Ligon Discovery Announces Appointment of Errol B. De Souza as Executive Chairman
20-year Industry Veteran Brings Extensive Experience in Drug Discovery and Development
Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 23, 2009 – Ligon Discovery, Inc., which uses proprietary small molecule microarray technology to find drugs against high-value targets, today announced the appointment of pharmaceutical industry veteran Errol B. De Souza as Ligon’s Executive Chairman of the Board.
“I’m very pleased to welcome Errol De Souza as Executive Chairman of the Board,” said Patrick Kleyn, Ligon’s chief executive officer and co-founder. He added, “Errol’s breadth of experience in the life sciences industry – particularly his leadership taking drug candidates from exploratory research through clinical development – will be an asset to Ligon as we advance our current drug discovery campaigns targeting cancer and coagulations disorders, utilizing our proprietary small molecule microarray platform.”
Dr. De Souza commented, “I look forward to chairing Ligon’s Board, and contributing to the forward momentum being built by the company in discovering small molecule drugs against disease targets that others have found intractable. Ligon’s unique and proprietary small molecule microarray technology offers compelling advantages, including broad applicability to all target classes, unprecedented scale of parallel screening, and minimal protein requirements. I believe Ligon has what it takes to leverage this already validated technology.”
Errol B. De Souza, Ph.D. is a seasoned pharma and biotech industry leader with 20 years of experience in senior level Research & Development (R&D) and management positions at Aventis, Hoechst Marion Roussel (HMR), DuPont Merck, Neurocrine Biosciences, Synaptic Pharmaceuticals and Archemix. His R&D experience spans from leading large R&D organizations at DuPont Merck (Director of CNS Diseases Research), HMR (Senior Vice President and Head of Global Lead Generation) with worldwide responsibilities for chemistry, chemical development, biotechnology, high throughput screening and core research functions to Aventis (Senior Vice President and Site Head of US Drug Innovation and Approval) where he had worldwide responsibilities for managing the CNS, Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases pipeline as well as administrative responsibilities for the entire R&D organization in the US including the Global Drug Development Center.
Dr. De Souza’s particular focus has been on the developing innovative approaches to accelerate progression of compounds from the candidate to clinical proof-of-concept stage and beyond through development of biomarker and pharmacogenomic strategies and utilization of imaging techniques. His experience on the biotech side spans from starting companies (Founder, Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of R&D at Neurocrine), to leading companies (President & CEO of Synaptic Pharmaceuticals and Archemix, Inc) and experience on several Boards of Directors and Scientific Advisory Boards of both public and private companies. In these capacities, he has successfully raised capital in both private and public environments and been involved in multiple collaborations with large pharmaceutical companies.
About Ligon Discovery
Ligon Discovery is a Harvard spinout that leverages a patented platform technology to identify pre-clinical drug candidates. The company’s high-throughput microarray “chip” transforms the speed of the drug discovery process and expands the scope of new drug prospecting to include previously intractable targets. With funding from incTANK Ventures, the team has deployed the SMM technology, originally invented at Harvard University and further developed at the Broad Institute (founded by MIT and Harvard University) in Cambridge, and has established one of the largest small molecule screening capabilities in the industry. Using this facility, Ligon has successfully completed screens in the fields of coagulation and cancer, and is actively pursuing drug discovery in other areas of high unmet medical need. For more information, visit www.ligondiscovery.com.
# # #
Contact: Tracey Rice
Ligon Discovery
(617) 453-0952
press@ligondiscovery.com
Cambridge-Based Ligon Discovery Raises $1M in Seed Funding
Harvard University Spinout is Pursuing Drugs for Intractable Disease Targets
Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 19, 2009 – Ligon Discovery, Inc., which uses proprietary small molecule microarray technology to find drugs against high-value targets, today announced that it has raised $1M in seed financing led by incTANK Ventures. The company will use the capital to complete its initial discovery campaign that will screen over 100 high-value disease protein targets. With this investment, incTANK Ventures General Partner Christian Bailey joins the board.
Patrick Kleyn PhD, Angela Koehler PhD and Benjamin Ebert MD PhD founded Ligon Discovery with an exclusive license to technology invented at Harvard University and already successfully used to find novel drug compounds at the Broad Institute.
Christian Bailey, General Partner at incTANK Ventures, commented, “Ligon represents a rare combination: although it is an early-stage company, its patented technology has already chalked up some significant drug discovery successes which big pharma companies are now pursuing.”
“Ligon’s technology has already been used to discover drug compounds against high value targets including protein kinases, histone deacetylases, extracellular growth factors, and transcription factors,” said Patrick Kleyn, Ligon’s CEO and co-founder. He added, “These compounds were subsequently validated by follow-up assays and results have been published in journals such as Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.”
“Ligon is a terrific example of how research at one of Massachusetts’ leading academic institutions can be commercialized, leading to new jobs and new therapies that help patients,” said Dr. Susan Windham-Bannister, President & CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the agency charged with implementing the state’s ten-year, $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative. “Translating research from our world-class colleges and universities into early stage companies and life-saving products is what makes Massachusetts the hub for innovation in the life sciences.”
About Ligon Discovery
Ligon Discovery is a Harvard spinout that leverages a patented platform technology to identify pre-clinical drug candidates. The company’s high-throughput microarray “chip” transforms the speed of the drug discovery process and expands the scope of new drug prospecting to include previously intractable targets. The team has deployed the SMM technology, originally invented at Harvard University and further developed at the Broad Institute (founded by MIT and Harvard University) in Cambridge, and has established one of the largest small molecule screening capabilities in the industry. Using this facility, Ligon has successfully completed screens in the fields of coagulation and cancer, and is actively pursuing drug discovery in other areas of high unmet medical need. For more information, visit www.ligondiscovery.com.
About incTANK Ventures
incTANK Ventures invests in Boston area technology ventures with strong intellectual property and compelling market opportunities emerging from premier universities and research institutions. Funded innovations are often inter-disciplinary and span the applied sciences including biotechnology, life sciences, materials science, and computational science. Existing portfolio companies include Agrivida, which applies genomic technology to sugar/biofuel production, and AgaMatrix, which applies audio signal processing technologies to blood glucose monitoring. For more information, visit www.inctank.com.
About the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) is a quasi-public agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts tasked with implementing the Massachusetts Life Sciences Act, a ten-year, $1 billion initiative that was signed into law in June of 2008. The Center’s mission is to create jobs in the life sciences and support vital scientific research that will improve the human condition. This work includes making financial investments in public and private institutions that are advancing life sciences research, development and commercialization as well as building ties between sectors of the Massachusetts life sciences community. For more information, visit www.masslifesciences.com.
# # #
Contact: Tracey Rice
Ligon Discovery
(617) 453-0952
press@ligondiscovery.com
