Press Release | June 25, 2024
BERKELEY, CA — June 25, 2024
Actym Therapeutics, pioneering a new drug modality to treat solid tumors, announced today the appointments of Mary J. Janatpour, PhD, as Chief Scientific Officer and Shouryadeep “Deep” Srivastava, MD, PhD, as Senior Vice President of Clinical Development. Drs. Janatpour and Srivastava bring extensive therapeutic product discovery and development expertise as Actym continues the clinical advancement of its lead program and expands its portfolio of drug candidates. In May, Actym announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared its Investigational New Drug (IND) application to start a Phase 1 clinical trial of lead drug candidate ACTM-838.
“We are fortunate to attract exceptional individuals with the depth of experience and skills that Mary and Deep bring to the company,” said Tom Smart, CEO of Actym. “Their appointments complete the near-term expansion of our senior team, equipping us with the leadership necessary to drive our product development and achieve our business objectives.”
Dr. Janatpour commented, “Actym’s STACT™ biological platform is designed to address a high unmet need to locally express large multiplexed therapeutic payloads in disease tissue via a systemically administered drug. In addition, the platform has another key feature – the amplified expression of the disease-tissue localized payloads. I am eager to lead the team in building Actym’s pipeline of new drug candidates that deliver therapeutic payload combinations, including immune modulators, other therapeutic peptides and proteins, and RNA and gene editing effectors. Our aim is to treat immune-excluded and immune-desert oncology indications and expand our applications to indications beyond oncology.”
“ACTM-838’s insightful design, based on the company’s proprietary STACT™ biological platform, is intended to engage both innate and adaptive immunity to generate a comprehensive, robust, and durable anti-tumor immune response throughout the body. This is a key differentiator from existing treatments targeting solid tumors,” said Dr. Srivastava. “With ACTM-838, I look forward to collaborating with the team to drive its development for the treatment of solid tumors and contribute to the expansion of Actym’s innovative pipeline.”
Mary J. Janatpour, PhD, is an oncology R&D executive and advisor with 25 years of experience helping biotech and pharma companies build value through strategic oncology pipeline development. Dr. Janatpour is currently on the Board of Directors of Active Motif and the Bioconjugates Advisory Board at Catalent Pharma Solutions. Before joining Actym, Dr. Janatpour served as EVP and Chief Scientific Officer at Spotlight Therapeutics where she oversaw the build of the company’s therapeutic pipeline leveraging its gene editing platform. She previously served as Vice President of Oncology Research at Dynavax Technologies, leading a research laboratory and an immuno-oncology clinical program through Phase 1 development. Dr. Janatpour also built a portfolio of early-stage oncology biologics at Chiron Corporation, Schering-Plough Biopharma and Novartis. She has also been an independent consultant for immuno-oncology start-ups with novel platforms. Dr. Janatpour received a PhD in Biomedical Science from the University of California, San Francisco, and did her post-doctoral training in Immunology at the DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA.
Shouryadeep “Deep” Srivastava, MD, PhD, is an experienced clinical researcher with expertise in oncology drug development. Prior to joining Actym, Dr. Srivastava served as Vice President of Clinical Development at Theseus Pharmaceuticals where he led early clinical development activities of targeted cancer therapies. He also served as a clinical development consultant at Jaguar Gene Therapy and played a pivotal role in the FDA IND clearance for a neurodevelopmental gene therapy program. Before Theseus, Dr. Srivastava was Vice President of Clinical Development at iTeos Therapeutics. From 2018 through 2021, he was the Global Clinical Lead at Takeda where he led the sNDA approval, Phase 3 initiation, and pediatric development for the leukemia drug, ICLUSIG® (ponatinib). Earlier in his career, he was on the development teams of early- and late-stage hemophilia programs at Baxalta/Shire. Dr. Srivastava received his MD from B.R.D. Medical College, India, and holds a PhD from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
About Actym Therapeutics
Actym Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on transforming cancer treatment. The company has created a proprietary novel drug modality (STACT™ biological platform) that harnesses the power of a genetically modified bacterial vehicle designed to be safely systemically administered and deliver multiple therapeutic payloads that are amplified and produced locally at the disease site. To achieve targeted anti-tumor effects, STACT™ exploits intrinsic tumor microenvironment (TME)-specific metabolites, enabling selective enrichment of the bacterial vehicle and therapeutic payloads in tumors. Our flagship drug candidate, ACTM-838, uses STACT™ to deliver IL-15plex and eSTING to the TME. With the ability to tailor STACT™ to target specific cell and tissue types, and incorporate a broad range of payload combinations, we aim to achieve an unprecedented level of therapeutic impact for patients across multiple oncology and non-oncology indications. Based in Berkeley, California, Actym Therapeutics is funded by leading investors.
Contacts
For Actym Therapeutics
Tom Smart, CEO
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Media Requests for Actym
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