CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fulcrum Therapeutics, a company focused on discovering and developing small molecule therapies to unlock gene control and treat serious genetic diseases, today announced the appointments of Owen Wallace, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer and Amit Hasija as Chief Business Officer.
“We are pleased to be strengthening our leadership team with these key hires,” said Robert J. Gould, Ph.D., Fulcrum’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Owen brings more than two decades of experience in drug discovery and development across multiple disease areas, including an impressive track record of delivering innovative compounds into clinical development. Amit is a respected industry leader with a wide breadth of finance, strategy and business development experience in the life sciences sector. Together, their deep expertise in their respective fields will prove invaluable to Fulcrum as we build and expand our product engine and advance our lead programs in Fragile X syndrome and fascioscapularhumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD).”
Owen Wallace joins Fulcrum from Novartis, where he served as Head, Global Discovery Chemistry and was responsible for teams and projects across several therapeutic areas. Prior to Novartis, he was the Site Scientific Leader with Eli Lilly & Company in the United Kingdom, and before that he held research positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he co-initiated a program on a novel mechanism for inhibiting HIV infection that is now in Phase 3 clinical trials. He is the co-inventor of 7 clinical candidates and has overseen teams who have progressed more than 30 compounds into clinical development. He earned his doctorate in chemistry from Yale University.
Amit was most recently at Sanofi where his roles included Vice President and Head of Integrated Care, leading value-based contracting for the U.S., and Vice President and Head of business development for North America. Prior to joining Sanofi, Amit spent more than a decade as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, where he executed mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance transactions for healthcare clients. Amit began his career at Merck in vaccine manufacturing as a planning and logistics analyst and operations manager. He earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from Drexel University and received an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Additional background on Fulcrum’s leadership team is available on the company website.
“Fulcrum is uniquely committed to its mission of delivering a new future to patients suffering from severe genetic diseases,” said Hasija. “I’m eager to guide our strategic initiatives as we work to realize the great potential of the company’s innovative product engine and bring life-changing treatments to patients in need.”
“I am thrilled to be joining Fulcrum in its efforts to pioneer its bold new approach to modulating gene expression to treat the fundamental causes of rare genetic diseases,” said Dr. Wallace. “I look forward to leading Fulcrum’s scientific efforts to harness our understanding of the genetic basis of severe rare disorders and develop innovative new treatments for patients and their families affected by these devastating diseases.”
About Fulcrum Therapeutics
Fulcrum Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing new medicines to deliver a new future to patients and their families by transforming gene regulation in disease. Fulcrum’s therapies are based on modulating gene regulation via control of genetic on and off switches of disease genes. Fulcrum, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., was launched by Third Rock Ventures in 2016 and named a “Fierce 15” company later that year. For more information, please visit www.fulcrumtx.com.
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