Team
Debanu Das, Ph.D.
Co-Founder & CEO
Debanu brings 20 years of expertise in protein crystallography, structure-and fragment-based drug discovery and structural biology. His expertise includes structure-function analysis of a broad range of proteins like kinases, proteases, antibody-antigen complexes, nuclear receptors, ubiquitin ligases, methylases, polymerases, microbiome enzymes, membrane proteins, and transcription factors. He completed his postdoctoral and doctoral training with Sung-Hou Kim and Millie Georgiadis, respectively, and is Co-Founder & CEO at Accelero Biostructures, which discovered the hits for XPose targets.
Ashley Deacon, Ph.D.
Co-Founder & VP
Structural Biology
Ashley brings 30 years of experience in synchrotron-based protein crystallography research, structure-and fragment-based drug discovery and structural biology. His professional experience and passion lies in the development and application of new technology to high impact structural biology research. He is Co-Founder & CSO at Accelero Biostructures, which has discovered the hits for the XPose targets.
Matthew Duncton, Ph.D.
Co-Founder & VP
Medicinal Chemistry
Matt has over 20 years of expertise in medicinal chemistry with a career in drug discovery in oncology, immunology, anti-infective and neuroscience therapeutic areas and has worked at both large and medium biopharma companies in the UK & USA like Merck, Vernalis, OSI Pharmaceuticals, ImClone Systems, Renovis, and Rigel Pharmaceuticals. Matt is an author/inventor on more than
90 papers and patents and is proficient at progressing programs from initiation to IND studies and beyond.
Patricia Pellicena, Ph.D.
VP Biochemical & Cellular Pharmacology
Patricia is a biochemist/biophysicist with 20 years of formal training in both enzymology and structural biology. She brings expertise in the field of assay development and in vitro pharmacology and a deep understanding of cancer biology. Her experience in drug discovery spans from target validation and lead discovery/optimization to preclinical proof-of-concept studies for both biotherapeutic and small molecule programs. Prior to XPose Therapeutics, Patricia held various scientific and leadership positions at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, Amunix, Catalyst Biosciences, and Allosteros Therapeutics.
David Wilson III, Ph.D.
Target Biology
John King-Underwood
Computational Chemistry
Dave was formerly the Chief of the Endogenous DNA Damage Repair Section at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging, and has focused his entire research career on studying aspects of DNA repair mechanisms in disease susceptibility and etiology, therapeutic strategies, and healthspan. Since relocating to Belgium in 2019, Dave has been appointed Professor of Neurosciences at Hasselt University and has launched an independent career as Founder and CEO of Boost Scientific.
John has been an independent Computational Chemistry consultant since 2003. In this time he has been instrumental in the selection of 6 clinical candidates across a wide array of indications including inflammation, diabetes and infectious disease. He has also worked extensively on targets in cancer and respiratory disease.
Taxiarchis Georgiadis, Ph.D.
Synthetic Chemistry
Tax is a synthetic organic chemist with over 20 years experience in the pharmaceutical and the agrichemical industries as well as in academia. As a medicinal chemist in the pharmaceutical industry, Tax has worked in drug discovery as well as hit-to-lead research in various companies including 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, Provid Research and R. W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute with about 10 patents to his credit.
Millie Georgiadis, Ph.D.
Co-Founder
Millie brings in critical focus DNA-binding proteins in cancer. She has determined novel crystal structures of bleomycin bound to DNA, the catalytic domain of SETMAR, the DNA-binding domain of SETMAR bound to cognate TIR DNA sequence, and the C-terminal regulatory domain of GCN2, the eIF2 kinase that senses amino acid deprivation. In synthetic biology, she is pursuing structural characterization of artificial DNA and interactions with DNA polymerases. Millie is Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis.
David Jobes, Ph.D.
Business Development
Dave brings 20 years of research and business development expertise in infectious diseases, oncology and metabolic diseases at NIH, Applied Biosystems and VaxGen. Dave is also a serial entrepreneur, having served as co-founder and business leader at Presidio Pharmaceuticals, Mid-Atlantic Biotherapeutics, and Prosper Animal Health. Dave has completed >$300M in transactions to date, in a number of different therapeutic areas and covering numerous technologies.
Advisors
Sung-Hou Kim, Ph.D.
Sung-Hou is a pioneer in structural biology, protein crystallography and structure-based drug discovery with a vast repertoire of high-value scientific contributions including the first 3D crystal structures of tRNA and Ras. Sung-Hou is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Professor at University of California Berkeley, Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Co-Founder of Plexxikon, one of the most successful structure-based drug discovery companies.
Daruka Mahadevan, M.D., Ph.D.
Daruka helps us strike a strong balance between therapeutics R&D and clinical need. With extensive training in internal medicine with subspecialty medical oncology, scientific research (structural biology with Tom Blundell, translational drug development in oncology and DNA repair) and work experience in academia and industry including antibody engineering, Daruka's exposure spans the entire gamut of medicine, science, and technology that XPose deals with. Daruka is currently Chief, Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
Adrian Gill, Ph.D.
Adrian brings over 25 years of drug discovery expertise across the preclinical value chain. He has held senior roles at Astex Therapeutics, AstraZeneca and currently Revolution Medicines where he is SVP, Discovery Chemistry. Adrian brings to XPose his experiences in innovative approaches to small molecule drug discovery, including fragment-based discovery, chemically induced proximity approaches, covalent drug discovery and structure based drug design. Over the course of his career, he has co-authored and published over 50 peer reviewed papers and patents, and delivered over 20 development candidates for clinical investigation across multiple disease areas including oncology.
George Church, Ph.D.
Eric Gordon, Ph.D.
George was involved in determining the crystal structure of tRNA with Sung-Hou and then went on to pioneering work in personal genomics and synthetic biology.
He joins us as a scientific advisor
with a strong interest in DNA repair, including intervention for novel cancer therapeutics, error-prone polymerases and mechanisms and associations in aging reversal and space travel. George is Professor at Harvard & MIT, co-author of 625 papers, 156 patent publications &
the book Regenesis, and with a
deep passion for translating scientific discovery to commercialization, has co-founded around 50 biotech companies. He developed methods used for the first genome sequence (1994) & genome recoding & million-fold cost reductions since. He co-initiated the BRAIN Initiative (2011)
& Genome Projects (1984, 2005) to provide & interpret world's only open-access personal precision medicine data. Image credit to Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
Eric brings in very deep expertise in translation of research and development into clinical drug discovery. Eric's career includes co-founding 4 antibiotic companies, discovery and development of 8 approved drugs, over 200 papers and patents, and experience in various companies including Bristol Myers Squibb and Affymax. Eric is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Carole Bellis
Carole is our outside legal counsel and Partner in the Silicon Valley Office of DLA Piper. Carole is an expert in working with life sciences companies and advises them on various corporate structuring and financing matters.
James Huie
James is a Partner in Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's San Francisco office. James has extensive experience in representing VC firms and other investors in private equity and debt financings.