Complix Appoints Dr Yvonne McGrath as CSO
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Complix has announced that it has appointed Yvonne McGrath as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO).
As CSO of Complix, Dr McGrath will be responsible for the use of the Company´s Alphabody platform to identify new drug candidates and take these forward into development, either internally or with partners.
This is part of Complix´ wider goal to build a pipeline of transformative Alphabody protein therapeutics. Dr Ignace Lasters, previously CSO and co-founder of Complix, will assume the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and will be responsible for the further development and expansion of the Alphabody technology platform.
Dr McGrath was most recently at Immunocore as Head of Development and before that as Head of Preclinical Development and CMC. In these positions, she successfully developed and executed the late preclinical and early clinical strategy for a novel platform technology, managed meetings with European and US regulatory authorities and led manufacturing and CMC strategy for a new biological entity targeting cancer.
Dr McGrath’s previous experience includes being a Project Manager at the UK subsidiary of the German biotech company MediGene AG, and Senior Scientist at BioVex (now part of Amgen). She has a PhD from the University of Wales, College of Medicine.
Dr Mark Vaeck, CEO of Complix, said: “I am delighted to welcome Yvonne to strengthen our management team, as we enter an exciting phase in Complix’ development. We are continuing to generate promising data with our lead oncology anti-MCL-1 program, which has shown that CPABs can exert potent activity against an important intracellular cancer target. Yvonne’s expertise in the preclinical and early clinical development of novel platform technologies will be a great asset to the Company as we seek to expand and accelerate our CPAB programs.”
Dr McGrath, commenting on her appointment, said: “I have been very impressed with the potential of Complix’ unique Alphabody platform. CPABs clearly have the potential to transform drug development by being able to reach a range of important intracellular disease targets which are known but cannot be addressed with existing protein therapeutics. I am excited to be a key member of the Complix team and look forward to taking a number of CPABs into the clinic.”
It is estimated that there are more than 1000 intracellular disease targets which are known to be involved in important disease processes, but are currently undruggable by conventional therapeutics. Complix’ CPABs have the unique capacity to enter cells effectively and modulate intracellular protein-to-protein interactions (PPIs).
The Company has generated compelling data with its lead program against the intracellular cancer target MCL-1. MCL-1 is an important regulator of cellular apoptosis and is often over-expressed in cancer cells thereby preventing them from dying.
