Iambic Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel therapeutics using its unique AI-driven discovery platform, today announced the appointment of Peter Olson, Ph.D. to the role of chief scientific officer. Dr. Olson, who was most recently vice president, research at Mirati Therapeutics, a Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) company, will join Iambic’s executive leadership team.
A specialist in cancer biology and genetics, Dr. Olson will lead a team focused on driving small molecule programs from target identification through to clinical proof-of-concept. At Mirati, he led in vitro and in vivo pharmacology and translational research across its portfolio, which included pre-clinical efforts for KRAZATI™ (adagrasib), a KRAS G12C inhibitor approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2022.
“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Pete Olson to the Iambic team,” said Tom Miller, PhD, Iambic’s chief executive officer. “He brings extraordinary drug discovery and development leadership experience as we advance and expand our pipeline of clinical candidates for oncology and other disease areas.”
Iambic is developing an internal pipeline of candidates, discovered using its platform that integrates AI models for protein structure prediction and wholistic drug design with high-throughput chemistry and biology experimentation. The Company’s pipeline currently includes IAM1363, a highly selective, brain penetrant small molecule inhibitor of both wild-type and oncogenic HER2 mutants currently in a Phase 1/1b study, as well as a potential first-in-class selective dual CDK2/4 inhibitor for multiple cancer indications, an allosteric inhibitor for KIF18A, and additional new programs.
“Iambic’s AI-driven discovery platform enables the rapid identification of promising drug molecules and provides predictive insights into clinical properties of potential medicines,” said Dr. Olson. “I am excited to join the Iambic team to further advance their promising pipeline as we work to deliver innovative breakthroughs for patients.”
Dr. Olson has over twenty-five years of basic, pre-clinical and translational cancer biology experience in academia and industry and is the author of close to 50 peer-reviewed papers. Prior to Mirati he was a senior principal scientist in Pfizer’s Oncology Research Unit, where he was the translational project leader for OGSIVEO™, the first FDA approved treatment for progressive desmoid tumors. Before Pfizer, he was a postdoc in the Hanahan Laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego and a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis.
About Iambic’s AI-Driven Discovery Platform
The Iambic AI-driven platform was created to address the most challenging design problems in drug discovery, leveraging technology innovations such as Enchant, a multi-modal transformer model that predicts clinical outcomes from the earliest stages of discovery, and NeuralPLexer, the best-in-class predictor of protein and protein-ligand structures. The integration of physics principles into the platform’s AI architectures improves data efficiency and allows molecular models to venture widely across the space of possible chemical structures. The platform enables identification of novel chemical modalities for engaging difficult-to-address biological targets, discovery of defined product profiles that optimize therapeutic window, and multi-parameter optimization for highly differentiated development candidates. Through close integration of AI-generated molecular designs with automated experimental execution, Iambic completes design-make-test cycles on a weekly cadence.
About Iambic Therapeutics
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in San Diego, California, Iambic Therapeutics is disrupting the therapeutics landscape with its unique AI-driven drug-discovery platform. Iambic has assembled a world-class team that unites pioneering AI experts and experienced drug hunters with strong track records of success in delivering clinically validated therapeutics. The Iambic platform has been demonstrated to deliver high-quality, differentiated therapeutics to clinical stage with unprecedented speed and across multiple target classes and mechanisms of action. The Iambic team is advancing an internal pipeline of clinical assets to address urgent unmet patient needs. Learn more about the Iambic team, platform, and pipeline at iambic.ai.
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