(MENAFN- PR Newswire) WALTHAM, Mass., Jan. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ensem Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company focusing on high value and difficult-to-drug oncology targets, today announced the appointment of Dr. Jeff Kutok as Chief Scientific Officer, effectively immediately. Dr. Kutok is a physician and scientist with more than 25 years of clinical practice, translational scientific research, and biotech leadership experience in oncology, immuno-oncology, and epigenetics.
"Dr. Kutok is a seasoned executive with the right credentials to guide ENSEM's science into the future," stated Shengfang Jin, Ph.D., President & Chief Executive Officer of ENSEM. "We are excited to welcome Jeff and look forward to benefiting from his drug development expertise and deep industry knowledge as we continue to progress our oncology pipeline of novel drug candidates utilizing our Kinetic Ensemble®
platform to help patients."
As an experienced biotech executive in the drug development space, Dr. Kutok recently served as the Chief Scientific Officer at Epizyme, Inc., where he led the company's scientific strategy, including directing preclinical research to support the further development of the EZH2 inhibitor, TAZVERIK® (tazemetostat), and advancing the company's broader epigenetic pipeline. He also served as a member of the leadership team during its acquisition by Ipsen.
Dr. Kutok previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where he was responsible for the company's scientific strategy, preclinical development, and translational science. During Dr. Kutok's tenure at Infinity, the company advanced several oral PI3K inhibitors into the clinic. He was also part of the leadership team during the AbbVie partnership and was involved in the licensing of the PI3Kd/ɣ
inhibitor, COPIKTRA® (duvelisib) to Verastem Oncology.
Prior to joining Infinity, Dr. Kutok was an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and is board certified in Anatomic Pathology and Hematology, with clinical duties in Hematopathology and Molecular Diagnostics at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). He is a leading expert in cancer biology, with authorship on over 200 journal articles, reviews, and book chapters. His laboratory at BWH focused on translational medicine research and biomarker identification in oncology. Dr. Kutok received his B.S. in Biology and his M.D., Ph.D. in Medicine and Molecular Pathology from Stony Brook University.
"I am thrilled to join the ENSEM team at this exciting time," stated Dr. Jeff Kutok, Chief Scientific Officer at ENSEM. "I look forward to leading its outstanding scientific team and building an industry leading pipeline of transformative medicines accelerated by our innovative Kinetic Ensemble® platform."
About Ensem Therapeutics
ENSEM is a pioneering drug discovery and development company that leverages its unique Kinetic Ensemble® platform to develop innovative small molecule precision medicines for oncology. ENSEM integrates computational and AI deep learning methodologies with advanced experimental techniques to identify non-obvious binding pockets and accelerate structure-based drug design, with a focus on high-value and difficult-to-drug targets. In 2023, ENSEM licensed the rights to its IND-ready oral CDK2 inhibitor (ETX-197), to BeiGene and is progressing a differentiated pipeline of novel drug candidates for the treatment of oncology.
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SOURCE Ensem Therapeutics, Inc.
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