CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – May 14, 2015 – Navitor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., today announced that it has been named the winner of the “Hottest Startup” in the healthcare section at the 2015 NEVY Awards presented by the New England Venture Capital Association. This was the third annual event for the NEVY Awards to honor the best and the brightest in the region’s technology and healthcare startup ecosystem.
The Hottest Startup award honors companies that are “setting the world on fire,” and have received funding within the past year. In selecting Navitor for the Hottest Startup award, the NEVY judges particularly recognized the company’s innovative approach for developing novel medicines by selectively modulating mTORC1, a fundamental and clinically-validated pathway which regulates cell growth and function, and plays a key role in age-related diseases
“We are honored to receive this award which recognizes that Navitor is on the leading-edge of drug discovery innovation by harnessing newly-discovered mechanisms of mTORC1 activation to create novel medicines for a wide range of diseases of aging,” said George P. Vlasuk, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Navitor. “Our experienced team at Navitor is focused, passionate and dedicated to developing innovative medicines that can significantly impact the lives of patients, and we look forward to building our company around Navitor’s proprietary technology platform.”
Navitor’s proprietary drug discovery platform is designed to develop first-in-class selective modulators 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 has exclusive access from the Whitehead Institute to fundamental intellectual property relating to nutrient sensing via the mTORC1 pathway from the laboratory of David M. Sabatini, MD, PhD, Professor of Biology at MIT, Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Sabatini, Navitor’s scientific founder, has led groundbreaking research in the molecular regulation of the mTORC1 pathway, and his discoveries are seminal contributions to the field of cellular nutrient signaling.
About the NEVY Awards
Through the NEVY Awards, the New England Venture Capital Association brings together more than 700 venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to recognize the greatest accomplishments in New England’s technology and healthcare private companies over the past year. The NEVYs celebrate the people who are hard at work building the next generation of companies that matter.
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.
CONTACT:
Kathryn Morris
The Yates Network
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kathryn@theyatesnetwork.com