MISSION appoints Dr Colin Goddard to its Board of Directors
CAMBRIDGE, UK, 1ST JULY 2015 – MISSION Therapeutics, a drug discovery and development company today announced Dr Colin Goddard, former Chief Executive Officer of OSI Pharmaceuticals (“OSI”), has been appointed to the Company’s Board of Directors.
“We are privileged to have Dr Goddard join our board at this exciting phase of MISSION’s growth and development”, commented Michael Moore, Chairman, MISSION Therapeutics.
“Dr Goddard has more than 25 years of outstanding leadership experience in the US biopharmaceutical industry and will add a complementary strategic dimension to our board. We look forward to benefiting from his corporate vision, as we continue to transition our business into a clinical stage organisation.”
Dr Anker Lundemose, Chief Executive Officer of MISSION Therapeutics added: “We are pleased to welcome Dr Goddard to MISSION Therapeutics. His experience and track record in clinical development will be invaluable as we look to develop new drugs that will significantly improve the management of cancer.”
Dr Goddard joined OSI as a research scientist in 1989 and led the transformation of the technology platform services company into a profitable fully integrated biopharmaceutical organisation, becoming CEO in 1998. He was pivotal in the registration and launch of OSI’s targeted therapeutic product, Tarceva (erlotinib) and also directed the Company’s financing, corporate development and acquisition strategies, completing several major acquisitions and divestitures and raising over $1.5bn in capital. OSI was acquired by Astellas Pharma Inc. in June 2010 for $4bn.
Dr Goddard obtained his PhD in cancer pharmacology from the University of Aston in Birmingham, UK and worked at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, before joining OSI. He currently serves as Executive Chairman of US based Biotech companies, Coferon, Inc and Merganser Biotech and as a Director on the boards of Endocyte Inc (NASDAQ: ECYT) and PanOptica Inc.; He was formerly a Director at Human Genome Sciences Inc.
About MISSION Therapeutics
Founded in 2011, MISSION Therapeutics builds on the research of Professor Steve Jackson FRS, who holds the Frederick James Quick Chair of Biology at the University of Cambridge, by exploiting the new and extensive research emerging on the ubiquitin pathways that control cellular responses to DNA damage.
MISSION has established a broad platform of technologies for the discovery and preclinical development of first-in-class modulators of ubiquitin pathway enzymes involved in cancer and other diseases. The Company is developing drugs to inhibit the proliferation of tumour cells, exploiting certain properties of specific DUBs, such as their oncogene status or association with synthetic lethality, the latter now a clinically-proven mechanism for selectively killing tumour cells.
The Company has received £27 million in venture capital from a blue chip syndicate comprising institutional (Sofinnova Partners, Imperial Innovations) and corporate (SR One, Roche Venture Fund and Pfizer) investors and is based at the Babraham Research Campus, south of Cambridge.
CONTACT:
MISSION Therapeutics Ltd
Anker Lundemose MD PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Tel +44 1223 497454
Hume Brophy
Mary Clark, Hollie Vile, Alexia Faure
Email: missiontherapeutics@humebrophy.com
Tel: +44 2034 405654
