SOMERVILLE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cellarity, a life sciences company founded by Flagship Pioneering to transform the way medicines are discovered, announced today the appointments of John Leaman, M.D., M.B.A., as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Cameron Trenor, M.D., as Vice President and Head of Translational Medicine, and Anjali Kumar, Ph.D., as Vice President, Head of Business Development. In addition, Parul Doshi, M.B.A., has been promoted to Chief Data Officer in recognition of her significant contribution to the development of Cellarity and her leadership in the implementation of an efficient and scalable data infrastructure to support Cellarity’s unique approach to drug creation.
Cellarity is fundamentally redesigning the way drugs are created. By shifting focus from a single molecular target to the underlying cellular dysfunction, the company unravels the complexity of disease biology to create medicines that are out of reach of target-based drug discovery approaches. The Cellarity platform uncovers novel actionable biology and creates non-intuitive drug candidates to address a vast array of diseases, even those with either limited or unknown targets.
These new leadership appointments will allow Cellarity to accelerate development of its platform and progress its pipeline programs towards the clinic.
“John, Cameron, and Anjali have well recognized expertise in their respective areas and bring new important capabilities to Cellarity at a time when we are progressing towards our first drug candidates,” said Fabrice Chouraqui, Pharm.D., CEO of Cellarity and a CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. “Their appointments are a great complement to the already well experienced senior leadership team which includes Parul Doshi, recently promoted to Chief Data Officer. I look forward to working with this expanded leadership team to significantly improve how the industry discovers drugs and creates medicines that matter for patients.”
John Leaman, M.D., M.B.A., CFO
Dr. Leaman has extensive financing, licensing, and merger and acquisition (M&A) experience. He has served as CFO & CBO for Impel Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IMPL), CFO and Head of Corporate Development for Selecta Biosciences (NASDAQ: SELB), and CFO of Medgenics Inc. (NASDAQ: MDGN). As Head of Corporate Development at InfaCare Pharmaceutical Corp., Dr. Leaman guided the acquisition of the company by Mallinckrodt plc. Earlier in his career, he held senior roles at Shire Pharmaceuticals and Devon Park Bioventures. Dr. Leaman began his career serving a range of life science companies as an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company. He holds a B.A. from the University of Oxford in the UK, an M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School.
Cameron Trenor, M.D., Vice President and Head of Translational Medicine
Dr. Trenor has 15 years of combined clinical and drug development experience, bringing deep expertise in hematology drug development and experience in due diligence and disease strategy. Prior to joining Cellarity, he was previously Executive Medical Director in Clinical Development at Forma Therapeutics (acquired by Novo Nordisk) where he led their flagship sickle cell disease program. Previously, Dr. Trenor worked at Novartis as the medical lead for their early phase hematology pipeline. Dr. Trenor is a board-certified pediatric hematologist/oncologist and maintains a weekly half-day clinic at the Boston Children’s Hospital. He holds an M.D. degree from the University of Tennessee and an MMSc from Harvard Medical School.
Anjali Kumar, Ph.D., Head of Business Development
Prior to Cellarity, Dr. Kumar led External Innovation Search & Evaluation in East North America for therapeutics and platform technologies at Johnson & Johnson Innovation. Through strategic sourcing and transactions, she developed an external early-stage innovation pipeline aligned with the strategies of Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical businesses. Prior to this, she was Due Diligence Lead in Corporate Development at Shire Pharmaceuticals, where she led large cross-functional due diligence teams performing integrated assessments for incoming M&A and in-licensing opportunities. Previously, Dr. Kumar spent 20 years in R&D at large and small companies, including The Upjohn Company, Genetics Institute/Wyeth, Critical Therapeutics, Clinquest Inc., and Flexion Therapeutics, where she held roles with increasing responsibilities in drug discovery and development, advancing programs from early discovery to regulatory approval. Dr. Kumar holds a Ph.D. in bioengineering from Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, and a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India.
Parul Doshi, M.B.A., Chief Data Officer
Since her appointment in December 2021 as Senior Vice President, Data and Software Engineering, Parul Doshi has significantly contributed to the development of Cellarity and led the implementation of an efficient and a scalable data infrastructure to support Cellarity’s unique approach to drug creation. The company is pleased to announce her promotion to Chief Data Officer where she will continue to use her expertise to build a proprietary, integrated data and software application that bridges research and data science, adding to our unique ability to generate novel insights for drug creation.
About Cellarity
Cellarity is fundamentally redesigning the way drugs are created. By shifting the focus from a single target to the underlying cellular dysfunction, the company unravels the complexity of disease biology to create medicines that are out of reach with the target-based drug discovery approach. Founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2017, Cellarity has developed a platform that utilizes proprietary AI models trained on over 500 billion genomics data points to uncover novel actionable biology and create non-intuitive drug candidates in a vast array of diseases. The company currently has programs ongoing in several disease areas including those in metabolic disease, hematology, and immuno-oncology. For more info, visit www.cellarity.com.
About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $100 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $3.3 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $20 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 43 transformative companies, including Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Indigo Agriculture, Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), and Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB).
