MENLO PARK, Calif. /PRNewswire/ -- NuMedii, Inc., today announced an expansion of its Board of Directors with the appointment of Athena M. Countouriotis, MD. In addition, Zemin Zhang, PhD, has joined the company's Scientific Advisory Board. Drs. Countouriotis and Zhang are two industry leaders with expertise in cancer clinical development, and genomics and bioinformatics, respectively.
"We are thrilled to have Dr. Countouriotis join the NuMedii Board of Directors and Dr. Zhang join the NuMedii Scientific Advisory Board," said Gini Deshpande, PhD, chief executive officer, NuMedii, Inc. "Dr. Zhang's insights from his work with single cell sequencing and Dr. Countouriotis's extensive experience in the clinical development of precision therapeutics will be invaluable as we continue to advance our AIDD technology and design our oncology programs for success in the clinic. Their collective and unsurpassed expertise will further enhance our capabilities in the discovery and development of precision therapies for rare oncology indications."
Dr. Countouriotis brings more than 15 years of experience in the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology and life science industries. She has significant experience leading clinical development programs, from preclinical through clinical stages through to approval. Over the course of her career, she has been involved in multiple clinical programs, with a focus within oncology, both hematologic and solid tumor indications, that have supported regulatory approvals in the U.S. and Europe. Currently, Dr. Countouriotis is Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of TP Therapeutics. Before joining TP Therapeutics, Dr. Countouriotis served as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Adverum Biotechnologies and previously at Halozyme Therapeutics. Prior to that, she was Chief Medical Officer at Ambit Biosciences leading the development of quizartinib through the company's initial public offering and acquisition by Daiichi Sankyo. Dr. Countouriotis also worked at Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb in various leading clinical development roles for several oncology products including Sutent® (sunitinib malate), Mylotarg® (gemtuzumab ozogamicin), Bosulif®(bosutinib) and Sprycel® (dasatinib). She holds an MD from Tufts University School of Medicine, completed her pediatric residency at the University of California (UC), Los Angeles, and completed additional training at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology program.
"NuMedii has considerable momentum and I am excited to be joining the company's Board of Directors at this pivotal moment. I believe the Company's ability to understand disease at an unprecedented resolution combined with unparalleled data analytics and drug discovery capabilities has significant potential to produce transformative medicines, particularly for the many cancers for which unmet medical needs still exist," said Dr. Countouriotis.
A renowned professor in cancer genomics and bioinformatics, Dr. Zhang is currently an Associate Director at BIOPIC College of Life Sciences, Peking University and Senior Principal Investigator, Peking-Tsinghua University Center of Life Sciences. His current research focuses on using cutting-edge technologies such as single-cell sequencing to understand oncogenesis and cancer immunology. Previously, he spent more than 16 years at Genentech/Roche, leading the cancer genomics and bioinformatics group to discover anticancer targets and biomarkers using new technologies such as machine learning and high-throughput sequencing. An inventor with more than 60 issued US patents, Dr. Zhang has pioneered multiple research directions in computational cancer biology and cancer genomics including the first-ever whole genome tumor sequencing and has directly contributed to the initial finding of the molecular targets of multiple cancer therapeutic agents in clinical trials. He is on the editorial boards for journals including Cell Systems, Genome Medicine and Cancer Informatics. He is a CUSBEA Scholar, a recipient of the 1000 Talents program, and also a Cheung Kong Scholar. Dr. Zhang received his bachelor's degree in Genetics from Nankai University, and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Penn State University. He received additional training in Information Technology from UC Berkeley and conducted postdoctoral training in Laboratory Medicine at UC San Francisco.
Added Dr. Zhang, "I am excited to join NuMedii's stellar Scientific Advisory Board and I look forward to helping the company expand its AIDD technology to encompass additional modalities and facilitate the discovery of new precision therapies that will help cancer patients and the physicians who treat them."
NuMedii's AIDD (Artificial Intelligence for Drug Discovery) technology employs deep learnings of human biology consisting of hundreds of millions of structured molecular, pharmacological and clinical data points that the company has curated and harmonized. The company couples these data with proprietary machine learning and network-based algorithms to discover and advance precise, effective new drug candidates, as well as biomarkers predictive of efficacy for subsets of patients, in a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas including orphan diseases like IPF and oncology.
