David de Graaf Appointed as Selventa CEO
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - December 8, 2010 - SelventaTM, which evolved from Genstruct®, Inc. announced today that David de Graaf, Ph.D. has been appointed President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) effective immediately. Dr. de Graaf brings significant scientific and business experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. He assumes this leadership role from his most current position as Chief Scientific Officer at Selventa. Dr. de Graaf's new role will include leading the Selventa team in its partnerships with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as select academic institutions collaborations.
"David's appointment reflects his strong credibility and significant contributions in fulfilling Selventa's commitment to providing the industry's leading solutions that help our business partners develop a robust project portfolio throughout their R&D pipeline," said Jim Matheson, Selventa's Chairman of the Board and General Partner at Flagship Ventures. "David combines a proven scientific background with established operational and leadership capabilities that will extend our core strengths and move us to the next level of corporate development as we continue our rapid growth and deepen our strategic relationships." Selventa leverages patient data and innovative analytics to find optimal treatments for the right patients. Ultimately, the value includes evidence-driven identification and validation of mechanisms for patient stratification and combination therapies, which maximize broad response or desired efficacy.
"I am excited to accept this responsibility because I truly believe that Selventa's approach to personalized healthcare will revolutionalize the pharmaceutical industry," said Dr. de Graaf. "I look forward to extending the Company's current success by expanding our scientific reach and helping our partners accelerate and clarify strategic, R&D decisions."
Dr. David de Graaf joined Selventa as Chief Scientific Officer and over the past year has been instrumental in defining the company's scientific strategy, direction and general operations. Prior to joining the Company, Dr. de Graaf served as the Vice President of Biotherapeutics and Integrative Biology at Boehringer-Ingelheim, where he built a successful portfolio of clinical candidates, initiated key collaborations as well as managed scientific leadership and site operations. He also held roles with increasing scientific and management responsibilities at Pfizer, AstraZeneca and the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research.
Dr. de Graaf completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel in pharmacogenomics of human olfactory systems. He also earned a Ph.D. in mammalian genetics from The University of Illinois at Chicago and a Masters of Science degree in evolutionary genetics from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. He was awarded a Feinberg Fellowship and is invited frequently to speak at scientific conferences. About Selventa Founded in 2002 and privately-held, Selventa helps clients find optimal treatments for the right patients by offering scientific consulting services, licensed software products and strategic partnerships. The company analyzes rich patient data, accelerates the development process and clarifies decisions on therapeutics and diagnostics. Selventa engages in short-, mid- and long-term relationships with top-tier pharmaceutical and life science companies to develop new therapeutics and mechanistic biomarkers in the areas of oncology, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases, inflammation and drug safety. For more information, visit www.selventa.com.
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