CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Generate Biomedicines today announced that Daria Hazuda, Ph.D., has been named Head of Vaccines and Infectious Disease Research and Lisa Wyman has been named Senior Vice President of Technical Operations. As the company advances into its next stage of growth, Dr. Hazuda is identifying and prioritizing the best applications of the Generate platform in vaccines and infectious disease research. Ms. Wyman is preparing for larger-scale manufacturing as Generate prepares to submit Investigational New Drug (IND) applications across multiple candidates and begin first-in-human testing.
“We’re thrilled that Daria and Lisa have joined the team to help us realize the full potential of our generative biology platform,” said Mike Nally, Chief Executive Officer of Generate Biomedicines. “Their stellar backgrounds, breadth and depth of expertise, and demonstrated leadership are invaluable attributes as we continue to find new ways to address some of the world's greatest unmet medical needs and expand the translational impact of our platform to save and improve the lives of patients around the world.”
Daria Hazuda has a remarkable track record of success in leading teams that discovered and developed multiple approved drugs, including antivirals for HIV, hepatitis C and cytomegalovirus, as well as anti-bacterials. As a Merck veteran, Daria has held various positions of increasing responsibility within the research and medical affairs organizations, including Vice President of Infectious Disease and Vaccines and Chief Scientific Officer of the Merck Cambridge Research site. Notably, Dr. Hazuda led the research efforts that identified the first-in-class HIV integrase inhibitor raltegravir, which won the 2008 Prix Galien. In addition, she has contributed to over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications.
Dr. Hazuda is a Fellow of the American Society of Microbiology and has received numerous awards, including The David Barry Drug Development for Antiviral Therapy Award, The Bernie Field Lecture Award, The Distinguished Research Career Award in Retrovirology (Ohio State University), and The American Chemical Society Heroes of Chemistry Award. Before joining Merck, she completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in immunology at SmithKline (now GSK). She received her biochemistry education at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Lisa Wyman is an accomplished leader with a successful history of transforming programs, improving R&D efficiency and driving exponential growth. Prior to Ms. Wyman joining Generate, she served as the Senior Vice President of Technical Operations at Acceleron Pharma. As a member of the executive team, she transformed the enterprise from a research and development-focused company to a fully integrated biotech. She led the CMC strategy for the accelerated development of sotatercept for pulmonary arterial hypertension and supported the launch of Acceleron’s first commercial product Reblozyl®. Previously, she held global roles of increasing responsibility leading pipeline development programs and commercial assets at Mersana, Shire and Boston Scientific.
As an accomplished engineer, Ms. Wyman has received several awards, including Life Sciences Voice Top Industry Leader, Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 Winner, and Control Engineering and Plant Engineering Magazine’s Engineering Leader. She graduated from Ithaca College with a bachelor’s degree in biology and earned her master’s of science degree in engineering management from Tufts University.
About Generate Biomedicines
Generate Biomedicines is the first drug generation company, pioneering a machine learning-powered generative biology platform with the ability to generate new drugs on demand across a wide range of biologic modalities. The platform can drastically improve the speed at which targets, and therapeutics are identified and validated, the specificity of target engagement by generated proteins, and the cost of identifying and developing clinical candidates. The company’s platform represents a potentially fundamental shift in what’s possible in the field of therapeutic development, addressing key challenges of drug discovery and drastically expanding the available search space for novel biomedicines. Generate Biomedicines was founded by Flagship Pioneering after two years of foundational research in its Labs unit and launched in 2020. Learn more about Generate Biomedicines by visiting https://generatebiomedicines.com/ or following the company on Twitter and LinkedIn.
