FORMA Therapeutics Strengthens Scientific Advisory Board with Addition of Three Leaders from Industry and Academia

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Mon Mar 30, 2009 9:02am EDT

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(Business Wire)--
FORMA Therapeutics announced today the addition of three new members to the
Company`s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). The new members are:

* SAB Chairman Robert Gould, Ph.D., Director of Novel Therapeutics, Broad
Institute and former VP of Licensing and External Research and VP of Basic
Research, Merck; 
* Simon Campbell, Former SVP of Worldwide Discovery and Medicinal R&D Europe,
Pfizer; and 
* Yigong Shi, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton
University and Chair Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Tsinghua
University.

They join existing FORMA SAB members Stuart Schreiber, Ph.D., Todd Golub, M.D.,
and Michael Foley, Ph.D. FORMA is integrating important new advances in
chemistry and biology to unlock important drug targets that have been elusive to
the best scientists in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. 

"The addition of these visionaries in the fields of genetics, oncology,
structural biology, chemistry and drug discovery to our existing world-class,
influential Scientific Advisory Board, is a strong endorsement of FORMA`s
transformative drug discovery platform capabilities," said Steven Tregay,
President and CEO of FORMA. "This also highlights our dedication to exploiting
new advances in the understanding of previously elusive drug targets so that we
are at the forefront of successfully developing drugs for these targets. We look
forward to working closely with our SAB to help us execute on the scientific
promise of the company." 

"FORMA's commitment to creatively combining technologies from multiple sources
and to marry biological screening technology with advanced chemistry puts them
in a strong position to accelerate drug discovery," said Robert Gould, Ph.D.,
Chairman of FORMA`s SAB. "We believe that the company's unified approach will
allow them to discover a new generation of therapeutics, particularly for
oncology." 

FORMA Therapeutics is integrating transformative chemistry and biology to unlock
the best targets and pathways that genomic medicine has revealed.Capitalizing on
the targets and pathways validated by the Cancer Genome Atlas Project and other
related efforts, FORMA is developing a new generation of cancer therapies aimed
at previously elusive drug targets. The Company is achieving this by applying
its proprietary cell-based screening, structure-guided drug discovery and
Diversity Oriented Synthesis (DOS) technologies, which FORMA also uses to
discover novel compounds for its partners in indications beyond oncology. FORMA
is a global company headquartered in Cambridge, MA with additional research
operations in Connecticut, Singapore and Beijing. www.formatherapeutics.com

New SAB Members

Robert Gould, Ph.D., Chairman of Scientific Advisory board, FORMA Therapeutics;

Director of Novel Therapeutics, Broad Institute

Dr. Gould is currently Director, Novel Therapeutics, The Broad Institute of MIT
and Harvard. Gould retired from Merck Research Labs in 2006 where he was Vice
President, Licensing and External Research. For the three years prior to that
position he was Vice President, Basic Research, Merck Research Labs, where he
oversaw strategic direction and drug discovery activities for multiple
therapeutic areas, as well as MRL's centralized high throughput screening and
imaging facilities. Dr. Gould obtained degrees from Spring Arbor College,
Michigan and The University of Iowa. After post-doctoral studies at The Johns
Hopkins University, he joined Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Labs where he
remained until retiring and joining the Broad Institute. Dr. Gould has published
over 90 peer-reviewed publications and 16 patents. 

Dr. Simon Campbell, CBE FRS

Past President of the Royal Society of Chemistry

Simon Campbell is a synthetic organic chemist who retired from his position as
senior vice president for world-wide discovery and medicinals R&D Europe at
Pfizer in October 1998. He has co-authored over 110 publications and patents and
was a key member of the research teams that discovered doxazosin (Cardura) and
amlodipine (Norvasc). He was also senior author on the research proposal that
led to sildenafil (Viagra), the first oral treatment for erectile dysfunction.
Dr. Campbell was the first chair of the Expert Scientific Advisory Committee for
the Medicines for Malaria Initiative, was President of the Royal Society of
Chemistry 2004-06 and was elected FRS in 1999. In 2006, Dr. Campbell was
appointed CBE for services to science. Dr. Campbell received both his BSc and
Ph.D. degrees from the University of Birmingham in England. 

Yigong Shi, Ph.D., Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor, Department of Molecular
Biology, Princeton University; Chair Professor, Department of Biological
Sciences, Tsinghua University

Yigong Shi has been a Professor at Princeton University in the Department of
Molecular Biology since 1998. Dr. Shi's research is aimed at elucidating the
molecular mechanisms involved in tumorigenesis, with a focus on key regulatory
components in programmed cell death (apoptosis). His approaches include a
variety of biochemical and biophysical methods, particularly x-ray
crystallography. Dr. Shi is a founder of TetraLogic, Inc. and currently serves
as co-Chairman of the scientific advisory board. He is also Chair Professor for
the department of Biological Sciences at Tsinghua University. Prior to joining
the faculty at Princeton, Dr. Shi was a Postdoctoral fellow in the Structural
Biology Laboratory of Tumor Suppressors and Oncogenes at the Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center under Dr. Nikola P. Pavletich. Dr. Shi earned his
Ph.D. and stayed on as a Post Doctorate fellow through the Inter-campus Program
in Molecular Biophysics (IPMB) and the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical
Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under Dr. Jeremy M.
Berg. Yigong Shi received his B.S. from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China with
highest honor in both Biology and Mathematics. 



FORMA Therapeutics
Steven Tregay, 617-679-1970
CEO
or
Media Contact:
MacDougall Biomedical Communications
Douglas MacDougall, 781-235-3060 

Copyright Business Wire 2009

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