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Watertown, Mass., May 3, 2022 – Seismic Therapeutic, Inc., a biotechnology company advancing machine learning for immunology drug development, today announced the appointment of Maude Tessier, PhD, as Chief Business Officer. Dr. Tessier brings over 16 years of company building experience with a multi-disciplinary background in business development, corporate strategy, corporate communications, IP management, and portfolio and program management in public and private biotechnology, pharmaceutical and academic organizations.
“We are very pleased to welcome Maude to the Seismic leadership team. Seismic is in a period of significant growth and Maude will play a vital role in implementing and executing our long-term business, partnering and financing strategy. Her proven track record of cultivating biopharma partnerships and strategic deals to advance new medicines will help drive the tremendous opportunities ahead of us at Seismic,” said Jo Viney, PhD, Founder, President and CEO of Seismic Therapeutic. “Maude’s versatile leadership experience across a range of company sizes, deep business acumen and collaborative team spirit are an ideal fit for our team as we chart the course for Seismic as the machine learning immunology company and build a pipeline of novel medicines for autoimmune diseases.”
“I couldn’t be more delighted to join the outstanding team at Seismic at this exciting time when the company is building momentum with its leading-edge platform and promising pipeline candidates,” said Dr. Tessier. “I look forward to working alongside Jo and my Seismic colleagues to drive business strategies and foster opportunities that will enable the company to achieve its goals as an immunology innovator that makes an impact on patients’ lives.”
Dr. Maude Tessier joins Seismic after serving as Chief Business Officer of Ikena Oncology (Nasdaq: IKNA), a clinical-stage biotech company, where she built and managed the business development, legal and corporate strategy functions. At Ikena, she played a multi-faceted role leading key company building initiatives, including the negotiation and execution of a $1B+ strategic partnership with BMS, the strategy and execution of the company rebranding and pipeline expansion into targeted oncology, the acquisition of Amplify Medicines, and as part of the executive team, drove core elements of financing activities resulting in over $260M in private and public capital. Prior to Ikena, she was Executive Director, Business Development and Licensing at Merck & Co, leading oncology partnering in the Boston innovation hub. Dr. Tessier previously served as Assistant Director, Business Development and Strategic Initiatives at Boston Children’s Hospital. She began her career at Xanthus Pharmaceuticals, a venture-backed oncology biotech company in Cambridge, Mass., where she had key roles in business development and program management of a Phase 3 drug candidate leading to its eventual FDA approval. She holds a BSc in Biochemistry from McGill University and a PhD from the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto.
About Seismic Therapeutic
Seismic Therapeutic is a biotechnology company integrating machine learning across the entire biologics discovery process to accelerate immunology drug development. Using its IMPACT™ platform, the company is addressing the central challenges of biologics discovery and development by fully integrating machine learning with the key elements of biologics drug discovery – structural biology, protein engineering and translational immunology – to create optimized therapies on an accelerated path to patients. Seismic Therapeutic has an emerging pipeline of novel biologics to treat adaptive immune system dysregulation to treat autoimmune diseases. The company is backed by a strong syndicate of life sciences investors and is located in the Boston biotechnology hub. For more information, please visit www.seismictx.com.
Media Contact
Kathryn Morris, The Yates Network
914-204-6412
kathryn@theyatesnetwork.com
Biotech business leaders bring extensive financial and strategic planning experience across many stages of product development and company growth
Watertown, Mass., April 13, 2022 – Seismic Therapeutic, Inc., a biotechnology company advancing machine learning for immunology drug development, today announced the appointment of Eric Larson as Senior Vice President of Finance and Heather Vital as Vice President of R&D Strategy. These experienced business leaders join Seismic at a pivotal time for the company as it approaches the next stage of growth to build a pipeline of novel biologics to treat autoimmune diseases.
