SAN DIEGO, Dec. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Samumed, LLC, a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering therapeutics based on RNA alternative splicing for major diseases, announced today that Dr. Darrin M. Beaupre will join the company as its Chief Medical Officer, Oncology. Dr. Beaupre joins Samumed from Pfizer, where he held the position of Senior Vice President, Head of Early Oncology Development and Clinical Research.
“We are thrilled to bring Dr. Beaupre onboard to lead our clinical strategy for our oncology program. His leadership will be instrumental to continued, rapid advancement of our first-in-class therapies to address a broad array of serious cancers,” said Samumed Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Osman Kibar.
Dr. Beaupre is a Medical Oncologist and Hematologist with 14 years of industry experience in both early and late phase clinical development. As Senior Vice President, Head of Early Oncology Development and Clinical Research at Pfizer, he supervised the filing and execution of numerous INDs in broad platform areas including small molecules, large molecules, antibody drug conjugates, bispecifics, a CAR-T, and vaccines. Prior to joining Pfizer, he was the Head of Early Development as well as the Immunotherapy and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Therapeutic Area head at Pharmacyclics. There, he participated in the NDA filings of ibrutinib for mantle cell and marginal zone lymphoma, both of which achieved accelerated approvals. He also initiated Phase 2 and 3 trials testing ibrutinib in several Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma indications.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Beaupre served as a member of the Amgen early development group and was a Medical Director involved in filing multiple INDs. Linked to his translational medicine background, he previously served as an Assistant Professor at the Moffit Cancer Center in the Department of Interdisciplinary Oncology.
In addition to being awarded a Hollis Brownstein Research Grant, Dr. Beaupre also received a Clinical Scholars in Oncology Award from the National Cancer Institute and was nominated as a “new scientist to watch” by the Leukemia Research Foundation.
Dr. Beaupre completed his Medical Oncology and Hematology Fellowship and post-doctoral research training at the University of Miami Sylvester Cancer Center, where he was supported by an NIH K12 Award. He completed his MD and PhD in Cancer Biology at the University of Texas at Houston and MD Anderson Cancer Center, respectively, where he was a member of the MD PhD program. He also received an M.S. degree in Biotechnology and B.S. degree in Biology at the University of Lowell in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
About Samumed
Samumed is developing first-in-class, small-molecule therapeutics based on pioneering science of RNA alternative splicing. From our foundational discoveries in WNT pathway modulation, Samumed has elucidated novel biology linking CLK/DYRK kinases to the therapeutic regulation of alternative splicing of RNA which allows for modulation of the diversity of proteins that can be expressed in a cell. These kinases govern the selection of tissue-specific mRNA splice-sites, making them attractive druggable targets within the “command and control” center of proteome diversification.
Samumed’s drugs in clinical development include lorecivivint for osteoarthritis (in Phase 3), SM08502 for numerous cancers, and a broad pipeline that ranges from neurology to degenerative disc disease. Learn more at https://www.samumed.com/pipeline/default.aspx.
Corporate Contact:
Erich Horsley
Samumed, LLC
erich@samumed.com
858-365-0200