Herophilus Appoints Brad Savall, Ph.D. as Vice President and Head of Chemistry as it Advances Pipeline of Novel Drugs for Complex Brain Diseases

Industry veteran brings deep experience in neuroscience and design of brain penetrant molecules, including at Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), to neuro drug discovery efforts

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Herophilus, a leading biotechnology company developing neurotherapeutics to cure complex brain diseases, today announced the appointment of Brad Savall, Ph.D. as the company’s new Vice President and Head of Chemistry. Dr. Savall brings to Herophilus over 20 years of experience in medicinal chemistry, including the design of molecules optimized for brain diseases, as the company continues to progress their pipeline of novel drugs for neurological and psychiatric disease.

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Dr. Brad Savall, Vice President and Head of Chemistry of Herophilus (Photo: Business Wire)

Prior to joining Herophilus, Dr. Savall served as Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Plexium where he led efforts to leverage the company’s phenotypic screening platform in order to discover novel monovalent degraders. Prior to Plexium, he served as the Associate Director of Drug Discovery at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, leading medicinal chemistry and drug discovery efforts on multiple early and mid-stage drug discovery programs. Dr. Savall was also previously employed at Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) where he led projects for three drug discovery programs that delivered four clinical candidates across neuroscience and immunology.

“Herophilus is surpassing the limitations of traditional neuroscience drug discovery methods with a powerful new approach that has the potential to enable transformative neurotherapeutics,” said Dr. Savall. “I am thrilled to be joining this groundbreaking effort to discover new medicines that will impact the lives of millions living with complex brain disease.”

Starting with patient-derived stem cells, Herophilus develops brain organoids that uniquely recapitulate characteristics of human brain disease, allowing researchers to identify drug compounds with significantly increased confidence of clinical efficacy compared to those found using standard approaches. Robotic automation allows the company to develop organoids at massive scale and gather rich multi-modal data, while advanced machine learning applied to the data unlocks novel insights into neurological disease. In contrast to traditional single target-focused drug discovery, Herophilus’s technology yields robust drug candidates, identifies polypharmacologic drugs and combination therapies, and ultimately enables systematic drug discovery for complex brain diseases.

“Brad is an accomplished scientist with a stellar track record of solving the challenges of drug discovery,” said Saul Kato, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Herophilus. “We are excited to welcome him to the Herophilus team as we continue to advance our vision of reinventing neuro drug discovery and create a new era of curative therapeutics for complex brain diseases.”

The appointment of Dr. Savall follows the addition of Sharath Hegde, Ph.D. as Chief Scientific Officer and Kenneth Kosik, M.D. to the company's Scientific Advisory Board.

About Herophilus

Herophilus is a San Francisco-based neurotherapeutics company focused on curing complex brain diseases. The company’s platform combines brain organoid science, systems neuroscience approaches, robotic automation, and advanced machine learning techniques to scale the ability to discover novel drugs for complex neurological and psychiatric diseases. In an industry-first approach, the company employs multimodal phenotypic screening to discover characterizations of diseases never before achievable. These “deep phenotypes” are exploited to identify novel therapeutic targets and drug treatments for disorders for which current discovery techniques have proved least successful, including neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. To learn more, visit www.herophilus.com.

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