Former Novartis and AstraZeneca industry veteran Ruben Tommasi joins Dunad Therapeutics leadership team
CAMBRIDGE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dunad Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company developing small molecule covalent therapies based on novel insights from chemistry and protein degradation, today announced the hire of Ruben Tommasi, Ph. D., as Chief Research and Development Officer. In this role, Dr. Tommasi will lead global R&D strategy and be responsible for cultivating Dunad’s pipeline growth and lead programs.
Dr. Tommasi joins Dunad Therapeutics with nearly 30 years of industry and biotech experience. He comes to Dunad from Entasis Therapeutics, a biotech company developing precision antibacterial therapies. Dr. Tommasi helped lead the formation of Entasis in 2015, spinning it out of AstraZeneca where he served as Head of Infectious Disease Chemistry. Prior to AstraZeneca, he spent nearly 17 years at Novartis, where he most recently led medicinal chemistry efforts for the infectious disease therapy unit. Dr. Tommasi received a B.S. in chemistry and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the State University of New York at Albany.
“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Tommasi to Dunad as we embark on our next phase of growth,” said Pearl Huang, Chief Executive Officer of Dunad Therapeutics. “Ruben brings to Dunad a strong track record of pipeline delivery to the clinic as well as building and managing portfolios across different therapeutic areas. Importantly, Ruben also has the experience to navigate the unique challenges of progressing assets in the covalent space, which will be fundamental to us as we execute on our strategy. He and Patrick Gunning, our Chief Scientific Officer, will work closely to transform our platform technology into therapeutics.”
“I am excited about joining Dunad and to begin collaborating with this amazing team of leaders with experience across multiple aspects of drug development,” said Dr. Tommasi. “Dunad’s novel molecular approach and cutting-edge technology, combined with the potential to address a wide number of therapeutic areas made this opportunity particularly attractive to me, and I am eager to use my industry experience to help build out a pipeline of programs, bring those to clinical candidate stage and drive Dunad’s compelling mission forward.”
Dr. Tommasi will be based out of Dunad’s Cambridge, Massachusetts office.
About Dunad Therapeutics
Dunad Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company developing small molecule covalent therapies based on novel insights from chemistry and protein degradation. Dunad's proprietary, tunable platform is designed to discover and develop orally bioavailable, including CNS-accessible, therapeutics with greater specificity and improved pharmacologic attributes compared with current therapies. Founded in 2020, Dunad is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with operations in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Toronto, Ontario, and is backed by founding investor Epidarex Capital as well as BioGeneration Ventures (BGV) and Novartis. For more information, please visit: www.dunad.co.uk
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