SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Atomic AI, a biotechnology company fusing cutting-edge machine learning with state-of-the-art structural biology to unlock RNA drug discovery, today announced the appointment of Stuart Peltz, Ph.D. as an independent board member to the Atomic AI Board of Directors, and the additions of Percy Carter, MBA, Ph.D., and Nicholas Meanwell, Ph.D. to their Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).
“We are extremely pleased to have these highly regarded, experienced biotech leaders join in our efforts and believe in our mission,” said Raphael Townshend, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Atomic AI. “Dr. Peltz’s experience will help shape our strategy as we endeavor to streamline the discovery and development of novel therapies. Together with the contributions from our current Scientific Advisors, the deep therapeutics expertise brought by Doctors Carter and Meanwell to our SAB will be essential as we build and advance our own pipeline.”
“I am excited to be part of the Atomic AI team,” said Dr. Peltz. “They have demonstrated tremendous progress integrating deep learning foundation models with experimental results to be able to predict and optimize RNA structures to enable rational drug design. I very much look forward to collaborating with the other board members as well as with Atomic’s team as they continue to innovate and bring potential new therapies to treat patients with diseases of high unmet medical need.”
Dr. Peltz founded PTC Therapeutics in 1998 and served as its Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors for twenty-five years. PTC grew from just a few scientists with expertise in the control of RNA processes to a publicly traded, integrated, global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative new therapies. Under his leadership PTC commercialized six new therapies with almost a billion dollars of revenues and a large pipeline of discovery and development programs. Prior to founding PTC, Dr. Peltz was a Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers University. Dr. Peltz is a recognized scientific leader in RNA biology in the area of post-transcriptional control processes involving mRNA turnover and translation, with more than 30 years of research and over 100 publications in this area. Dr. Peltz has received a number of business and scientific awards. Notably, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 2010. He was recognized as PharmaVoice’s 100 Most Inspiring People in 2009 and received the Dr. Sol J. Barer Award for Vision Innovation and Leadership in 2014. Dr. Peltz earned a Ph.D. from the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin.
Dr. Percy Carter, Chief Scientific Officer of Blueprint Medicines, joins Atomic’s SAB with more than 20 years of global leadership in pharmaceutical companies and industry experience. Prior to joining Blueprint Medicines, he served as Chief Scientific Officer at FibroGen, Inc. He previously served as Global Head of Discovery Sciences at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a division of Johnson & Johnson. From August 2001 to May 2019, Percy held roles of increasing responsibility in drug discovery, covering all therapeutic areas, drug platforms and stages of discovery at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), including serving as Senior Vice President and Head of Discovery. Prior to his experience at BMS, he was Senior Research Scientist in Chemical and Physical Sciences at DuPont Pharmaceuticals until it was acquired by BMS in 2001. Percy is an inventor or co-inventor on more than 28 U.S. patents and has authored or co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications. Percy currently serves on the board of HiFiBiO Therapeutics, a privately held, clinical stage biotechnology company that is developing antibody therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. He received an A.B. in Chemistry from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Harvard University. In addition, he received an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Former Bristol-Myers Squibb veteran Dr. Nicholas Meanwell, who retired in October 2022 as a Scientific Vice President in the Department of Small Molecule Drug Discovery also joins Atomic’s SAB. Over his 40-year career at BMS, he led drug discovery programs in the cardiovascular, neurosciences, and virology therapeutic areas, research that resulted in the advancement of 33 clinical candidates for the prevention of thrombosis, the treatment of stroke (flindokalner), and therapy for viral infections, including RSV, HIV-1 (fostemsavir), and HCV (daclatasvir, asunaprevir, beclabuvir). He is the author of more than 300 publications and is named as an inventor on more than 140 issued U.S. Patents. Among his many contributions to the medicinal chemistry community and awards received, he was Perspectives Editor for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 2017-2022, he was inducted into the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame in 2015, was the recipient of the 2015 Philip S. Portoghese Medicinal Chemistry Lectureship Award and the 2022 Alfred Burger Award in Medicinal Chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society.
About Atomic AI
Atomic AI is an emerging biotechnology company exploiting the cutting-edge fusion of artificial intelligence and structural biology to unlock RNA drug discovery. Based on research prominently featured in Science, Atomic AI’s proprietary R&D platform leverages state-of-the-art deep learning foundation models integrated into a virtuous cycle with purpose-designed, in-house wet-lab assays, to discover and design proprietary 3D RNA structural datasets. Backed by an interdisciplinary team of machine learning researchers, medicinal chemists, engineers, and experimental biologists, as well as strategic scientific advisers and world-class investors, Atomic AI is leading the way in AI-augmented structural biology and transforming the design of RNA-targeted and RNA-based medicines to treat undruggable diseases. To learn more, visit atomic.ai and engage with us on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter).
