SAN DIEGO--- Conforma Therapeutics Announces New Board Appointments
Conforma Therapeutics Corporation, a privately held biopharmaceutical company, today announced the following elections to the Conforma board of directors:
- - Robert Bechard, managing partner of RBC Capital Partners Life Sciences,
- - Maxine Gowen, Ph.D., managing partner, S.R. One, Limited, and
- - David E. Thompson, vice president of corporate strategy, business development and alliance management, Eli Lilly and Company.
Eckard Weber, M.D., a venture partner at Domain Associates, also joins the Conforma board, replacing Domain General Partner James C. Blair.
"We are very pleased to welcome these experienced executives to our board of directors," said Lawrence C. Fritz, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Conforma Therapeutics. "Their combined expertise in finance, drug discovery and development, corporate strategy and business development will serve Conforma well as we enter our next stage of growth and begin to advance our first products through human clinical trials." RBC Capital Partners, S.R. One, Ltd., and Lilly BioVentures each invested in Conforma's Series C financing that closed in September 2003; S.R. One, Ltd. Led that round.
Robert Bechard is a managing partner at RBC Capital Partners Life Sciences. Prior to joining RBC in 1998, he worked as an investment manager, lifesciences with SOFINOV (now CDP Capital). Mr. Bechard has played an active role as a director with numerous private and public biotech companies. He has also worked on the advisory committees of various U.S. and Canadian biotech funds.
Maxine Gowen is managing partner at S.R. One, Limited, having joined in July 2002. She specializes in investing in companies involved in drug discovery and pharmaceutical product development. In addition to the Conforma Board, she also serves on the Boards of Directors of Morphotek, Nucleonics Inc. and Santarus Inc. Prior to joining S.R. One, Max was vice president, GSK Ventures, where she was responsible for placing assets with privately held companies in return for equity. Until 2001 Max was vice president, drug discovery, musculoskeletal diseases at GSK, responsible for drug discovery and early development for osteoporosis, arthritis and metastatic bone disease. Max joined SmithKline Beecham in 1992 as director of cellular biochemistry. Over the following nine years she held positions of increasing responsibility in the R&D organization, and led teams that progressed fifteen compounds into development.
David E. Thompson was named vice president of corporate strategy, business development, and alliance management for Eli Lilly and Company in January 2001. He also serves on the Senior Management Forum. Employed by Eli Lilly since 1971, Mr. Thompson had previously served as vice president of corporate business development since 1992 and vice president of pharmaceutical product management and licensing since 1988. Immediately prior to that, he was president/CEO of IVAC Corporation, a medical device subsidiary in San Diego.
Eckard Weber, M.D. joined Domain in 2000 as a venture partner with over 20 years of drug discovery and development experience. He has been the founding CEO of multiple biopharmaceutical companies in the Domain portfolio and currently serves as chairman of Novacea, NovaCardia, Orexigen Therapeutics and Peninsula Pharmaceuticals. Until 1995, Dr. Weber was a tenured professor of pharmacology at the University of California, Irvine, and he is the inventor or co-inventor of over 40 patents and patent applications.
Conforma Therapeutics, a San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company, is focused on the design and development of novel drugs for the selective treatment of cancer. Conforma is developing drugs that target the cellular HSP90 family of molecular "chaperones" that control protein shape or conformation, including that of key signaling molecules involved in the growth and survival of tumor cells. HSP90-directed drugs selectively induce the degradation of these cancer-promoting proteins, leading to tumor cell death. In addition to cancer, Conforma's technology also promises to have applications in other areas of medicine, including inflammation, virology, and central nervous system disorders. Additional information regarding Conforma is available at www.conformacorp.com.