CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – September 9, 2015 – Nimbus Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on harnessing the power of computational chemistry to design breakthroughs for serious, underserved diseases, today announced the appointment of Annie C. Chen, M.D., M.P.H., as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Chen brings more than a decade of industry experience and joins Nimbus from Merck & Co., where she most recently served as Executive Director of Clinical Research, Section Head of Vaccines.
“We are thrilled to welcome Annie to our team. As CMO, she will play a critical role in helping advance Nimbus’ mission to deliver medicines that truly matter and bring a meaningful difference to patients,” said Don Nicholson, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer at Nimbus. “I am extremely proud of the top industry talent we continue to attract and the world-class leadership team we are building at Nimbus. We look forward to leveraging Annie’s deep experience as we continue to evolve as a clinical-stage company and progress our broad pipeline in metabolic disease, cancer and immune-inflammatory disorders.”
Over the course of her career, Dr. Chen has been responsible for overseeing the global clinical development and regulatory filings of key therapeutics spanning small molecule, protein therapeutics and vaccines. At Merck, Dr. Chen oversaw clinical research activities for a broad portfolio of vaccines, from discovery through Phase III, and marketed products. She served as alternating chair of Merck’s vaccines therapeutic area development review committee, and previously as a clinical reviewer for the document review committee covering all therapeutic areas, including oncology, infectious diseases, respiratory and immunology, metabolic disorders and vaccines. At Merck, Dr. Chen also previously held the position of Executive Director Clinical Research, Section Head Immunology. Prior to Merck, Dr. Chen held several roles at Genentech, including Senior Medical Director, where she facilitated approvals and expanded indications for the company’s blockbuster biologic treatments, including
Rituxan® and ACTEMRA®. Dr. Chen previously served as Medical Director of Celera Genomics, where she designed, implemented and monitored crucial phase 1 clinical trials in oncology and autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Chen was formerly an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California and has published a number of influential scientific papers throughout her career. A qualified adult rheumatologist, Dr. Chen is a member of the American College of Rheumatology. She received her M.P.H. in Epidemiology from the University of California Berkley, her M.D. from Cornell University and her B.A. in Biological Sciences from Harvard University.
“I am very excited to begin working with Don and the entire Nimbus team, particularly at this moment in time when we’re experiencing such explosive, unprecedented advancement,” said Dr. Chen. “Industry wide we’re seeing remarkable progress advancing new approaches to address long-held, significant unmet needs. Nimbus’ computational chemistry approach and the company’s ability to design highly specific therapies to interrupt critical, yet until now undruggable targets is quite thrilling, and I believe places the company at the forefront of this revolution in medicine.”
About Nimbus
Nimbus Therapeutics is a biotechnology company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (U.S.). It is pioneering the application of computational chemistry to design breakthroughs for the treatment of substantial and underserved human diseases. The company’s focus on metabolic diseases, cancer and immune- inflammatory disorders reflects the mechanistic relationship between these disorders, and Nimbus’ ability to rapidly tackle well validated targets as well as those that have proven intractable to the approaches taken by others in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Nimbus’ most advanced program, an allosteric inhibitor of acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is currently in Phase I clinical testing. To learn more, please visit www.nimbustx.com.