New York, July 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI) driven drug discovery company, has appointed Dr. Sujata Rao as Senior Vice President (SVP) with responsibility for the global clinical development strategy of Insilico Medicine's therapeutic programs. She will be based in the U.S., and report directly to Dr. Feng Ren, co-CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Insilico Medicine.
“The unique opportunity at Insilico allows me to join a world class AI drug discovery team that can rapidly bring novel drugs to patients with a great unmet need,” said Sujata Rao M.D., Senior Vice President, Head of Clinical Development at Insilico Medicine. “This is a transformative approach to drug development with shortened timelines that I hope will make a huge clinical impact.”
Dr. Rao is a seasoned executive physician with over 15 years of extensive clinical development and medical affairs experience in executive roles and operational proficiency in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Insilico, she spent over five years at Eli Lilly, most recently as Associate Vice President of Global Clinical Development for early and late-stage immuno-oncology assets, including sintilimab, an anti PD-1 program in partnership with Innovent and Pegilodecakin; pegylated IL-10 and cytokine pipeline for ARMO Biosciences, acquired by Eli Lilly in 2018; as well as Cyramza, a monoclonal antibody targeting VEGFR-2. Dr. Rao also provided strategic leadership and guidance for the Investigator Initiated Studies program and collaborative research across multiple indications. Prior to Eli Lilly, she served as Immuno-Oncology Medical Lead and Oncology Scientific Advisor at Bristol-Myers Squibb for nivolumab, leading efforts for rare population malignancies and lung cancer. She also held the role of Sr. Medical Director at Onyx Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Amgen, Inc. where she was responsible for leading efforts in liver, renal, and thyroid cancer for Nexavar. Dr. Rao has had global registrational responsibilities to include NDA as well as IND/pre-BLA interactions with regulatory agencies.
“Many of our projects are or will soon be in the clinic. While we are innovating relentlessly in the field of AI, we need to ensure that we are following industry best practices in clinical development and trying to exceed it,” said Feng Ren, Ph.D., co-CEO and Chief Scientific Officer at Insilico Medicine. “We are excited to have Dr. Sujata Rao join our team and look forward to her extensive experience and openness in applying AI in clinical development to accelerate programs to clinical milestones.”
Prior to joining the industry, Dr. Rao had 15 years of academic and clinical practice experience in oncology. She was Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington focused on Gastrointestinal Oncology. Before her academic practice, she had a large community-based oncology practice in Tacoma, WA. Dr. Rao completed her medical degree from Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, in Buffalo, NY followed by residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her Medical Oncology/Hematology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
“Under the leadership of my co-pilot, Dr. Ren, who embraced and institutionalized the use of AI across the many areas of our drug discovery process, Insilico Medicine managed to set several records and make history in drug discovery resulting in over 30 therapeutic programs,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. “As the first programs progress through human clinical trials, we need expert supervision by industry leaders with substantial experience in clinical development. I am very happy to have Dr. Sujata Rao join our clinical development team.”
Since 2021, Insilico has nominated eight preclinical candidates that were discovered and designed using its AI platform in a variety of disease areas, including fibrosis, inflammation, and cancer. It also successfully completed a Phase 0 microdose trial and entered a Phase 1 clinical trial with its first internally developed program for fibrosis.
About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine, a clinical stage end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, is connecting biology, chemistry, and clinical trials analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and the generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases.
Website: http://insilico.com/
For further information, images, or interviews, please contact media@insilico.com
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