“We are delighted to welcome these two outstanding and accomplished industry leaders to our leadership team, bringing a wealth of expertise in areas of finance and strategic planning to support our future growth,” said Jo Viney, PhD, Founder, President and CEO of Seismic Therapeutic. “Eric’s decades of experience in a range of financial leadership roles in the biopharma industry and his proven skills in building operations infrastructure will be invaluable as we evolve Seismic and grow as an immunology platform and pipeline company. Heather’s diverse expertise across R&D strategy and operations, program and alliance management, and commercialization for biopharma companies and her proven skills in developing strategies in new market areas are critical capabilities as Seismic takes on the enormous opportunities ahead of us.”
Eric Larson, Senior Vice President of Finance
“It is exciting to be part of such a talented team at Seismic focused on a new drug development paradigm,” said Mr. Larson. “I look forward to using my experience building and leading finance teams and my operations skills to help a growing organization execute on its strategy, goals and mission to impact the lives of patients.”
Eric Larson brings nearly 30 years of financial leadership experience with private and public companies across multiple industries. His expertise extends across accounting and controls, financial planning, tax and treasury. Prior to joining Seismic, Eric was Vice President of Finance at Pandion Therapeutics where he built the finance and accounting infrastructure in support of its transition to a Nasdaq-listed public company. Previously, he was the Corporate Controller for Proteostasis Therapeutics and the Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer for Northern Power Systems. Earlier in his career, he held financial leadership roles at Biogen Idec, CMGI, Inc., and Ernst & Young. Eric is a CPA and earned his BA from Grove City College.
Heather Vital, Vice President of R&D Strategy
“This is an invigorating time to join Seismic as the company realizes the potential of integrating machine learning to develop novel treatments for autoimmune diseases,” said Ms. Vital. “I am eager to leverage my experience to help the company achieve its aspirations as a drug innovator and to create a host of new medicines for patients.”
Heather Vital joins Seismic with more than 15 years of experience across strategic and operational functions, including program and alliance management, portfolio planning and R&D strategy and commercialization. She most recently was Senior Director, Portfolio Strategy and Operations for Relay Therapeutics where she contributed to portfolio strategies for pipeline programs and was responsible for alliance management with a large biopharma partnership and a research collaboration. She served as Senior Director of Program Leadership at Deciphera Pharmaceuticals where she was the program lead for two oncology drug programs including one through product approval. Previously, Heather had a tenure at Biogen, culminating in the role of Director, R&D Strategy and Portfolio Leadership and for several disease areas. Her earlier roles at Biogen included portfolio strategy for spinal muscular atrophy, launching SPINRAZA as part of the global brand team and new product commercialization for the immunology therapeutic area. Heather has a BS from Babson College, MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Master of Science (SM) from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program.
About Seismic Therapeutic
Seismic Therapeutic is a biotechnology company integrating machine learning across the entire biologics discovery process to accelerate immunology drug development. Using its IMPACT™ platform, the company is addressing the central challenges of biologics discovery and development by fully integrating machine learning with the key elements of biologics drug discovery – structural biology, protein engineering and translational immunology – to create optimized therapies on an accelerated path to patients. Seismic Therapeutic has an emerging pipeline of novel biologics to treat adaptive immune system dysregulation to treat autoimmune diseases. The company is backed by a strong syndicate of life sciences investors and is located in the Boston biotechnology hub. For more information, please visit www.seismictx.com.
Media Contact
Kathryn Morris, The Yates Network
914-204-6412
kathryn@theyatesnetwork.com
Company’s IMPACT™ platform accelerates discovery and enables parallel optimization of superior therapeutic and manufacturability properties of novel biologics
Multiple drug programs take a new approach to targeting adaptive immunity to treat autoimmune diseases
Watertown, Mass., February 9, 2022 – Seismic Therapeutic, Inc., a biotechnology company advancing machine learning for immunology drug development, today announced its launch and financing of $101 million. The Series A was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from lead founding investors Timothy A. Springer and Polaris Partners, along with new investors GV, Boxer Capital, Samsara BioCapital, and management and founders. Seismic’s IMPACT™ platform systematically integrates machine learning, structural biology, protein engineering and translational immunology to invent novel biologics and optimize properties with significantly improved efficiency and scale over conventional therapeutics discovery. With this new approach, Seismic Therapeutic is accelerating a pipeline of biologics targeting dysregulated adaptive immunity to treat autoimmune diseases.
