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For questions, please contact Sonia Batra at sbatra1@hs.uci.edu.
Past Events
“How Antisense Technology Came to Be”
Stanley T. Crooke, MD, PhD | Chairman, Founder, & CEO, n-Lorem
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Crooke is founder, chairman and chief executive officer of n-Lorem, a nonprofit foundation focused on providing treatments for patients with nano-rare disease patients (1 to 30 patients worldwide), which he initiated in January 2020. Prior to n- Lorem, Dr. Crooke founded and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Lead Scientist of Ionis Pharmaceuticals. During his tenure at Ionis, he led the scientific development of a new platform for drug discovery, antisense technology and the creation of one of the largest and more advanced development pipelines in the biotechnology industry, and commercialized several antisense drugs including, Spinraza, Tegsedi and others. Early in Dr. Crooke’s career, he led the creation of the first broad anticancer program in the industry at Bristol-Myers, bringing numerous anticancer drugs to the market in the first five years of his career. He then assumed responsibility for worldwide R&D (president) at SmithKline Beckman (now GSK). During his tenure at SKB, Dr. Crooke led the restructuring of R&D and the development of several drugs that were commercialized.
Dr. Crooke has also contemporaneously led a successful academic career becoming a full professor at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School where he trained a number of PhD students and won several teaching awards. Dr. Crooke has been an active scientist throughout his career as well.
Dr. Crooke has received a number of awards, most recently, the Steven C. Beering Award for Advancement of Biomedical Science from the Indiana University School of Medicine, Prix Galien Roy Vagelos Pro Bono Humanum Award, the American Chemical Society’s E.B. Hershberg Award for Important Discoveries in Medicinally Active Substances, the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society, the Scrip Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2019 Massry Prize. Dr. Crooke received his MD and PhD degrees and house staff training at Baylor College of Medicine, where he currently serves on the Board of Advisors. In 2021, Dr. Crooke was named Distinguished Alumnus of both Baylor College of Medicine’s Graduate and Medical schools and named one of the 20 of the most influential biopharma R&D executives by Endpoints News. He has published nearly 600 scientific publications, edited more than 20 books, has numerous patents, and led the development of more than 23 drugs that have been commercialized.
“Of Platforms and Products:
New Technologies for Rare Disease Drug Development”
Doug Treco, PhD | Chief Executive Officer, Inozyme Pharma
The challenges associated with building biotech companies and developing drugs for rare diseases will be discussed. Novel platforms for gene activation to produce therapeutic proteins and systems to select high affinity binding peptides from very large pools will be described.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Douglas A. Treco, PhD, is the chief executive officer of Inozyme Pharma (Nasdaq: INZY) and has served as the Chairman of the Board at Inozyme since May 2020. From April 2021 to April 2022, Dr. Treco was chief executive officer of Alchemab Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company. Dr. Treco co-founded Ra Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Ra Pharma”; Nasdaq: RARX), a biopharmaceutical company, in 2008, which was acquired by UCB S.A. in April 2020. He served as the president and chief executive officer of Ra Pharma from June 2008 to July 2020. Dr. Treco served as an entrepreneur-in-residence with Morgenthaler Ventures, a venture capital firm, from January 2008 to May 2014. Dr. Treco co-founded Transkaryotic Therapies, Inc. (Nasdaq: TKTX), a biopharmaceutical company, in 1988, which was acquired in 2005 by Shire plc. Dr. Treco served as a visiting scientist in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and as a lecturer in genetics at Harvard Medical School from 2004 to 2007. Dr. Treco currently serves on the board of directors of CRISPR Therapeutics AG and is a scientific advisor to Lightstone Ventures and AcuraStem, Inc. Dr. Treco served on the board of directors of Ra Pharma from June 2008 to April 2020 and the board of directors of Alchemab Therapeutics from April 2021 to April 2022. Dr. Treco received a B.A. in Biology from the University of Delaware and a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and performed post-doctoral research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Massachusetts General Hospital.