CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Metaphore Biotechnologies, a Flagship Pioneering-founded generative AI drug design company focused on creating a new class of functional antibodies, today announced the appointment of Anabella Villalobos, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer. Villalobos will oversee the advancement of MIMIC™, the world's first structure-independent sequence-to-function platform for protein design, and the company's drug discovery and development efforts.
"Over her extensive career, Anabella has delivered over 30 clinical candidates across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas, including neuroscience, multiple sclerosis, rare diseases, and autoimmune disorders," said Angela Hwang, MBA, CEO of Metaphore and CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering. "Anabella has built and led pioneering scientific teams, forged strategic academic and industry collaborations, and demonstrated a strong track record advancing entirely novel therapeutic candidates from early discovery to the clinic and beyond. Her expertise will be invaluable, and I look forward to working with her as we continue to advance the MIMIC™ platform and our pipeline of differentiated therapeutics."
Villalobos brings more than 30 years of drug discovery and development experience to Metaphore. She most recently served as Senior Vice President, Head of Biotherapeutics and Medicinal Sciences at Biogen, where she was responsible for the delivery of differentiated drug candidates for neurological, rare, and autoimmune diseases across multiple modalities, including small molecules, biologics, oligonucleotides, and gene therapy. Prior to Biogen, she spent 28 years at Pfizer in positions of increasing responsibility, including most recently as Vice President of Medicinal Synthesis Technologies and Neuroscience Medicinal Chemistry. As a leader, her group at Pfizer was instrumental in the discovery of Ogsiveo® (nirogacestat), tavapadon, and other first-in-class therapeutics. She serves on the Board of Directors for Coya Therapeutics.
"I am delighted to be joining Metaphore at this exciting time," said Villalobos. "Throughout my career, I have been driven by the challenge and privilege of translating new scientific directions into transformative medicines. Metaphore's function-first drug design platform is cutting-edge and highly differentiated, and it will address complex disease biology in ways not currently possible. This is a thrilling opportunity to advance MIMIC and unlock unlimited pipeline potential. I look forward to working with Angela and the rest of this talented team to deliver bold, differentiated therapies that address urgent patient needs."
About Metaphore Biotechnologies
Metaphore Biotechnologies is pioneering the power of function-first AI drug design to make previously intractable drug targets accessible and unlock breakthroughs that outperform today's drugs for maximum patient impact. The company's computationally driven MIMIC™ platform is the world's first structure-independent sequence-to-function platform for protein design. The company was founded in 2021 in Flagship Labs, a unit of Flagship Pioneering. For more information, visit www.metaphorebio.com or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
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