CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Civetta Therapeutics, LLC, a biotechnology company focused on developing a pipeline of therapies that target beta-propeller proteins, today announced that Christopher D. Roberts, Ph.D., has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Roberts, who most recently served as Chief Scientific Officer of Black Diamond Therapeutics, brings more than 20 years of leadership experience discovering and developing novel therapies for oncology, immunology, virology and other indications.
“Civetta has developed a unique discovery platform designed to rigorously investigate, validate and drug beta-propeller proteins. Because propeller domains are ubiquitous and play critical functions in pathways that are known contributors to pathogenesis, they provide broad opportunity as therapeutic targets,” said Dr. Roberts. “I’m impressed by the work the team has done advancing its lead programs and platform. I look forward to joining the Civetta team in the discovery and development of novel, first-in-class therapies that can help patients across a variety of disease areas, from cancer, inflammation and immunology to neurodegeneration and metabolic disease.”
Cameron Wheeler, Ph.D., who was serving as Chief Executive Officer at Civetta and is a Partner in the Biotherapeutics Group at Deerfield Management Company, will continue to serve as chairman of Civetta’s board of directors.
“The team at Civetta has done great work taking the early insights into beta-propeller science made by our founders at the Broad Institute and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and advancing them, to better understand their role in a variety of diseases,” said Dr. Wheeler. “We see broad potential for targeting beta-propeller proteins and we’re working to identify novel, near-term therapeutics and establish the leading beta-propeller targeting platform in the industry. Attracting top talent like Chris will continue to be critical as we accelerate and expand our programs and pipeline.”
Prior to joining Black Diamond, Chris served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at SR One, the corporate venture capital arm of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Prior to SR One, Chris was the Vice President (VP) of Chemistry and Early Development at Syros Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company focused on gene control and drugging transcription, where he built and led a variety of discovery and development functions and helped guide two oncology assets into clinical development. Prior to joining Syros, Chris held numerous positions of increasing responsibility at GSK, including VP and Head of the Host Defense Discovery Performance Unit, and also led multiple clinical development projects. He joined GSK as Senior Director of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Medicinal Chemistry via its acquisition of Genelabs Technologies. As a medicinal chemist at Genelabs, Chris was significantly involved in establishing Genelabs’ HCV research focus. His work has been extensively published.
Chris earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Riverside, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He graduated with a B.A. in Chemistry from Whitworth University.
About Civetta
Civetta is a biotechnology company focused on the development of therapies that target beta-propeller domains to treat cancer and other diseases. The company was founded based on the pivotal insights into beta-propeller domains made by its founders, which helped elucidate beta-propeller domain functionality and their potential for therapeutic intervention in oncology as well as neurodegeneration, metabolic disease and other disease areas. Civetta is funded by Deerfield Management Company and is based in Cambridge, MA. For more information, please visit www.civettatherapeutics.com.
