases represents a promising path to treating these complex and heterogenous diseases impacting millions of patients. I look forward to collaborating with a team on the leading edge of this field of drug discovery to advance new therapies for these underserved conditions,” said Dr. Raychaudhuri.
“Similar to other scientific founders and members of the Rheos Scientific Advisory Board, I have dedicated my career to uncovering new understandings of inflammatory disease processes based on molecular mechanisms and patient heterogeneity, and I welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the talented team working with Rheos to translate these exciting discoveries into new treatments for patients,” said Dr. Weyand.
Soumya Raychaudhuri is Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and the Coblyn/Brenner Distinguished Chair in Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy. After completing his M.D./Ph.D. at Stanford University, he pursued clinical training in internal medicine, and then went on to pursue subspecialty training in rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Since starting his own laboratory, he has contributed to the understanding of the genetic basis of rheumatoid arthritis and other immune-mediated diseases. He has also been at the forefront of devising statistical and computational methods to localize genetic association signals to causal variants, and to interpret human genetic data in the context of functional information. He has also defined key computational strategies to define critical cell states in tissue inflammation. He currently has active research programs in the human genetics and functional genomics of tuberculosis, type I diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis, with a specific focus on using genomic strategies to understand CD4+ T cell biology. Dr. Raychaudhuri also currently serves as the Director for the Center for Data Sciences (BWH, HMS) and is appointed as an Institute Member at the Broad Institute. Additionally, he is clinically active and sees patients at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Arthritis Center and serves as a Visiting Professor in Genetics at the University of Manchester.
Cornelia Weyand is Professor of Medicine and Immunology at the Mayo Clinic, Alix School of Medicine and Professor of Medicine Emerita at Stanford University, School of Medicine. She is the Director of the Program in Immunity and Inflammation, dedicated to the translation of molecular immunology into the care of patients with inflammatory disease. Her research has contributed to the understanding of how the human immune system ages and how this leads to tissue inflammation. Dr. Weyand and her team have defined successful and maladaptive immune aging and are developing therapeutic strategies to slow down the immune aging process. Together with her research team, she has examined immune malfunction in two disease states, rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis of the large blood vessels. Her research has identified and characterized immune cells that mediate medium vessel vasculitis and has defined the molecular underpinnings of immuno-stromal interactions that cause arterial inflammation. By examining immune cells from affected patients, her group has defined mechanism of tissue invasion of inflammatory cells, arrest and survival signals that hold inflammatory cells in the tissue and the energy sources that allow inflammatory cells to fuel their pathogenic behaviors. Previously, Dr. Weyand was the Chief of Immunology and Rheumatology in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University, School of Medicine. Dr. Weyand held the David C. Lowance Chair in Medicine at Emory University and was the Director of the Lowance Center for Human Immunology and Rheumatology. Earlier in her career, she was the Barbara Woodward Lips Professor of Medicine and Immunology at Mayo Medical and Graduate School, and she also directed the Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapeutics Program at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Weyand completed her Residency in Germany at Hannover Medical School and was a Fellow with the Institute of Immunology and Genetics at the German Cancer Research Center. She has also been a Fellow in the Department of Medicine at the University of Heidelberg.
About Rheos Medicines
Rheos Medicines is a biopharmaceutical company developing precision medicines to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases by identifying and targeting the molecular characteristics and patient subsets for these complex diseases. Using our proprietary MetPM™ platform, the Rheos team integrates an unmatched knowledge base of immunometabolism networks based on bioinformatic integration of genetic, transcriptomic, epigenomic and metabolomic datasets, including from patient data and samples. We have built a pipeline of novel, differentiated drug programs to address autoimmune and inflammatory diseases by targeting fundamental underpinnings of immune system dysfunction while, at the same time, identifying the molecular signatures for patient stratification and selection. Rheos has assembled leading scientists whose discoveries opened the field of immunometabolism, clinicians with a deep understanding of immune-mediated diseases, and an experienced biotech leadership team. Rheos was founded by Third Rock Ventures and is located in Cambridge, MA. For more information, please visit www.rheosrx.com/. We invite you to follow us on LinkedIn and @Rheosrx.