“The time is right to move the needle in immunology, as advances in technology now enable us to discover medicines to address complex immune system biology in dramatically improved ways,” said Jo Viney, PhD, Founder, President and CEO of Seismic Therapeutic. “We are leading the next generation of immunology drug development with Seismic’s platform. By integrating machine learning throughout the biologics drug discovery process, we are powered by a systematic and programmable approach to design superior biologics from initial discovery and therapeutic design through to manufacturability.”
The Series A financing will support Seismic Therapeutic’s further advancement toward the clinic of its first two lead drug programs, one targeting Ig (immunoglobulin)-mediated autoimmunity and the other targeting cell-mediated autoimmunity. In addition, the company will continue to build its proprietary IMPACT platform to make further advancements to machine learning technologies applied to immunology therapeutics.
“This strong financing and syndicate enable Seismic to aggressively advance multiple product candidates to the clinic. Through its leading edge integration of machine learning into drug development, the company is well positioned to be an important innovator in immunology,” said Alan Crane, Founder and Chairman of Seismic Therapeutic and Entrepreneur Partner at Polaris Partners.
IMPACT™ Platform “parallelizes” interdisciplinary components of drug discovery
The IMPACT platform enables the generation of drug molecules on an unprecedented scale in order to engineer better therapeutic solutions in immunology. The comprehensive integration of machine learning with protein engineering, structural biology and translational immunology enables the accelerated design and analysis of vast numbers of proteins and protein modifications in parallel. This parallelized process enables simultaneous optimization for biologic function and for developability, resulting in the creation of novel biologics with superior properties bypassing the trial and error methods of conventional biologics development with its challenges of balancing multiple factors of efficacy and manufacturability.
“Biologics drug development has undergone extraordinary advances in recent years, and the advent of machine learning working in concert with structural biology and protein engineering offers an entirely new trajectory for creating innovative biologics medicines,” said Timothy Springer, PhD, Founder of Seismic Therapeutic and Professor at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “Seismic is taking a major leap forward by fully integrating machine learning throughout the biologics drug development process, whereas earlier efforts to date have generally used machine learning in a much less integrated way.”
World-class team of drug developers, machine learning innovators, and immunology experts
“The Seismic team has made rapid progress in building a world-class platform for immunology drug innovation, incorporating the power of machine learning and guided by the team’s expert drug hunters, technology integrators and company builders. We look forward to the exciting future for this company and the immunology medicines it will advance for patients,” said Shelley Chu, MD, PhD, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners.
The Seismic Therapeutic team brings together experienced biotechnology leaders with decades of industry expertise in company building and drug development. Company leadership includes:
Academic Founders of Seismic Therapeutic include world-renowned experts with track records that span decades of pioneering work in immunology mechanisms, structural biology of antibodies and proteins, and machine learning for protein engineering.
About Seismic Therapeutic
Seismic Therapeutic is a biotechnology company integrating machine learning across the entire biologics discovery process to accelerate immunology drug development. Using its IMPACT™ platform, the company is addressing the central challenges of biologics discovery and development by fully integrating machine learning with the key elements of biologics drug discovery – structural biology, protein engineering and translational immunology – to create optimized therapies on an accelerated path to patients. Seismic Therapeutic has an emerging pipeline of novel biologics to address adaptive immune system dysregulation to treat autoimmune diseases. The company is backed by a strong syndicate of life sciences investors and is located in the Boston biotechnology hub. For more information, please visit www.seismictx.com and follow up on Twitter @Seismic_Tx and on LinkedIn.
Media Contact
Kathryn Morris, The Yates Network
914-204-6412
kathryn@theyatesnetwork.com
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