CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – June 15, 2015 – Navitor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing novel medicines targeting the activation of mTORC1, today announced that Paul Friedman, MD, former President & Chief Executive Officer of Incyte Corporation, has joined the Navitor Board of Directors as an independent Director.
“I am honored to welcome Paul Friedman to our Board,” said George P. Vlasuk, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Navitor. “Paul is an extremely accomplished scientist, drug developer and life sciences executive, having led the transformation of Incyte into a commercial stage biopharmaceutical company with over $350 million in annual revenue and a deep pipeline of drug candidates for cancer and inflammation. Paul’s drug discovery and development experience and strategic perspective will be instrumental as we advance our novel product candidates toward the clinic and grow the company.”
Dr. Friedman said, “Navitor’s proprietary IP, know-how and drug discovery capabilities strongly position the company to discover drugs that selectively modulate mTORC1 activation pathways with high specificity. The company’s novel mTORC1 modulators have the potential to treat a wide a range of age-related diseases as well as several genetic rare diseases that are linked to the dysregulation of mTORC1 activation. I am excited to become part of the Navitor team and to help build the leading company targeting this important, clinically-validated pathway.”
Dr. Friedman served as Chief Executive Officer of Incyte from 2001 and was President of the company from 2004 until his retirement in January 2014. From 1998 until October 2001, Dr. Friedman served as President of DuPont Pharmaceuticals Research Laboratories, a wholly owned subsidiary of DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company (formerly The DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company), from 1994 to 1998 he served as President of Research and Development of The DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company, and from 1991 to 1994 he served as Senior Vice President at Merck Research Laboratories. Prior to his work at Merck and DuPont, Dr. Friedman was an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Friedman is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. Dr. Friedman is also a director of Auxilium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Cerulean Pharma, Inc., Durata Therapeutics, Inc., Synta Pharmaceuticals Corp., and Verastem, Inc.
About Navitor
Navitor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is a biopharmaceutical company developing novel medicines by targeting cellular nutrient signaling pathways. The company’s proprietary drug discovery platform targets mTORC1, which responds to and integrates the cell’s response to nutrient availability and plays a key role in protein synthesis and cellular growth. Navitor’s therapeutics are designed to selectively modulate the cellular signals that are aberrant in disease processes caused by the dysregulation of mTORC1 activation to address a wide range of diseases, including metabolic, neurodegenerative, autoimmune and musculoskeletal diseases, as well as age-related immune suppression and several rare disorders. The company’s founding intellectual property is based on the groundbreaking discoveries related to the mTORC1 pathway and nutrient signaling mechanisms by Dr. David Sabatini at The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The company is backed by leading financial and corporate investors, including Polaris Partners, Atlas Venture, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, SR One and The Longevity Fund. For more information, please visit www.navitorpharma.com.
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Kathryn Morris
The Yates Network
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