Bicycle Therapeutics Strengthens Senior Management Team With Appointment Of Maria Koehler, M.D., Ph.D., As Chief Medical Office

CAMBRIDGE, England & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bicycle Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new class of therapeutics based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle®) product platform, today announced the appointment of Maria Koehler, M.D., Ph.D., as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Koehler will lead clinical strategy and oversee operational functions for Bicycle’s clinical development team to bring BT1718 and additional Bicycles to patients for the treatment of a range of cancers with poor survival outcomes.

“We are delighted to welcome Maria to the Bicycle leadership team. As Chief Medical Officer, she will play a pivotal role in furthering our mission to transform the treatment regimens for cancer and other diseases,” said Dr. Kevin Lee, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Bicycle Therapeutics. “Maria has an exemplary track record, both as an oncology clinician and researcher, and as a drug development expert. We look forward to drawing on her breadth of experience in the development, registration and launch of oncology drugs. This expertise will prove invaluable as we continue to advance our broad pipeline of oncology therapeutics including our lead program, BT1718, and further evolve Bicycle Therapeutics as an integrated pharmaceutical company.”

Dr. Koehler, a trained oncologist with two decades of industry experience, joins Bicycle from Pfizer, where she was Vice President of Strategy, Innovation and Collaborations for the Oncology Business Unit. At Pfizer, Dr. Koehler was a key member of the oncology leadership team responsible for creating and coordinating innovative strategies for their oncology pipeline from early stage clinical trials through pivotal trials and product approval. Her accomplishments at Pfizer include leading development strategies for Palbociclib/IBRANCE, which was launched in 2015, and shaping the oncology portfolio. Prior to joining Pfizer, Dr. Koehler was the Group Leader for the Medicine Development Center of GlaxoSmithKline Oncology, and a Senior Medical Director for Oncology Research and Development at AstraZeneca. During her academic career, she was the Clinical Director of Bone Marrow Transplantation at University Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, and Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program and Associate Professor at St. Christopher’s Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. She is a Board Certified Hematology/Oncology physician, and the author of more than 160 peer reviewed publications and book chapters. Dr. Koehler received her M.D. and Ph.D. from the Silesian School of Medicine in Katowice, Poland.

“This is a tremendous opportunity to contribute to the clinical development of Bicycles, which are a truly innovative new class of cancer treatment with broad potential to make a life-changing impact on patients with cancer,” said Dr. Koehler. “I’m eager to work with the Bicycle team to bring these unique and powerful therapies to patients.”

About Bicycle Therapeutics

Bicycle Therapeutics is developing a new class of medicines to treat oncology and other important diseases based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle^®) product platform. Bicycles^® exhibit the affinity and exquisite target specificity usually associated with antibodies. Their small size enables rapid and deep tissue penetration, allowing tissues and tumours to be targeted from within. Their peptidic nature provides a “tuneable” pharmacokinetic half-life and a renal route of clearance, thus avoiding the liver and gastrointestinal tract toxicity often seen with other drug modalities. Bicycle Therapeutics is rapidly advancing towards the clinic with its lead programs using Bicycle Drug Conjugates^® to selectively deliver toxins to tumours. Bicycle Therapeutics is collaborating in oncology and other areas to realise the full potential of the technology. Bicycle Therapeutics’ unique intellectual property is based on the work initiated at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., by the scientific founders of the company, Sir Gregory Winter and Professor Christian Heinis. Bicycle Therapeutics is headquartered in Cambridge, U.K., with a U.S. subsidiary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.bicycletherapeutics.com.