Kleem Chaudhary, Ph.D. appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Chaudhary brings more than 20 years of leadership experience across multiple pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
LEXINGTON, Mass., March 11, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hyku Biosciences, Inc. (Hyku), a covalent precision medicine company, today announced the appointment of Kleem Chaudhary, Ph.D. as President and Chief Executive Officer, succeeding co-founder and acting CEO Milind Deshpande, Ph.D. who will now serve as an advisor to the company. Dr Chaudhary will also serve as a member of the Board of Directors of Hyku.
“I am pleased to welcome Kleem to Hyku” said Dr. Deshpande, “With his extensive experience leading organizations and completing significant transactions across biotech and big pharma, I am confident that Hyku will flourish under Kleem’s leadership.”
Dr. Chaudhary brings diverse and successful experiences from his previous roles at multiple pharma and biotech companies. Most recently, he was Chief Operating and Business Officer at Redona Therapeutics. Prior to Redona, he was Chief Business Officer at Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, where he was instrumental in the company’s Series C financing, IPO and led the sale of the company to Regeneron. Previously, he held business development roles of increasing responsibility at Novartis, Takeda, and Biogen after starting his industry career as a medicinal chemist at Gilead Sciences. Dr. Chaudhary holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Winnipeg.
“I am very impressed with the highly differentiated and innovative chemoproteomics-driven drug discovery platform at Hyku that, together with the extremely talented team, has already enabled an exciting pipeline of potential first-in-class and best-in-class medicines. Hyku’s platform has the depth and breadth to open new opportunities broadly across therapeutic areas” said Dr. Chaudhary
“I am delighted to welcome Kleem as the new CEO of Hyku Biosciences,” said Laura Tadvalkar, Ph.D., Managing Director at RA Capital Management and Hyku Board member. “Kleem’s background as a scientist and his extensive business experience across pharma and biotech, position him to be a great partner to the board and an excellent leader for Hyku as we advance the exciting pipeline and continue to expand and deploy our differentiated platform.”
“Hyku’s proprietary chemoproteomics platform and precision covalent medicine pipeline have the potential to accelerate the development of important new medicines that address major clinical unmet needs,” said Matthias van Woensel, Ph.D., Partner at Droia Ventures and Hyku Board member. “We are excited to have Kleem join Hyku and I look forward to working with him to advance the exciting science at Hyku.”
About Hyku Biosciences
Hyku Biosciences is a biotechnology company, based in the greater Boston area, building the leading covalent medicines discovery platform to inhibit disease targets which are challenging to address with conventional approaches. Hyku’s drug discovery engine is based on its proprietary platform technologies, which identifies binding pockets based on histidines, tyrosines, lysines and other non-cysteine amino acids and enables rational drug design for therapeutic development. The platform pioneered by Hyku has the potential to fundamentally expand the scope of small molecule drug discovery, greatly increase druggability across many target classes, and bring significant therapeutic benefits to patients via novel medicines. For more information, please visit http://www.hykubiosciences.com/
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