Sanofi cancer executive jumps ship to Silicon Therapeutics

Sanofi veteran Christopher Winter has been appointed as the new chief of R&D at drug discovery biotech Silicon, becoming the latest in an increasingly long line of Big Pharma executives to join the early-stage life science stream.

Winter comes to the Boston-based company from Sanofi, where since 2013 he led its U.S. oncology research as site lead and research cluster head on overcoming immunosuppression.

This comes as Sanofi has once again been retooling its cancer R&D, bringing a deeper focus into key oncology areas after seemingly looking to scale down just a few years back.

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Winter, also a Blueprint Medicines, Merck Research Laboratories and Exelixis alumnus, will work with Silicon and its “integrated physics-based drug discovery,” where it is looking to create small molecule therapeutics for diseases with challenging protein targets that are difficult to drug.

“Silicon Therapeutics has assembled a world-class team applying an industry-leading platform to address fundamental challenges for designing next-generation, breakthrough therapeutics,” said Winter.

“I’m excited to join Silicon Therapeutics’ mission that joins integrated excellence in physics-based simulations, chemistry and disease biology focused on making drugs that matter for patients.”